Africa not holding its breath for Trump on trade

By Grant Clark
Contributing Writer

(Urban News Service) — After a two-year election campaign and weeks into his presidency, Africans still have no idea how Donald J. Trump plans to deal with this continent of 54 nations.

Since the launch of his political career, Trump has barely mentioned Africa, home to six of the 12 fastest-growing economies in the world, let alone share insight into his foreign policy thinking. All Africans, and anyone interested in U.S.-Africa relations, have got to go on are a few disparaging tweets, posted in the years before his run for office.

In one 2015 tweet, he called South Africa, the continent’s economic powerhouse, a “total and very dangerous mess.”

In another, he said: “Every penny of the $7 billion going to Africa as per Obama will be stolen.”

Officially, the response to Trump’s presidency by African leaders has been muted.

But given America’s track record on African trade and investment, some in African business circles say they are neither surprised nor alarmed by the absence of any foreign policy direction on Africa. “Many people were expecting closer relations [with the U.S.] while Obama was in there but that didn’t happen,” said Kebour Ghenna, director of the Ethiopia-based Pan-African Chamber of Commerce and Industry, a body representing African business.

“And they don’t expect that to change with Trump,” Ghenna said.

Nuamah agrees. “Expectations are very low. Whatever [Trump] does will exceed expectations,” he said.

China surpassed the U.S. as Africa’s biggest trading partner in 2009. Sino-African trade has grown in leaps and bounds since, rising to $210 billion in 2013 – more than double that of the U.S.-Africa trade in goods that year.

America’s trade with African nations, on the other hand, dropped from $125 billion in 2011 to $99 billion the following year to $85 billion in 2013, according to Washington-based think tank, the Brookings Institution. Last year, Obama announced that U.S. direct investment in Africa had risen 70 percent during his presidency. But it still lagged behind China.

This article originally published in the February 20, 2017 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.