Nelson Byaruhanga explains why Africa’s autocrats feel Trump is a relief
The house Speaker of Uganda’s eleventh Parliament on November 6th posed in the middle of a sitting to celebrate the election of Donald Trump as the 47th President of the United States. Anitah Among whose house passed the repressive anti-LGBT law 2023 is under sanctions from the UK, US and United Arab Emirates over large scale corruption and gross human rights abuses.
Among openly bragged that, once in office, Trump would withdraw all the sanctions put against her by the Biden’s Administration. From Kampala to Cape town to the Masai grasslands of Kenya, the drums being beaten across the African continent in celebration of the Republican victory are because Trump who, at one time, regarded some African nations as “shithole countries” is being viewed as a transactional politician with no interest to hold Africa’s tyrants accountable on issues of stealing elections, international law and human rights violation.
Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi who Trump described in his previous administration as “my favourite dictator” was among the early birds to congratulate him for his win against Kamala Harris. Zimbabwean Emmerson Mnangagwa aka the Crocodile who was sanctioned by the US in March 2024 for corruption and serious rights abuses took to X (formerly twitter) to announce his government’s readiness to work with the Trump administration. Nigeria’s Bola Tinubu hoped that Trump’s second term in the White House meant a mutual economic and development partnership between Africa and the United States.
Will Trump hold on his “America First” campaign agenda by continuing on his previous trajectory of underrating Africa and cutting America’s aid to the continent? Bill Clinton’s African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) which provides African nations with duty-free access to the American markets expires in 2025 and Trump in his first Administration had vowed that it would never be renewed under his watch.
But with the current ongoing Chinalisation of Africa and the BRICS boasting of new partners on the continent including Africa’s most populous nation, Nigeria, stopping AGOA, would be a shot in America’s own foot. It would present a smooth ride for China and Russia’s influence in Africa. Africa is waking up from the reality that it cannot be developed through World Bank loans and aid. They now prefer equal opportunities in terms of trade. The desperation to shift is what China is exploiting to penetrate the African market as well as hook obtuse African leaders through unwarranted strategic infrastructure debt schemes.
In Kampala local businesses are collapsing because a large Chinese supermarket called “China Town” marketed itself as a hub of cheap products and consumers are okay to endure long waits in the queues in order to buy cheaply. China is now the source of 14 to 21 percent of the Africa’s imports (selling nearly six times as much as US trade in Africa) and the destination for 15 to 16 percent of the region’s exports according to estimates from Thomson Reuters and the World Bank.
All this is happening when Russia is expanding the presence of Wagner mercenaries to strengthen ties with African dictators and protect Putin’s economic interests on the continent. At the same time Kremlin backed RT media is entrenching the Russian propaganda using colonial history to woo Africans, including promoting disinformation about the war in Ukraine through paid partnerships with national televisions and street billboards.
Caught between a hard place and a rock, political analysts argue that geo-political gymnastics could see Trump approach Africa in the typical image of what many think he is, a desperate deal-focused politician who would dismiss the climate agreements to break an enormous fossils fuel deal with the worst dictator on the continent.