As African heads of state prepare to gather next month for the African Union’s annual leaders summit, AU Commission Chair Mahmoud Ali Youssouf delivered remarks to the body in which he noted “the increasingly complex global environment, marked by shrinking financial resources, rising protectionism, tariff barriers, and visa restrictions.” Though Youssouf never explicitly named the United States as the source of many of those challenges, the implication was clear.
In the past month alone, President Donald Trump’s administration has abducted a world leader, threatened to annex the territory of a NATO ally and announced the Board of Peace, which appears designed to undermine the legitimacy of the multilateral system—most notably the United Nations. Contrary to the post-Cold War bipartisan consensus around the rules-based international order, the U.S. under Trump has become a key architect of global disorder, characterized in a speech by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the World Economic Forum as “a rupture, not a transition.”
One benefit for African leaders of Trump’s return to the White House is that there is no uncertainty or ambiguity over where they stand. During his first term, Trump infamously alluded to Africa as being full of “shithole countries.” This time around, though the Trump administration may be more interested in Africa as a source of mineral resources, the continent is still low on the list of priorities identified in its 2025 National Security Strategy, with just three paragraphs devoted to it at the very end.