Below is my response to The Economist’s February 20 article, “How America deals with Africa, despite Donald Trump.”
Your report on the Trump Administration's policy toward Africa (February 20) missed the main point. Trump came into office determined to reverse everything that Obama had done. But, he has left intact, and has fully funded, Obama's two very creative projects in Africa: "Power Africa" and "Feed the Future". The former has already increased power generation in Africa by 30 thousand megawatts, and the latter has increased food crops considerably in Nigeria. In addition, Trump sent Nikki Haley, his first Ambassador to the UN, to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2018 to persuade former President Kabila to stop delaying the election, and to promise not to run himself. This has opened the door in the DRC to democracy for the first time in its history. Also, of course, the Bush (43) program to control and reduce the prevalence of HIV/AIDS, and the Clinton AGOA program, to encourage African exports to the U.S. also have Trump's continuing support. Trump's own new project to encourage U.S. private investment, "Prosper Africa", has been slow to get started. But Secretary of State Pompeo brought two major U.S. corporations to Senegal recently where they signed two investment memoranda of understanding. Finally, Trump's offer to mediate between Egypt and Ethiopia over the latter's construction of a major dam that threatens to reduce the volume of Blue Nile water going to Egypt, and its one hundred million people, is an important effort to avoid a shooting war between these two major African powers. Despite Trump's initial nasty depiction of African countries two years ago, his actual policy is really quite constructive.