Africa–USA Relations Herald a Winter of Discontent as Global Alliances Are Upended

Continental giants South Africa and Nigeria have drawn the ire of the Trump administration as the global trade and diplomatic architecture experiences its biggest overhaul since 1945.

Africa’s fortunes in 2026 will turn on whether the continent’s leaders can navigate a fundamentally transformed geopolitical and economic landscape. One year since US President Donald Trump’s ascendance to power on a platform defined by American isolationism, the global political, diplomatic, and trade architecture has been revolutionized, leaving nations scrambling for new alliances while dealing with fresh challenges and opportunities.

Long reliant on aid and trade breaks such as the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA — the 25-year-old agreement that allowed eligible sub-Saharan African countries duty-free access to the American market for over 1,800 products), Africa’s economies now face crippling tariffs and collapsing aid in an environment defined by weakening democracy. New, nimble, answers will be needed.

A Whole New World Created by America First

When the USA published its highly-anticipated, 33-page National Security Strategy (an outline of its foreign policy priorities) in December 2025, Africa merited a mere half a page tagged on at the very end of the document. The three paragraphs and 210 words on Africa amounted to a call for the USA to shift from a “foreign aid paradigm to an investment and growth paradigm capable of harnessing Africa’s abundant natural resources and latent economic potential”.

As if to underline the USA’s turn against multilateralism, demonstrated in actions over the year buttressing President Trump’s “America First” policy, the administration announced two weeks after the strategy’s release that it was expanding travel restrictions to an additional 20 countries and the Palestinian Authority, doubling the number of states affected by sweeping limits announced in June 2025 on who can travel and emigrate to the country. Of the 20 countries facing new travel restrictions or outright bans, 16 are in Africa.

The USA’s forceful implementation of its America First policy — incorporating aid freezes and cuts and travel restrictions on Africans — will dominate interaction with the continent over the next three years of the Trump presidency. It means that punitive measures such as the recent travel bans are unlikely to abate. For example, Trump said in December that the USA should seek immigrants from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden rather than from what he termed “s***hole countries”, an expletive he has used in the past to denigrate African countries.

Opportunity amid the Acrimony

Despite rising diplomatic tensions between the USA and some African states, there is scope to strike new bilateral and multilateral relationships and forge new economic and diplomatic alliances, as well as for renewed postures between specific states and the Trump administration.

In the wake of the imposition of the punitive “Liberation Day” tariffs in May 2025, countries such as South Africa (which faces a 30% tariff after previously enjoying duty-free access under AGOA) have sought to diversify export avenues by targeting existing and new markets. South Africa, for example, has adopted a so-called “butterfly strategy”, prioritizing 27 countries to bolster trade in Europe and Asia — and particularly China.

This is prudent for economies like South Africa, which has been specifically targeted for punitive action by the Trump administration over debunked allegations of a “white genocide”, and Nigeria. In December, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing that the Trump administration was open to a one-year extension of AGOA, but would consider excluding South Africa from the trade initiative if Congress pushed for that outcome. South Africa — which hosted a successful G20 leaders’ summit in Johannesburg in November 2025 — has already been barred from participation in the body’s events in 2026, and it has indicated that it will not force a diplomatic crisis over the issue.

The two African economies that are likely to feel the most pain from Trump policy are South Africa (already hit with an aid freeze as well as the aforementioned 30% tariff) and Nigeria (which faces a 15% tariff alongside threats by Trump of sending the US military into the country “guns a-blazing” allegedly to protect Christians). South Africa’s leadership has been threatened with sanctions, while Nigeria has been designated a “country of particular concern” and slapped with significant travel restrictions.

It’s not all bad. African countries such as Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Mauritania, Rwanda, and Senegal have struck various deals with the USA on critical minerals, energy, security, and migration. Other jurisdictions, such as eSwatini, have accepted US cash in exchange for its deportees.

As indicated in its National Security Strategy, the USA still needs African states and their minerals. This may give some African states leverage to play the USA off against China and rising foreign powers on the continent such as Russia, Türkiye, the UAE, and the European Union to eke out economic gains.

Democracy Slides as USA Retreats

Democracy took a hit on the continent in 2025. In East Africa, Tanzania — one of the continent’s most stable and enduring democracies — mounted elections marred by repression, state violence, and a result in which President Samia Suhulu won 98% of the vote. Madagascar’s government fell in a coup and is now under a “transitional” military junta, Kenya suppressed protests, and Zambia has instituted controversial constitutional changes that open the way for a possible power grab by the ruling party.

At the same time, the coup nations of West Africa — Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger — consolidated under new organization the Confederation of Sahel States (CES), are turning their backs on democracy in general. Djibouti, Ethiopia, Republic of Congo, and Uganda are set to vote this year and all indications are that their long-standing leaders will remain in power. With the USA no longer interested in encouraging democracy, bad political actors are emboldened.

Gen-Z Is Still Here

The Gen-Z protests that shook Africa last year may have subsided, but they are not over. Over the past three years, youth-led protests have repeatedly roiled Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Morocco, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Togo. Media-savvy protesters have used platforms such as TikTok and Discord — a messaging app popular among gamers and used during the Nepal uprising — to organize, in many cases outwitting governments and even toppling them as happened in Madagascar and Nepal in 2025. The youth’s anger at rising living costs, government failures, and political repression has largely not been addressed and so, as seen in Kenya for three consecutive years, protests are likely to remain a feature of the African political landscape.

But African Economies Will Continue to Grow

Despite the uncertainties of this geopolitical moment, ranging from trade disputes to crippling debt servicing costs, projected GDP growth for sub-Saharan Africa is set to outpace global averages thanks to macro-economic reforms and strong links to China and Europe. The World Bank and African Development Bank project growth at between 4.3% and 4.4% in 2026. Further, “the Global South is gaining momentum, with South–South trade forecast to increase by 3.8%”, according to the Boston Consulting Group’s Global Trade Model.

Clearly, for Africa there is opportunity in the turbulence that lies ahead. The key will be whether it has the leadership to steer it through a vastly changed and swiftly transforming world. At a time of heightened uncertainty and intensifying rivalry, Africa will require leaders who can forge strong, diversified partnerships that benefit the continent’s people.