Walls of Alienation & Realignment

On June 5, the US President Donald Trump banned citizens from seven African countries from travelling to the United States, citing risks from terrorism and the prevalence of visa overstays. Since June 9, citizens of Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan are banned from travelling to the US – part of a-strong list of twelve countries worldwide facing the measure. Burundi, Sierra Leone and Togo are among seven nations worldwide to be subjected to partial restrictions. In addition to this, the Trump administration has proposed a new tax on remittances. African nations would be among the hardest hit. The bill’s passage would be the latest sign of a US retreat from Africa, coming on the heels of the stripping of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the introduction of steep tariffs after decades of preferential trade agreements on the continent, observes the New York Times.

PayPal Mafia and Trump’s Africa Policy

The “PayPal mafia” of libertarian billionaires with roots in South Africa under white rule are now hugely influential in the US tech industry and politics, observes the Guardian. They include Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, David Sacks and Roelof Botha.

Peter Thiel, the German-born billionaire venture capitalist and PayPal cofounder, was educated in a southern African city in the 1970s when Hitler was still openly venerated. Thiel, a major donor to Trump’s campaign, has been critical of welfare programmes and women being permitted to vote as undermining capitalism. As a student at Stanford he defended apartheid as “economically sound”. Elon Musk takes an unhealthy interest in genetics while backing claims of a looming “white genocide” in his South African homeland and endorsing posts promoting the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory—a debunked white nationalist far-right conspiracy theory espoused by French author Renaud Camus. The original theory states that, with the complicity or cooperation of “replacist” elites, the ethnic French and white European populations at large are being demographically and culturally replaced by non-white peoples—especially from Muslim-majority countries—through mass migration, demographic growth and a drop in the birth rate of white Europeans. Increasingly, Elon Musk’s language and tone have come to echo the old South Africa.

David Sacks, formerly PayPal’s chief operating officer and now a leading fundraiser for Trump, was born in Cape Town and grew up within the South African diaspora after his family moved to the US when he was young. A fourth member of the mafia, Roelof Botha, the grandson of the apartheid regime’s last foreign minister, Pik Botha, and former PayPal CFO, has kept a lower political profile but remains close to Musk. Recently, Steve Bannon, Trump’s former adviser, described white South Africans as the “most racist people on earth”, questioned their involvement in US politics and said Musk was a malign influence who should go back to the country of his birth.

Trump has put financial aid to Africa on hold, affecting projects that support the fight against HIV and AIDS, to the detriment of many ordinary people. It is widely reported that The US government plans to reduce its diplomatic presence in Africa. The plan is to significantly reduce the US diplomatic footprint in Africa, alleged Alex Vines, who heads the Africa programme at London’s Chatham House think tank. Lesotho, Eritrea, the Central African Republic, the Republic of Congo, Gambia, and South Sudan will have embassies closed, along with consulates in Douala, Cameroon, and Durban in South Africa.

Africa didn’t feature very strongly in Trump’s first term either. He didn’t visit Africa throughout his tenure as President. So far, during his second term only three ambassadors, for South Africa, for Morocco and for Tunisia, on the African continent, are nominated by the Trump administration. All the others either have existing ambassadors still serving or vacancies. US President Trump recently named Leo Brent Bozell III as ambassador to South Africa, an industrial powerhouse, pending confirmation by the US Senate. The appointment of pro-Israel Bozell follows the expulsion of South African ambassador Ebrahim Rasool from Washington, who had criticised Trump. Diplomatic relations between the two countries reached a low point following the expulsion. The US is South Africa’s second-biggest trading partner, and the country is facing a 30 per cent tariff under Trump’s currently suspended raft of import taxes. The Trump administration has condemned South Africa’s lawsuit against Israel before the International Court of Justice over the Gaza war. In February, there was another row: Trump accused the South African government of arbitrarily expropriating land, speaking of “discrimination” against white South Africans in order to seize their land. However, later, it was revealed that on this issue, Trump was misguided with distorted information by a prominent member of the PayPal Mafia group.

US President Donald Trump confronted South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in May with explosive false claims of white genocide and land seizures during a tense White House meeting. “People are fleeing South Africa for their own safety. Their land is being confiscated, and in many cases, they’re being killed,” the president added, echoing a once-fringe conspiracy theory that has circulated in global far-right chat rooms for at least a decade with the vocal support of Trump’s ally, South African-born Elon Musk, who was in the Oval Office during the meeting. Though South Africa has one of the highest murder rates in the world, the overwhelming majority of victims are Black. South Africa, which endured centuries of draconian discrimination against Black people during colonialism and apartheid before becoming a multi-party democracy in 1994 under Nelson Mandela, rejected Trump’s allegations, reports Reuters. Ramaphosa responded to Trump’s allegations by saying that the South African government had not confiscated any property and the policy is aimed at ensuring equitable public access to land. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa also spoke to Elon Musk regarding “misinformation” about South Africa after US President Donald Trump said he would suspend aid to the country over its land reform policy.

Reacting to Trump’s Africa policy, Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo, the archbishop of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, asked the US President to reinstate foreign aid to Africa. In an op-ed, published in The Wall Street Journal on Sunday afternoon (June 8), the cardinal stated, “It would be a mistake, however, for Mr. Trump forgot about Africa.” Cardinal Ambongo highlighted Africa’s rich natural resources and “bright entrepreneurial and eager young people” as important assets to the US, emphasising the utility of a relationship between Africa and the United States. While Ambongo acknowledged the need for the US to be concerned about the use of its limited resources, he noted that international adversaries will replace the US if it completely withdraws all aid to Africa.

Bill Gates Foundation in Africa

Bill Gates has developed a strong association with Africa through his philanthropic foundation. By June 2004, ACHAP (African Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Partnership), a three-way partnership of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Merck, and the Botswana government, had committed nearly USD 60 million of the USD 100 million toward various AIDS education, prevention, and treatment programmes. The Gates Foundation is primarily known for its public health investments, but has also made major inroads into agriculture. In Africa, much of this work extends through the Nairobi-based AGRA (previously known as the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa). The Gates Foundation is a cofounder and the largest donor to AGRA.

Many of the projects funded by the Gates Foundation have generated controversy among the aid recipients. A growing group of Gates’ intended beneficiaries today criticise him as doing more harm than good, and some have explicitly asked him to stop helping. “Bill Gates Should Stop Telling Africans What Kind of Agriculture Africans Need,” noted the headline of an op-ed in Scientific American (July 6, 2021), authored by Million Belay and Bridget Mugambe from the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa. From farmer organisations in sub-Saharan Africa to public health experts around the globe to public school teachers in the United States, critics cite the high opportunity costs of Gates’s charitable crusades and the vast collateral damage they leave behind. It is alleged that the Gates model is funding white-collared bodies in the Global North to fix those wearing dashikis, burqas, saris, and kangas in the Global South, writes the Nation Weekly.

Recently, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, the fifth richest person in the world, pledged that most of his fortune would be spent on improving health and education services in Africa over the next 20 years. On May 9, he announced to give away 99 per cent of his vast fortune, around USD 200 billion, over the next 20 years.

It may be recalled that on August 27, African faith, farming, and environmental leaders came together to launch an unusual statement. Their open letter was addressed to “the Gates Foundation and other funders of industrial agriculture.” It charged these funders with promoting a type of corporate, industrial agriculture that does not respect African ecosystems or agricultural traditions. The letter was organised by the Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute (SAFCEI), and has over 150 signatories and was primarily targeted against two foundations promoted by Bill Gates.

According to Forbes, under a basket of policies dubbed the “green revolution,” AGRA, the Gates Foundation, and likeminded institutions have sought to substantially increase the use of synthetic fertilisers, pesticides, and commercial seeds in Africa. This has centred on developing new seeds and a network of sellers. The aim was to dramatically increase agricultural output, in order to reduce hunger and elevate farmer incomes. Nonetheless, by AGRA’s own admission, it failed in its goal to double crop yields and incomes for 30 million farmers by 2020. In fact, some critics argue, AGRA has made things worse. According to an external assessment by Tufts University, severe hunger in AGRA countries increased by 30 per cent between AGRA’s founding and 2018. Crop yield increases have been modest, and where they exist, they haven’t always been enough to cover the higher cost of farming with commercial seeds and agricultural inputs. Dependence on fertiliser has increased the debt and financial vulnerability of the small farmers who make up the majority of farmers in Africa.

African Renaissance

Significantly, the ban on African nations by the Trump administration has been imposed during “a decade of African Renaissance — 2020-2030”; it is a ten-year project under the “Beyond the Return” campaign, launched by the government of Ghana, in 2020. In the previous year, 2019, the Ghana government launched the “Year of Return” campaign to mark 400 years since the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in Jamestown, Virginia. “The Year of Return” was also launched to celebrate the resilience of all the victims of the trans-Atlantic slave trade who were forcefully displaced throughout the world, ending up in North America, South America, the Caribbean, Europe and Asia. The two campaigns actually have contributed immensely to the arrival of the African diaspora, in Ghana and the slave prisons. Following Ghana, Benin also launched a similar programme. It is reported that African Americans are returning to countries like Ghana more than 400 years after their ancestors left Africa as slaves. Many say they want either to reconnect to history, or resettle on the continent. Most of the African American visit the Cape Coast Castle—the largest of the buildings based around the legacy of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. It played a significant role in the gold and slave trades, the arrival of Christianity, and the establishment of the first formal education system.

Over the last 400 years, Western countries have plundered Africa of its rich minerals, natural resources and efficient human prowess. Now Africans are trying to exercise national control on their assets. Recently, Burkina Faso officially completed the handover of five gold mining assets to its state-owned mining company. Assets included two operating mines and three exploration licenses formerly owned by subsidiaries of London-listed Endeavour Mining and Lilium. Burkina Faso’s status as a gold producer has grown significantly over the past two decades, making it one of Africa’s leading gold-producing countries. Burkina Faso is following the lead of regional peers Mali and Niger by tightening control over its extractive industries, aiming to boost state revenues amid a 27 per cent surge in gold prices this year. However, the shift has raised concerns among Western investors, including Canada’s IAMGOLD, Russia-linked Nordgold, and Australia’s West African Resources Ltd, who worry the reforms may undermine investment certainty and project stability in one of Africa’s top gold-producing regions.

Africa is home to sizable reserves of the world’s critical energy transition minerals but the continent has yet to fully seize the opportunities presented by its natural resource endowments. Estimates show that African countries generate only about 40 per cent of the revenue they could potentially collect from these resources. A UNCTAD 2024 report reveals, Africa’s share of global critical mineral reserves in 2023 were: Cobalt (48 per cent), Manganese (48 per cent), Graphite (22 per cent), Copper (6 per cent), Nickel (6 per cent), Lithium (1 per cent), iron ore (1 per cent). The year 2025 is predicted to be a tipping point for the mining of rare earth minerals in Africa. The continent’s output will make significant strides towards a projected accomplishment of providing 10 per cent of global supply within five years. This begins this year as new mining endeavours in Malawi, South Africa and other countries start operations.

China has already expressed its willingness to work with Africa to deepen the implementation of the ten partnership actions for modernisation, prioritise cooperation in such key areas as green industry, e-commerce and e-payment, science and technology, and artificial intelligence, and enhance cooperation in security, finance and the rule of law, so as to promote high-quality development of China-Africa cooperation.

Significantly, Africa is coming out of the shadows of the Western colonial powers. Currently, the non-Western bloc BRICS (10), led by Brazil; Russia; India; China and South Africa, has three members from Africa-South Africa, Egypt and Ethiopia. Out of the 54 countries in Africa, 53 have signed memoranda of understanding with China to participate in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This includes agreements at a bilateral level with individual countries, as well as a general agreement with the African Union.

In the China-Africa Changsha Declaration on Upholding Solidarity and Cooperation of the Global South dated June 11, 2025, China has offered, through negotiating and signing the agreement of China-Africa Economic Partnership for Shared Development, to expand the zero-tariff treatment for 100 percent tariff lines to all 53 African countries having diplomatic relations with China, or all African countries except Eswatini, to welcome quality products from Africa to the Chinese market. For the least developed countries in Africa, on top of the zero-tariff treatment for 100 percent tariff lines announced at the 2024 Beijing Summit of Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), China offered to roll out measures on market access, inspection and quarantine, and customs clearance to boost trade in goods, enhance skills and technical training, and expand the promotion of quality products.

Cardinal Ambongo, while cautioning US President Trump about his misguided African policy, has very rightly observed that international adversaries would replace the US if it completely withdraws all aid to Africa. It appears, China is filling the vacuum and collaborating with the African nations to help them emerge as a resilient continent.

The writer is a professor of Business Administration who primarily writes on political economy, global trade, and sustainable development.
Views expressed are personal