Trump Saves US Africa Command, But Faces Security Dilemma in Somalia and the Sahel
By Daniel Volman
16 June 2025
On 4 June 2025, President Trump signaled that the US Africa Command (Africom) would remain an independent combatant command, and that Africom would not be downgraded to a sub-command of US European Command. He named Air Force Lieutenant-General Dagvin Anderson as the new commander of Africom, starting this summer. And he promoted Anderson to the rank of full four-star general; the commander of Africom is required to hold this rank, like the commanders of all independent regional commands.
The new Africom commander will face a major dilemma: how to confront the challenge to US national security interests at home and abroad posed by jihadist insurgent groups affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Somalia and the Sahael.
In Somalia, Anderson will have to deal with the consequences of President Trump’s decision to eliminate all US funding for peacekeeping operations in FY 2026, including the African Union Stabilization Support Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM). Other countries—including China—might come forward to fund AUSSOM, but it is very unlikely that the mission can be deployed as planned.
ASUSSOM was expected to consist of 11,900 personnel, including military, police, and civilian staff, contributed by Uganda, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, and Egypt. Ethiopia and Egypt might decide to continue, chiefly because they have rival strategic agendas in the region, but they might withdraw, simply due to lack of funding. Turkiye can be expected to continue its large military training program in Somalia, again for its own strategic reasons.
Africom can continue to increase the number and scale of airstrikes on jihadist groups in Somalia and provide training and equipment to the Somali military. But, without a peacekeeping force to back up the weak and ineffective Somali National Army, the security situation will continue to deteriorate and, sooner or later, the Trump administration will have to decide how to respond. It could, of course, just give up and withdraw. But this would further destabilize the Somali government and enable the jihadists to become stronger and more widespread, which could allow it to continue expanding into neighboring countries, including Ethiopia and Kenya.
If, as seems more likely, President Trump decides on a more aggressive military response, this would require him to commit far more resources to Africom—particularly drones and carrier-based aircraft–and to the Somali National Army. It could also require greater levels of US military assistance to Ethiopia and Kenya; and eventually it could require the deployment of US ground troops.
In the Sahel, Anderson will have to deal with the consequences of the expulsion of US troops from Niger last year, which ended US reconnaissance drone operations based in that country. The Pentagon had hoped to relocate these operations to coastal west Africa, but its efforts to persuade Cote d’Ivoire, Benin, and Togo to host the operation have reportedly failed.
The Trump administration has expressed deep concerned about the growth of jihadist groups in the Sahel and their potential capacity to attack US interests or US citizens in Africa or the US homeland. However, it has expressed complete disinterest in the activities of the Africa Corps and other Russian military operations in the Sahel, despite their destabilizing effect on the region.
President Trump is reportedly considering waiving Section 7008 restrictions on Africom cooperation with the governments of countries that have experience military coups, which he is permitted to do by the law. This would allow Africom to resume military operations in the Sahel. He could authorize US troops to become more directly involved in supporting the combat operations of the military forces of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger. But it is difficult to envisage how the US military can collaborate with the military dictators in the Sahel and their allies, the Russian troops of the Africa Corps.
Trump could even decide to authorize airstrikes and other military operations in the Sahel and other parts of west Africa using US naval forces deployed offshore (which he has already done in Somalia). However, this would require the allocation of substantial resources and would risk provoking the jihadists to retaliate by targeting American military personnel, civilians, government facilities, and private business interests in the region. But if he decides instead to abandon US counter-terrorist activities in the Sahel, Nigeria, and the Lake Chad basin, he knows that the jihadists will continue to grow stronger and spread throughout the region.
What little we know about President Trump’s intentions and inclinations indicates that he is likely to take an aggressive approach. This would create his own “forever wars,” only this time they will be in Africa instead of the Middle East. Now is not the time to “double down” (as Marine General Michael Langley, the current commander of the Africom, has characterized it) on a militarized policy that has clearly failed. But, having dismantled the US Agency for International Development and other instruments of “soft power,” this is the course he seems determined to pursue.
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President Trump’s FY 2026 Military Aid Budget Request for Africa
By Daniel Volman
3 June 2025
On 29 May 2025, President Donald Trump released his full new Congressional Budget Justification for the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs, which includes his budget request for US security assistance programs in Africa in FY 2026, which starts on 1 October 2025. It provides remarkably little information on specific countries, as the budget request has always done in the past. But it does provide important indications about the direction of US national security policy toward Africa in the second Trump administration.
Perhaps the most significant proposal in the budget request for FY 2026 is to eliminate all funding commitments to UN peacekeeping operations, including those in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Abye, Western Sahara, as well as AU peacekeeping operations in Somalia. In FY 2025, UN peacekeeping operations received more than $1.2 billion in funding from the United States and the AU operation in Somalia received more than $200 million. According to the request, the elimination of this funding is due to “ongoing mission failures and the disproportionately high level of assessments to the US.”
The request proposes a major increase in the Foreign Military Financing program for Emerging Global Priorities—which provides loans and loan guarantees to foreign countries to buy American military equipment and services—from $51.2 to $188 million. The request states that “priority recipients could include partners in the Indo-Pacific and other regions to counter Chinese activities.”
Funding for most bilateral military aid programs will remain relatively unchanged from spending levels during the Biden administration. The budget request asks for $95 million for the International Military Education and Training program, which provides professional training at US military institutions for foreign military officers. It also calls for $215 million in funding for the Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program, which provides training and equipment to civilian law enforcement and border security agencies for anti-terrorist operations.
However, the request virtually ends all funding for the International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement program, arguing that the United States should reduce spending from $1.3 billion to $125 million and focus on “counter-drug, organized crime, and border security missions that directly impact the United States.”
In the past, the budget request always included detailed country-specific data on these military aid programs. That data has been omitted from President Trump’s request and, as far as I can determine, is not available to the public. So, it is impossible for Congress or the American people to know the Trump administration’s plans for military aid to specific countries. Congress should insist that Trump provide them with this information and ensure that it is made public.
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New US Defense Secretary Hegseth Says Africa Is “Very Much on the Front Lines” Under Trump
By Daniel Volman
19 March 2025
On 11 February 2025, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth visited the headquarters of the US Africa Command (Africom) in Stuttgart, Germany. He began his day doing physical training with Green Berets, then met with the commanders of European Command (Eucom) and Africom getting high-level briefings “on threats ranging from militants in Africa to Russia’s war in Ukraine,” and ended his day with a news conference on the Pentagon’s “force posturing priorities on the European and African continents.”
Hegseth declared that Africom plays a key role in US national security policy. “That’s a mission very much worth resourcing,” he said. “Africa is very much on the front lines of a fight from Islamists to Christian populations that are under siege in Africa and have been ignored for far too long and American interests there. It matters a great deal. And Islamists—we’re not going to allow them to maintain a foothold, especially to try to strike at America.”
In answer to a question about fighting against the threat of armed jihadist groups in Africa and US concerns about the possibility that they might launch attacks in other parts of the world, Hegseth responded by saying that he was “definitely concerned. I mean, anybody of our—anybody of my generation that served in Iraq and Afghanistan or have been a part of post-9/11 understands the threat of global jihad, especially the desire to export that against our allies in Europe or Israel or certainly the United States. So the counterterrorism threat focused on those who would seek to do us harm is of the highest priority, which is why you saw what Africom did so well in that strike in Somalia,” authorized by President Trump on 1 February 2025. Hegseth went on to say that “where we see those growing, plotting, or planning with increased capabilities we will strike. And that pertains to Islamist organizations all across the continent.”
When asked about whether the United States would continue to station hundreds of US Special Forces trainers and advisors in Somalia, Hegseth declared that US President Trump has “been very clear that we’re not trying to have American boots all over the globe. Where we can do counterterrorism effectively over the horizon, that’s the preference. But we’ll review the force posture there and with the generals doing the heavy lifting and take it into consideration, no doubt.”
Hegseth also stressed the role of Africom in countering the threat to US interests in Africa posed by China. His visit to the Africom headquarters, Hegseth said, was “a reflection of the importance of that command as well as Eucom.“ But, Hegseth went on to say, “it’s also a reflection that, you know, the PRC’s [People’s Republic of China’s] intentions are pernicious, not just in their part of the world, but also in South America and on the African continent. And America’s posture there along with allies and partners is going to matter about contesting that space. So, it certainly remains a priority.”
According to Defense Secretary Hegseth, therefore, Africom’s missions are counter-terrorism—targeting armed Islamist organizations that are judged capable of launching attacks on US citizens at home or abroad in particular—and countering what American officials always label the “malign influence” of China in Africa. Conspicuously absent from Hegseth’s remarks, however, is any mention of US interest in maintaining, and expanding or increasing, its access to strategic raw materials, especially the minerals vital for the production of mobile telephones, computers, batteries, other advanced electronic devices, and the infrastructure for the production and distribution of “green energy.”
But on the first day of President Trump’s second term in office, he signed an executive order on minerals, mineral extraction, and mineral processing in Africa and other parts of the world. “Mainly in the United States, but if you read closely there are also multiple references in that executive order to international partnerships and, you know, cooperating with partner nations,” said Scott Woodard, the acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Transformation, at an African mining conference held in Cape Town, South Africa in early March 2025.
President Trump’s attention is focused on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The Global Edge Research Organization at Michigan State University estimates that 70% of the world’s cobalt is produced in the DRC, for example. And, according to a study conducted by the US Army War College, Chinese state-owned companies control 80% of the Congo’s cobalt production. However, mining in the eastern and southern part of the DRC—where cobalt, copper, lithium, coltan, and other minerals are concentrated—is threatened by constant warfare, involving the national army, a host of domestic insurgent groups, and the armed forces of Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, South Africa, and other countries in the region. This warfare has escalated dramatically over the past three months, as the M23 militia and Rwandan troops seized control of two provinces and captured Goma and Bukavu, the two largest cities in eastern DRC.
In an interview with the New York Times published on 22 February 2025, Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi declared that the Trump administration had already shown interest in a deal that would increase the flow of strategic raw materials to the United States. Soon afterwards, Tshisekedi’s spokesperson, Tina Salama, announced that “President Felix Tshisekedi invites the United States of America, whose companies buy strategic raw materials from Rwanda, which plunders them by massacring our people, to come and buy them directly from us, who are the real owners.”
President Tshisekedi is working hard to make a deal with President Trump; according to a 20 February 2025 filing under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, he hired American lobbyists on a $1.4 million, year-long contract, to carry out “strategic engagements to advance defense security and critical mineral diplomacy with the United States government.”
On 9 March 2025, discussions with Washington grew more serious, people with direct knowledge of the talks told the Financial Times and Reuters. “The DRC is endowed with a significant share of the world’s critical minerals required for advanced technologies,” a State Department spokesperson told the Financial Times, and “the United States is open to discussing partnerships in this sector that are aligned with the Trump administration’s America First agenda.”
“There is a desire for us to diversify our partners,” Congolese government spokesperson Patrick Muyaya said in late February 2025, and the DRC is engaged in “daily exchanges” with the United States on a mining deal. Andre Wameso, Deputy Chief of Staff to President Tshisekedi, travelled to Washington in early March 2025 for talks with American officials about a deal, two sources told the Reuters news agency. On 11 March 2025, the Washington, DC-based lobby group Von-Batten-Montague-York, posed a statement on social media saying that “the only confirmation we are willing to give is that a high-level delegation from the DRC government was in Washington, DC, last week for meetings with the United States Congress and the Donald Trump administration.”
Soon afterwards, Semafor announced that President Trump was “set to name his daughter’s father-in-law as his Special Envoy to the Great Lakes region.” He is the Lebanese-born businessman Massad Boulos, who was appointed by the president as his senior adviser for Arab Affairs in December 2024. Boulos is expected to receive his security and diplomatic clearances quickly and, Semafor reported on 10 March 2025, “could visit the Congolese capital Kinshasa and Rwanda’s capital Kigali later this month.”
“Support from the US,” said Semafor, “would give DR Congo a better negotiating hand in working out a pact where all sides get some version of what they want.” And “the US is keen to reach an agreement that gives it access to minerals and pushes out Chinese players.”
Most recently, on 17 March 2025, Representative Ronny Jackson (Republican of Texas), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Subcommittee on Africa, met with President Tshisekedi in Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC, during a ten-day trip to central Africa. The Congolese presidency described him as a “special envoy” for President Trump. According to the presidency statement, Representative Jackson said that “we want to work so that American companies can come and invest and work in the DRC. And to do that, we have to make sure that there is a peaceful environment’ in the country.
We have a pretty clear idea of what kind of a deal President Tshisekedi is looking for.
On 21 February 2025, Congolese Senator Pierre Kanda Kalambayi, chair of the DRC Senate Committee on Defense, Security, and Border Protection, sent a letter to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, which was then distributed by Aaron Poynton, President of the Africa-USA Business Council, as required under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Senator Kalambayi declared that “the United States and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) share a common interest in strengthening strategic mineral supply chains, ensuring economic resilience, and advancing mutual security objectives.” Therefore, “the moment is ripe to deepen this relationship and formalize a long-term economic and security partnership.” And, “while China has historically dominated mineral supply chains in the DRC, the recent policy shift from President Tshisekedi presents a rare opportunity for the US to establish a direct and ethical supply chain” and for the DRC to “shift away from China’s dominant influence and strengthen economic ties with the West.”
In exchange for “granting US companies extraction and export rights to secure a stable, direct supply chain for defense and technology sectors” and other economic privileges, Senator Kalambayi proposed that the Trump administration provide “training and equipping the Congolese Armed Forces to protect mineral supply routes from foreign-backed militant groups” (i.e. the M23 militia and Rwandan troops), use “access to military bases in key zones to protect strategic resources,” and “replace ineffective UN peacekeeping operations with direct US-DRC security cooperation.”
To secure a deal, President Trump is likely to consider selling significant quantities of American weaponry and other military equipment to the DRC dispatching Special Operation Force teams to train units of the Congolese Armed Forces. It is doubtful, however, that he would consider deploying American combat troops to the DRC and fighting the M23 and other militia groups on Tshisekedi’s behalf, no matter how attractive the minerals deal might be.
Since Hegseth’s trip to Stuttgart, Africom has conducted an escalating series of air strikes against Islamic State (IS) forces in northern Somalia and the forces of the al-Qaeda affiliated al-Shabaab Islamists in central and southern Somalia. Following air strikes on IS forces on 1 February 2025, Africom launched a second round of attacks on IS forces on 16 February 2025. And then it mounted air strikes against al-Shabaab forces on 20 February and 25 February 2025, and again on 1 March and 15 March 2025.
Africom has also been working strenuously to regroup and reorganize its counter-insurgency operations from the Sahel to the states of coastal west Africa. On 16 September 2024, US troops completed their withdrawal from Niger after they were expelled by the military junta that seized power in the country, where they had been stationed to conduct intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions using drones operating from a facility constructed by the Pentagon at a cost of $110 million at a Nigerien base in Agadez, in the northern part of the country. On 4 January 2024, the Wall Street Journal revealed that Washington is now “seeking to base military drones along the West African coast” and “is holding preliminary talks to allow American unarmed reconnaissance drones to use airfields in Ghana, Ivory Coast and Benin.”
According to the report, retired US Air Force Major General Mark Hicks, a former commander of US Special Operations forces in Africa, said that “the Niger coup has forced our hand,” and “there’s really not much option other than to fall back and operate out of the coastal West African states.” So, according to US and African military officers, the US has proposed basing drones at the Ghanaian Air Force base at Tamale, the airfield at Parakou in Benin, and three airfields in Cote d’Ivoire.
And, General James B. Hecker, commander of the US Air Force in Europe and Africa, told the 2025 African Air Chiefs’ Symposium in Lusaka, Zambia, on 19 February 2025, that Africom was prepared to conduct attacks on armed Islamist groups throughout the continent. These groups “are high-value targets that threaten African nations and threaten the United States.” So, General Hecker said, America “will continue to go after terrorist organizations that threaten our African partners as well as the United States.”
Taken together, all these statements and developments provide us with several significant signs about the national security policy toward Africa that the second Trump administration is pursuing and the level of military activities that it will undertake on the continent.
First, it will continue to escalate air strikes and other attacks on armed Islamist groups affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. The Trump administration has already done this in Somalia and it is likely to initiate combat operations in west Africa in the future, particularly in the Sahel and coastal west Africa, either from land bases or from naval forces stationed offshore.
Second, it will make a deal with the government of the DRC. Under such a deal, the Trump administration will provide military equipment, training, and other security assistance to the Congolese armed forces in exchange for the Tshisekedi government’s agreement to to curtail Chinese mining operations and negotiate new contracts with American mining companies and investors.
Third, it will increase arms sales and other forms of security assistance to key US allies, proxies, and partners in Africa that agree to help to protect US interests and to support US objectives. Under President Trump, this assistance is likely to be channeled to just a few countries, which are likely to include Morocco, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Kenya.
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US Africa Command Faces Challenges Under Trump
By Daniel Volman
20 January 2025
The incoming Trump administration is set to pursue an aggressive approach to Africa that will prove challenging for the US Africa Command (Africom), the Pentagon’s combatant command for Africa. Trump may have described African nations as “shithole countries” during his first term and largely ignored the continent. But, in his second term, right-wing advisors are determined to transform US national security policy and implement new policies on competing with China, expanding economic relations with African countries, promoting democracy and human rights, and responding to the threat of armed jihadi insurgent groups.
We already know Trump’s nominees for the leading national security positions: Mike Waltz as Director of the National Security Council (NSC), with Joe Foltz reportedly likely to serve as NSC Senior Director for Africa; Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, with J. Peter Pham as Assistant Secretary of State for Africa; Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense; and John Ratcliffe as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
In addition, Tibor Nagy, who served as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in the first Trump administration, just announced that he will be returning to the State Department in a temporary role “beyond just Africa.” And retired Lieutenant Colonel Rudolph Atallah, a specialist on African security issues, is expected to join the National Security Council and focus on US counter-terrorism operations in Africa.
Their priority will be countering China’s “malign influence” in Africa and competing with them for control over strategic raw materials, particularly uranium, oil and natural gas, coltan, lithium, and other “green energy” minerals. And their primary focus will be on central Africa, where they will exert pressure on the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo to curtail Chinese mining operations and increase security cooperation with Rwanda and Uganda in the mineral-rich, but war-torn eastern part of the country.
According to J. Peter Pham, in an essay entitled “Africa in the Second Trump Administration” and published in November 2024, minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo “are key to securing supply chains for US defense needs as well as the demands of America’s renewed domestic energies. This—rather than exporting raw materials to China, where supply chains can be weaponized—is how to achieve a ‘win-win’ outcome for both Africans and Americans.”
And, according to Ambassador Pham, South Africa will be punished for its “closeness to Russia, China, and Iran, and its role in leading the ‘genocide’ case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. All three members of the national security team nominated by President Trump—Marco Rubio and Representatives Michael Waltz and Elise Stefanik—are on the record raising concerns about Pretoria’s positioning itself in the orbit of Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran as well as its antisemitic antics.”
They will also expand and escalate US counter-terrorism operations in Africa, particularly in the Sahel. They view the greatest threat coming from conflicts which pose a threat to US citizens, businesses and organizations, US government agency personnel, and US national security interests.
According to Ambassador Pham, “the epicenter of terrorism has shifted from the Middle Est and North Africa to Sub-Saharan Africa, concentrated in the Sahel region.” So, “tackling these challenges in a way that is consonant with US interests is not at cross purposes with President Trump’s determination to avoid new wars and open-ended commitments to counterinsurgency operations or nation-building exercises.”
This means resuming security cooperation with the military regimes that seized power in the Sahel, pressuring the coastal West African states to host a growing number of US personnel and increased US military activities, pressuring the French to resume aggressive security involvement in the region, increasing security cooperation with northern African countries (Morocco, Tunisia, and Libya), and expanding security cooperation with Nigeria. They are likely to ignore the activities of Russian mercenary forces—from the Africa Corps, formerly known as the Wagner Group—and Russian commercial and business activities in Africa.
They may decide to follow the advice of prominent members of the first Trump administration like J. Peter Pham and Tibor Nagy to recognize Somaliland as an independent state. At the very least, this will complicate US Africa Command operations in Somalia against al-Shabaab (including both military training operations and airstrikes by US aircraft and drones). It will also make it extremely difficult to continue security cooperation with Ethiopia and maintain ordinary diplomatic relations with the Abiy regime, as well as US arms transfers and military training programs for the Ethiopian military.
Since the Ethiopian military is a major component in the AU-sponsored peacekeeping force in Somalia (backed and financed by the US), this will severely disrupt their operations and provide al-Shabaab with a golden opportunity to expand its operations in Somalia or even launch strikes against US interests and citizens elsewhere.
“But,” wrote Ambassador Pham, “in his first term, President Trump correctly assessed that there was neither a capable local partner in the Mogadishu regime nor any US national interest that warranted risking American lives or treasure on the ground in Somalia. He ordered US military personnel pulled out. Any threats posed by al-Shabab, the Qaeda-aligned Islamist movement, or the Islamic State’s local affiliate could be dealt with from offshore or bases in nearby countries. The Biden administration reversed this Trump order, which will need to be revisited after the inauguration.”
They will avoid any meaningful effort to resolve the civil war in Sudan, choosing instead to ignore the role of Egypt and the UAE in arming the rival forces and prolonging the conflict. And they are unlikely to pay any significant attention to the spreading armed jihadist insurgency in northern Mozambique, despite the recent discovery of large deposits of oil and natural gas in the region.
Africom, which was founded in 2008 to manage US military relations with African states and conduct military operations in Africa, will have its hands full keeping up with all these changes in US security policy toward Africa.
It will have to manage the retreat of US intelligence drone operations and other American forces in the Sahel to coastal west Africa and move its counter-terrorism operations to coastal west African states like Ghana, Benin, and Cote d’Ivoire.
It will have to implement Trump’s likely decision to recognize the sovereignty of the self-declared Republic of Somaliland and try to find a way to continue operations against al-Shabaab in the rump state of Somalia.
It will have to respond to orders to increase its involvement in the continuing conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo and expand its military training programs and other military assistance programs in Rwanda and Uganda.
It will have to manage military relations with Morocco, including preparing for the possible outbreak of renewed warfare in the Western Sahara between Morocco and the Sahrawi Democratic Republic.
And it will have to continue to prepare for possible American military intervention in Nigeria in response to what the Pentagon regards as the “nightmare scenario” of state collapse and civil war, especially if it impacts the Christian communities in the country or impedes oil production.
So, when will we know more about the Trump administration’s security policy toward Africa and its military intentions on the continent? While we may see some indications before then, we are certain to learn a great deal about them in March, when President Trump will submit his budget request for fiscal year 2026 to Congress and when Marine General Michael Langley—the current commander of Africom—will testify in support of the proposed budget before the House and Senate Armed Services Committees. General Langley was very revealing last time and I, for one, look forward to hearing what he has tell us this coming March.
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Did Somalia Beat Trump To A Deal With Ethiopia?
By Daniel Volman
14 January 2025
On 11 December 2024, the Somali government headed by President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud agreed to the “Ankara Declaration” with the Ethiopian government of President Ahmed Abiy following negotiations hosted by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Erdogan of Turkiye. Under the agreement, the two leaders committed themselves to respecting their country’s respective sovereignty, unity, independence and territorial integrity. The two also agreed to conclude “mutually advantageous commercial arrangements through bilateral agreements, including contract, lease, and similar modalities, which will allow the Federal Republic of Ethiopia to enjoy reliable, secure, and sustainable access to and from the sea, under the sovereign authority of the Federal Republic of Somalia.”
Somalia’s decision to grant Ethiopia access to port facilities appears to be a response to the election of Donald Trump to a second term as president of the United States and its concern that the incoming administration would recognize the sovereignty of Somaliland, the self-declared state in northern Somalia. Somaliland signed a memorandum of understanding with Ethiopia on 1 January 2024 that promised to grant commercial and military port facilities to Ethiopia on its coast in exchange for a promise that Ethiopia would recognize its declaration of independence from Somalia and its sovereignty. Somalia appears to be attempting to pre-empt any decision by the new American administration to recognize Somaliland’s sovereignty.
The proposal to recognize Somaliland has strong support from a variety of Trump supporters and advisors. The Project 2025 report, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, prepared by a number of conservative organizations under the leadership of the Heritage Foundation as a blueprint for the second Trump administration and released in April 2023, calls for American “recognition of Somaliland statehood as a hedge against the US’s deteriorating position in Djibouti.” Several people involved in writing and promoting the report have already been nominated for positions in the incoming administration, including Stephen Miller (Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy at the White House) and John Ratcliffe (Director of the CIA).
The recognition of Somaliland has also been promoted by prominent foreign policy advisors who served in Trump’s first administration. J. Peter Pham, Trump’s Special Envoy to the Sahel region and to the Great Lakes region, declared that Somaliland has “demonstrated its attractiveness as a partner for the United States and other countries.”
Tibor Nagy, the former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, said there will be “more sympathy for places like Somaliland” in Trump’s second term in office, because “Somaliland stands on its own feet, it’s very pro-West, very free market oriented and it takes care of the security of its own territory and it holds regular elections.”
According to Nagy, the idea that Somaliland is part of Somalia is a “fiction” and “nonsense for a variety of reasons.” He goes on to say that “maybe, just maybe, if a new administration wins our next Presidential elections, Somaliland’s dream of being a fully recognized member of the community of nations will become reality.” And Michael Rubin, senior fellow at the influential American Enterprise Institute, published an article on 3 January 2024 entitled, “US Should Endorse Somaliland’s Independence,” explicitly calling for American recognition.
But now President Abiy appears to have achieved his objective without having to recognize Somaliland or risk a confrontation with Somalia, which has gained the military backing of Egypt and Eritrea. These two countries have their own disputes with the Ethiopian regime and have pledged to support Somalia if the dispute leads to war. The Ethiopian leader is unlikely to welcome a clumsy intervention by American ideologues that will upset his plans and destabilize the region. President Trump would be well advised to ignore the Somaliland lobbyists and stay out of the Horn of Africa.
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Africa Policy in Trump’s Second Term
By Daniel Volman
17 June 2024
The election of the next president of the US will be held this November, so obviously we don’t know yet who will win. We know what policy Joe Biden will follow if he wins another term, because he has followed a consistent policy and is unlikely to deviate significantly from that course in the next four years. But, what do we know about what Africa policy would look like in a second Trump presidential term?
Based on the Project 2025 report prepared by a number of major right-wing think tanks and lobbying organizations under the leadership of the Heritage Foundation, statements made by leading Republican foreign policymakers, and information from the media, the policy that Donald Trump is likely to follow if he wins is also clear.
In the view of Donald Trump and his supporters, many of President Trump’s foreign policy initiatives during his presidency were sabotaged by civil servants and disloyal Trump appointees who delayed or obstructed his decisions and plans. So, to ensure the implementation of the “America First” foreign policy agenda in Trump’s second term, the Heritage Foundation and other organizations involved in Project 2025 and Trump’s advisors are currently recruiting dependable, obedient right-wing applicants; vetting them; and selecting people to install as soon as Trump takes office on 20 January 2025.
This will end the tradition of political neutrality for personnel working in Executive Departments and Federal Agencies, and amount to a purge of all personnel who won’t pledge to do whatever Trump demands, however ill-advised, illegal, or unconstitutional it may be.
According to the Project 2025 report and other sources, Trump’s foreign policy agenda for Africa calls for radical changes in US national security policy toward Africa. To begin with, it argues that it is in the US national interest to increase US reliance on working with the French in north Africa to lead counter-terrorism operations and to counter the military and political involvement of Russia in the region and throughout the rest of the continent. “In North Africa,” the report states, “security cooperation with European allies, especially France, will be vital to limit growing Islamist threats and the incursion of Russian influence through positionings of the Wagner Group.”
The report also calls for the US to convert all foreign aid grants for African recipients into loans and eliminate all development assistance programs, along the lines endorsed by Senator Lindsey Graham in February 2024. According to the report, the US should “shift strategic focus from assistance to growth” and “reorient the focus of US overseas development assistance away from stand-alone humanitarian development aid and toward fostering US private sector engagement” in Africa. “While the United States should always be willing to offer emergency and humanitarian relief,” the report goes on to say, “both US and African long-term interests are better served by a free market-based, private growth-focused strategy to Africa’s economic challenges.”
At the same time, the report maintains that the US should increase funding for military and security operations by African allies by providing more military education, training, and security assistance, because this is necessary to protect American lives at home and abroad and to protect US companies, targets, and interests in Africa.
According to the report, “African country-based terrorist groups like Boko Haram may currently lack the capability to attack the United States, but at least some of them would eventually try if allowed to consolidate their operations and plan such attacks. The immediate threat they pose lies in their abilities and willingness to strike American targets in their regions of operation or to harm US interests in other ways.” Therefore, “the US should support capable African military and security operations through the State Department and other federal agencies responsible for granting foreign military education, training, and security assistance.”
The report says that the US should focus its attention on just a few countries. “Rather than thinning limited funds across all countries (including some that are unsupportive or even hostile to the United States) the next Administration should focus on those countries with which the US can expect a mutually beneficial relationship” and “after being designated focus countries by the State Department, such nations should receive a full suite of American engagement.”
The report declares that the US should “stop promoting policies birthed in the American culture wars” and stop pressing African governments to respect the rule of law, human rights/LGBT+ rights, political and civil rights, democracy, and women’s rights, especially abortion rights. “African nations are particularly (and reasonably) non-receptive to the US social policies such as abortion and pro-LGBT initiatives being imposed on them,” by the United States, the report declares. Therefore, “the United States should focus on core security, economic, and human rights engagement with African partners and reject the promotion of divisive policies that hurt the deepening of shared goals between the US and its African partners.”
The report contends that the US must “counter malign Chinese activity on the continent.” In particular, the report insists that the US should “focus on supporting American companies involved in industries important to US national interests or that have a competitive advantage in Africa.” In its most notable specific recommendation, the report insists on the “recognition of Somaliland statehood as a hedge against the US’s deteriorating position in Djibouti.” This indicates that the next Trump Administration will support Ethiopia, which has just signed an agreement with Somaliland to gain access to naval and commercial facilities on its coast in exchange for a promise to recognize it as an independent, sovereign state, against Somalia, Eritrea, and Egypt if this lead to war in the Horn of Africa, as seems likely.
Trump may not be particularly interested in what he once called the “shithole countries” of Africa, but his foreign policy advisors are clearly determined to implement these policies and recommendations if he wins a second term. They aren’t going to ignore Africa this time around
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US Africa Command Retreats to Coastal West Africa To “Double Down” on Counter-Terrorism
*Daniel Volman is the Director of the African Security Research Project in Washington, DC (www.africansecurity.org) and a specialist on US national security policy toward Africa and African security issues.
According to Marine General Michael Langley, Commander of the US Africa Command (US Africom), appearing before the House Armed Services Committee on 21 March 2024, in the Sahel and west Africa, “our operational approach would be to deter threats holistically and the greatest state is being able to protect a homeland. All those violent extremist organizations, whether we’re talking about ISIS Sahel, ISIS West Africa, JNN, or any other faction, Boko Harum is still alive as well.”
- Referring to the recent expulsion of US troops from Niger, where the US constructed a $110 million drone base, he stated “we need to be able to do indications and warnings. We need to be able to monitor and respond. And that’s where we need you know long-endurance ISR [Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance], so the impacts would be great if we lose our posture.” When asked about alternative sites for drone operations, Langley responded, “Congressman, we’re exploring that now and I’ll talk more in the closed session about it, because it’s in the diplomatic realm right now.”
The United States could continue ISR operations in the Sahel, using far more expensive drones with the fuel capacity to travel hundreds of miles and “loiter” over the Sahel, but the Pentagon knows that would be a waste of money, resources, and time. The whole point of the US drone operation at the Nigerian base at Adadez was to provide intelligence to local African military forces and French troops in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger. But these African military forces have staged military coups and are no longer eligible for US security assistance; they have expelled French troops; they have closed down the US drone operation in Niger; and they have hired the Russian mercenaries of Africa Corps, formerly the Wagner Group. So, to whom would the US give the intelligence?
Instead, the US Africa Command is retreating to coastal west Africa. On 4 January 2024, the Wall Street Journal revealed that Washington is now “seeking to base military drones along the West African coast” and “is holding preliminary talks to allow American unarmed reconnaissance drones to use airfields in Ghana, Ivory Coast and Benin.” According to the report, retired US Air Force Major General Mark Hicks, a former commander of US Special Operations forces in Africa, said that “the Niger coup has forced our hand,” and “there’s really not much option other than to fall back and operate out of the coastal West African states.”
Moreover, said a senior US military official, “coastal West African countries that used to be insulated no longer are” and, according to the Wall Street Journal, “the effort to build up American forces in the coastal states suggests Washington believes Mali and Burkina Faso are so inundated with Islamist militants that they are beyond the reach of Western help, and that it fears Niger, which until a July coup was the staunchest American ally in the region, is now unreliable.” So, according to US and African military officers, the US has proposed basing drones at the Ghanaian Air Force base at Tamale, the airfield at Parakou in Benin, and three airfields in Cote d’Ivoire.
“What we can do,” General Michael Langley, told the House Armed Services Committee on 21 March 2023, “is double down on what we’re doing whole of government in the military sense.” In his annual appearance before the Senate and House Armed Services Committee hearing on the FY 2025 budget request for Africom and other military operations in Africa, General Langley emphasized the role of Africa in the global military competition with Russia and China, and described how he intends to respond to the growing challenge from “violent extremist organizations” (VEOs, the official US designation for Islamic armed groups) throughout the continent.
In a recent interview with the Voice of America, Major General Kenneth Ekman, who served as US Africom’s director of strategy, plans, and programs before focusing solely on west Africa, said that “what you’re talking about is that layer of forces, most of which came from Niger, that we reposition around the Sahel. If our presence in Niger allowed us to go inside out, relative to the Sahelian based VEO (violent extremist organizations) threat, we now have to revert to going outside in. Countries like Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Ghana, Benini, Chad, our access to them and the degree to which they want to partner with us will influence how we go outside in. We’re at a different phase with each of those countries. What I mean is, each partner has their own unique security concerns. They also have their own respective tolerance and willingness to abide the presence of U.S. forces.”
“So, in some cases, we moved some forces well prior to the Niger coup, because that’s where the threat was going. We were invited early on, and whether it was a small SOF (special operations forces) team or an ISR (intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance) platform, we moved them months ago. The larger question is, and it’s a policy question, where, and if we establish significant presence of forces, probably on a partner base, serving alongside them, doing everything from command and control to projecting things like ISR and personnel recovery, to sustaining them and to medically treating them. That is something where we’re not there yet, and no agreements have been made.”
“There are some cases where, for now, we’re definitely not (establishing a significant force presence). So that’s true in Nigeria. We have a very clear message from them. Likewise in Ghana. The ones where things are still kind of under consideration, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Benin, those were, what we want to do is, within the partners’ needs, support their partner-led, U.S.-enabled counter VEO ops.”
So, what strategy will the next American administration pursue? If Kamala Harris wins the election, she is almost certain to follow the current plan to regroup in coastal west Africa and expand counter-terrorism operations in the region. Although President Donald Trump decided to pull 700 US troops from Somalia (mostly Special Operations forces engaged in training Somali troops) and to end US air strikes on al-Shabaab insurgents in that country, it should be remembered that he didn’t take these steps until 4 December 2020, after he was defeated for re-election by Joseph Biden. During Trump’s term in office, he escalated US combat operations in Somalia and there is no reason to think that he won’t do the same thing in west Africa if he wins a second term in office.
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Biden’s Trip to Angola to Celebrate Beating China at Its Own Game
By Daniel Volman
President Josph Biden will travel to Angola in the first week of December 2024 to celebrate the Lobito Corridor project as a major victory for the United States in the competition for economic control of Africa. The $2 billion project will refurbish and construct 1,150 miles of railway linking the Angolan port at Lobito to transport copper, cobalt, and other strategic raw materials from mines in Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is intended to promote increased production of these minerals—so crucial to modern electronic technology—by making it possible to bring far larger quantities on to the world market to meet the needs of producers throughout the world, including in China.
Although the trip is designed, in part, to meet Biden’s promise to visit the continent during his term in office, it should also be seen as an effort to focus attention on what the administration sees as beating China at its own game. The Lobito Corridor project will have far more impact on Africa’s future economic development than all projects built by the Chinese Belt and Road initiative combined. It demonstrates not only that America can compete with China—and win—but also demonstrates the Biden administration’s commitment to countering China’s growing influence and activities in Africa.
As Marine General Michael Langley, Commander of the US Africa Command, said when he appeared before the House Armed Services Committee on 21 March 2024, “the Lobito Corridor is going to be a rail line extended that is counter to the Belt and Road initiative, that is counter to mining concessions, or a supply chain that China is trying to push forward. So, I think we’re doing all the right things, that we need to do more, whether it’s investments in [President Trump’s] Prosper Africa holistically, all the other activities that we bring together a whole of government that pushes our partners to lead it and us enable them across a whole of government as an answer to what the false offerings or the unstable offerings that China is doing through a socio-economic coercive manner.”
Indeed, the Lobito Corridor project should be seen as the second “Marshall Plan” that many Africa specialists have proposed for decades. The railway that links the Zambian Copperbelt to Luanda, and the Kariba Dam hydro-electric power project that supplies the Copperbelt and central Africa with most of its electricity was actually constructed by the United States in the 1950 as part of the original “Marshall Plan” for Britain, which ruled central Africa at the time.
And an objective appraisal of China’s Belt and Road initiative reveals a mixed picture over the past decade. While Chinese President Xi once spoke of offering Africa an alternative to the IMF and other American-led financial institutions, many projects that were originally planned have been abandoned and Chinese officials have been instructed to scale back plans for future projects. The Lobito Corridor project, in contrast, has been fully funded and would transform the region’s role in the global economy. Or it could, if the Democratic Republic of Congo could conduct democratic elections, establish government authority over the eastern part of the country, and resolve its conflicts with Rwanda and Uganda. And that’s a big if.
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The Impotent Americans and Sudan’s Civil War
By Daniel Volman
The failure of the meeting convened in Geneva by the United States and Saudi Arabia in mid-August to resolve the humanitarian crisis in the Sudan and the civil war that is causing it—and to put the country back on the path toward democracy—was a dramatic display of America’s impotence in the post-hegemonic world and the limits of American power in the world today.
The report of the UN expert group on the enforcement of the embargo on arms sales to Sudan and the investigation by Amnesty International have clearly established the involvement of external forces—particularly the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Egypt—in arming the rival forces and have shown how crucial their role has been in fueling, escalating, and prolonging the conflict. But both Egypt and the Emirates are vital US allies in the Middle East, especially now in the midst of the Gaza War. So, the United States has no real leverage to use when it comes to their meddling in the Sudanese civil war. Washington can’t get the two rival Sudanese generals to engage in serious and meaningful negotiations, nor can it get the external actors that are backing them to stop the arms deliveries that are perpetuating the conflict.
The civil war in Sudan erupted on 15 April 2023, between the Sudanese Armed Forces (the SAF, commanded by General Abdul Fattah al-Burhan) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF, commanded by his rival, General Mohammed Hamdan Daglo, known as Hemedti). It was just the latest in a series of coups, internal armed conflicts, and mass mobilizations of civil society organizations seeking to create a democratic political system, that followed the overthrow of the military regime led by General Omar al-Bashir that ruled Sudan from 1989 to 2019.
In 2019, the two generals worked together to overthrow al-Bashir, and in 2021, cooperated again to bring down a short-lived civilian-led government and establish an interim regime under their joint control, with al-Burhan as head and Daglo as his deputy. They were supposed to oversee the implementation of a framework agreement for the restoration of democracy signed in December 2022. Instead, in April 2023, al-Burhan tried to integrate the RSF into the Sudanese Armed Forces, which ignited the civil war.
A variety of external actors have provided funding, military training and equipment, and political support to one or both of these rival forces. According to investigative reporters, the Wagner Group was active in Sudan, at least since 2017 and, more recently, was engaged in training both SAF and RSF troops. The interim regime reportedly received billions of dollars in funding from the Emirates and Saudi Arabia and, in return, Sudanese troops were sent to fight on their behalf in Yemen.
Since the civil war erupted, the Emiratis have backed the RSF and have sent large quantities of sophisticated weaponry and other military assistance to Daglo’s forces and the militias that have joined him. And other external actors have intervened in the conflict as well. Russia has provided millions of dollars-worth of military aid to the RSF in exchange for gold to help fund the war in Ukraine and mercenaries from the Wagner group were deployed to support Daglo. But more recently, Russia has shifted to supporting al-Burhan, primarily due to his promise to grant them a naval base on the Red Sea coast. Egypt, whose president has a close relationship with al-Burhan, is providing substantial military assistance to the SAF—including military drones—and has sent Egyptian soldiers to Sudan to train and support his troops.
The intervention of external actors in the civil war has created a stalemate in which neither side can achieve its aims by military means, leading to a protracted struggle that is unlikely to be settled on the battlefield. The RSF has used its advantages in manpower and its familiarity with mobile warfare to expand its control over much of the west and center of the country, at least in part due to major UAE arms supplies through Chad. But the SAF has also received a continuing flow of arms from its external supporters, particularly from Egypt, and continues to hold the north and east of the country, as well as military bases in other parts of Sudan.
The evolving military situation and the success of Hemedti’s diplomatic efforts to win over the leaders of neighboring countries has led al-Burhan to withdraw from the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and from the “peace process” conducted in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and led by Saudi Arabia and the United States.
General al-Burhan also refused to participate in the recent meeting in Geneva, despite the strenuous personal efforts of American Secretary of State Antony Blinken and President Biden’s Special Envoy to Sudan Tom Perreillo to convince him to attend. He cited the failure of the RSF to implement the Jeddah agreement, in which both sides agreed to restrict their military operations to allow for substantive negotiations to begin, although neither side has honored the agreement.
For better or for worse, Washington has lost its global hegemony in the face of challenges from Russia, China, India, South Africa, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Brazil, and other contending powers, and is never going to enjoy the kind of global power it had in the 1990s and early 2000s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union ever again. Realistically, there is very little that the US government can actually do in Sudan, unless it is willing to divert some of its limited military, economic, and diplomatic resources from Ukraine, the Middle East, and Taiwan to Africa, and to jeopardize its relations with important Middle Eastern partners like Egypt and the UAE; this is unlikely, regardless of who wins the elections in the United States this November.
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LGBTQ+ Africans Remember That Kamala Harris Stood Up For Them
By Daniel Volman
Although few Americans heard about it at the time, LGBTQ+ Africans remember that Kamala Harris stood up for them when she visited Africa as Vice President in March 2023. On 27 March 2023, she appeared at a joint news conference in Accra, Ghana, with Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo. The final question came from Zolan Kanno-Youngs of the New York Times. Referring to the bill that would impose harse jail terms on LGBTQ+ people, then being considered by the Ghanaian parliament, and citing the Biden administration’s commitment to” calling out any foreign government that advanced anti-gay legislation or violates human rights,” he asked her “what have you said to the President and plan to say to other leaders on this trip about the crackdown on human rights?”
Under the “Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill,” which was passed by the Ghanaian parliament on 28 February 2024, people who engage in same-sex relations will be subject to up to three years imprisonment, anyone who promotes LGBTQ+ rights can be jailed for six to ten years, and all LGBTQ+ organizations will be banned. The act is now being challenged in the country’s Supreme Court as unconstitutional.
As Nii-Quarterlai Quartner, professor at Pepperdine University, writes in his new book, Kamala, the Motherland, and Me, “even before he completed his inquiry, members of the Ghanaian cabinet made their disapproval apparent. You could see their faces get tight and hear the whispers. You could even hear some laughter. Was it nervous laughter? Was it belittling laughter? Was it somewhere in between? I don’t know. But the immediate shift in energy was palpable. Despite the angry stares and even some snickers from around the room, Vice President Harris never paused or hesitated in her response.”
Standing at Akufo-Addo’s side, Harris answered the question directly and at length. “I’ll start” she said, “I have raised this issue, and let me be clear about where we stand. First of all, for the American press who are here, you know that a great deal of work in my career has been to address human rights issues, equality issues across the board, including as it relates to the LGBTQ+ community. And I feel very strongly about the importance of supporting freedom and supporting and fighting for equality among all people, and that all people be treated equally. I will also say that this is an issue that we consider, and I consider to be a human rights issue, and that will not change.”
Former President Donald Trump’s policy, if he wins the election this coming November, would be quite different. According to the Project 2025 report, prepared under the direction of the Heritage Foundation by leading Trump advisors, in Trump’s second term, the United States will “stop promoting policies birthed in the American culture wars” and stop pressing African governments to respect the rule of law, human rights/LGBT+ rights, political and civil rights, democracy, and women’s rights, especially abortion rights. “African nations are particularly (and reasonably) non-receptive to the US social policies such as abortion and pro-LGBT initiatives being imposed on them,” by the United States, the report declares. Therefore, “the United States should focus on core security, economic, and human rights engagement with African partners and reject the promotion of divisive policies that hurt the deepening of shared goals between the US and its African partners.”
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1 May 2024
Send more guns: Biden’s Fiscal Year 2024 budget plan for Africa
By Daniel Volman
On 9 March 2023, President Joe Biden released his security assistance budget request for Africa for Fiscal Year (FY) 2024, the first new budget request he has submitted since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The age of American supremacism (in which the United States led an international coalition of allies that sought to dictate global geopolitical relations in the aftermath of the end of the Cold War at the 1980s) has come to an end with a bang and a new age of multi-polar great power struggle to establish a new global geopolitical order has begun. The new security assistance budget request provides us with some clear indications of what place Africa holds in the Biden administration’s vision of a new world order.
US security interests in Africa have evolved significantly since the Bush administration created Africom (the military command with responsibility for managing US military operations and program in Africa) in 2008. From the beginning, however, the new command was focused on three missions: protecting US access to African strategic raw materials (particularly oil and rare earth metals) and African military facilities, countering Chinese and Russian economic expansion and military presence on the continent, and backing counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations by its African allies.
Although Theresa Whelan, the Deputy Director of Defense for African Affairs (who directed the creation of Africom), tried to deceive the US Congress about the purpose of the new command, the truth was revealed by officers of the US Logistics Command, who quoted a briefing that she gave to a European Command conference in 2004 in which she stated quite clearly that Africom’s mission was to ‘prevent establishment of/disrupt/destroy terrorist groups; stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction; perform evacuations of US citizens in danger; assure access to strategic resources, lines of communication and refueling/forward sites’ for the deployment of American troops throughout the continent (US Logistics Command 2004). And in a presentation by Vice Admiral Robert Moeller, the first deputy commander of Africom, at a Defense Department conference held at Fort McNair on 18 February 2008, he specifically cited ‘oil disruption’, ‘terrorism’, and the ‘growing influence’ of China as the principal challenges to US interests in Africa (Moeller 2008).
New Africom commander testifies to Congress
While the relative ranking of these priorities has shifted over the years since then, they remain Africom’s core missions. In his March 2023 testimony before the Senate and House Armed Services Committee hearings on the budget request, the newly appointed commander of Africom, Marine General Michael Langley was questioned primarily about Chinese and Russian activities on the continent (US House Armed Services Committee 2023; US Senate Armed Services Committee 2023). ‘The [aspiration] of China is threefold’, Langley asserted,
one from a geopolitical – they’re trying to change the international norms and they’re using some African countries within the UN [United Nations] construct whether it be the General Assembly or … the Security Council trying to affect votes to change those international norms and international … system writ large. (US Senate Armed Services Committee 2023)
Then,
there is a geostrategic operation and their aspiration for military bases on the continent of Africa. … And the last piece, Senator is geo-economic – our future – our future economy is dependent upon a number of rare earth minerals, and also some are clean energy technologies [that] depend upon the rare earth minerals. About 30 to 40% of those minerals are on the continent of Africa, that – that’s forward thinking by the PRC [People’s Republic of China]. (ibid.)
Langley claimed that China is trying to get military bases on the west coast of Africa:
They do have other aspirations, and in a closed session, Ranking Member, I know that I can be able to lay that out, … where in West Africa is their next military base aspiration. [If they do establish a base,] it would change the whole calculus of the geostrategic global campaign plans of protecting the homeland. It would shorten their – if they – they built any capacity on the West Coast, geostrategically it would put them at an advantage. [He went on to declare that] we can’t let them have a base on the West Coast because it would change the dynamics. (ibid.)
And when asked if he thought it was ‘vital that we keep China from taking over that – that port [Capetown] there in … South Africa?’, Langley replied ‘[a]bsolutely so – sir, because as we look at the Cape of Good Hope and look at how much transit that our … commerce goes across, and it’s also – it can also be a power projection point as well, so we can ill afford, from a geostrategic position [to] allow either the PRC or even Russia to use that as a platform’ (ibid.).
General Langley also publicly and directly contradicted the repeated assertions by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and many other American officials that Washington did not want to make African countries choose between the United States and its Sino-Russian rivals. As he put it, ‘they make choices, and … they make the wrong choices in siding with – going with either PRC or Russia for especially lethal aid’ (ibid.).
According to Langley, this means that Washington should make it easier and quicker for African governments to get American military equipment. African governments ‘come and they ask and said, hey General Langley, we don’t want your boots on the ground, we want your equipment’. But regarding the US arms sales program, ‘it’s moving too slow, Senator, just moving too slow and they make the wrong decisions’ (ibid.).
And finally, Langley revealed that Africom has established a forward headquarters in Africa (in addition to its main headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany). When asked if Africom might follow the example of Central Command (which has its main headquarters in Tampa, Florida, but which has established a forward headquarters in Qatar), he replied that ‘I can talk about that in closed session, because we do have something established to that contract’ (ibid.).
Biden’s FY 2024 budget plan for Africa
Now that the Biden administration has released its FY 2024 security assistance budget request for Africa (shown in Table 1 ), what does that tell us about the administration’s intentions and objectives (US Department of State 2023a)?
Table 1.
US security assistance programs: FY 2022 actual expenditure, and FY 2023 and FY 2024 requests (in thousands of US$).
| Security assistance program | FY 2022 Actual | FY 2023 Request | FY 2024 Request |
|---|---|---|---|
| International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement (INCLE) | |||
| Africa total | 71,300 | 50,800 | 51,900 |
| Central African Republic | 4500 | 3250 | 3250 |
| Democratic Republic of Congo | 6000 | 3000 | 3000 |
| Ethiopia | 1500 | 1000 | – |
| Ghana | 3000 | 3000 | 1000 |
| Kenya | 4450 | 3000 | 3000 |
| Liberia | 5750 | 4350 | 3000 |
| Morocco | 3600 | 2500 | 2500 |
| Nigeria | 6400 | 3200 | 3000 |
| Somalia | 3000 | 1000 | 4300 |
| Sudan | 500 | – | 1000 |
| Tunisia | 6000 | 12,000 | 4000 |
| Africa regional | 36,250 | 29,000 | 29,000 |
| Nonproliferation, Anti-Terrorism, Demining and Related (NADR) | |||
| Africa total | 40,500 | 39,500 | 39,500 |
| Kenya | 5500 | 5500 | 5500 |
| Somalia | 4000 | 4000 | 4000 |
| Tunisia | 5000 | 1000 | 2000 |
| Africa regional | 31,000 | 30,000 | 30,000 |
| Peacekeeping Operations (PKO) | |||
| Africa total | 266,809 | 303,659 | 260,558 |
| Central African Republic | 550 | – | – |
| Democratic Republic of Congo | 4000 | – | – |
| Somalia | 208,108 | 233,209 | 208,108 |
| Africa regional | 54,151 | 52,450 | 52,450 |
| Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Partnership | 38,500 | 33,400 | 33,400 |
| International Military Education and Training (IMET) | |||
| Africa total | 17,908 | 19,280 | 20,805 |
| Algeria | 1354 | 1000 | 1300 |
| Angola | 478 | 500 | 600 |
| Benin | 254 | 500 | 600 |
| Botswana | 640 | 600 | 600 |
| Burkina Faso | 31 | – | 1 |
| Burundi | – | 200 | 200 |
| Cabo Verde | 196 | 400 | 400 |
| Cameroon | 596 | 600 | 600 |
| Central African Republic | 141 | 150 | 200 |
| Chad | – | 800 | 800 |
| Comoros | 197 | 300 | 300 |
| Côte d’Ivoire | 344 | 500 | 600 |
| Democratic Republic of Congo | 245 | 400 | 400 |
| Djibouti | 898 | 895 | 895 |
| Equatorial Guinea | 175 | 500 | 500 |
| Eswatini | 100 | 100 | 200 |
| Gabon | 232 | 400 | 500 |
| Gambia | 191 | 200 | 200 |
| Ghana | 835 | 800 | 900 |
| Guinea | – | – | – |
| Guinea–Bissau | 71 | 100 | 200 |
| Kenya | 1245 | 1000 | 1000 |
| Lesotho | 113 | 100 | 200 |
| Liberia | 420 | 360 | 360 |
| Madagascar | 396 | 300 | 300 |
| Malawi | 410 | 500 | 500 |
| Mali | – | – | – |
| Mauritania | 629 | 500 | 500 |
| Mauritius | 337 | 200 | 400 |
| Morocco | 1112 | 1500 | 2000 |
| Mozambique | 818 | 600 | 600 |
| Namibia | 89 | 100 | 200 |
| Niger | 860 | 875 | 1000 |
| Nigeria | 996 | 1000 | 1000 |
| Republic of Congo | 421 | 200 | 200 |
| Rwanda | 420 | 550 | 550 |
| São Tomé and Príncipe | 104 | – | – |
| Senegal | 957 | 200 | 200 |
| Seychelles | 362 | 850 | 900 |
| Sierra Leone | 775 | 200 | 200 |
| Somalia | 344 | 400 | 400 |
| South Africa | 395 | 300 | 300 |
| Sudan | – | 650 | 650 |
| Tanzania | 804 | 200 | – |
| Togo | 305 | 500 | 600 |
| Tunisia | 1488 | 2000 | 2300 |
| Uganda | 761 | 700 | 700 |
| Zambia | 363 | 500 | 500 |
| Foreign Military Financing (FMF) | |||
| Djibouti | 6000 | 5000 | 6000 |
| Morocco | 10,000 | 10,000 | 10,000 |
| Tunisia | 85,000 | 85,000 | 45,000 |
Source: US Department of State 2023b, Foreign Congressional Budget Justification, Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs, supplementary tables, Fiscal Year 2024.
International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement program (INCLE)
INCLE funding for Africa will remain almost unchanged at $59.1 million for regional programs in East Africa, West Africa and the Sahel, as well as bilateral programs in Kenya, Nigeria, Somalia and other countries. Africa is also likely to receive substantial funding through the Countering People’s Republic of China Malign Influence Fund ($70 million), the Prevention and Stabilization Fund ($15.5 million) and the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons ($66 million).
Nonproliferation, Anti-Terrorism, Demining and Related programs (NADR)
The Biden administration proposes a modest increase in NADR funding for Africa from through a variety of programs. The most important is the Antiterrorism Assistance program, which will increase to $274 million for Bureau of Counterterrorism (CTF) program throughout the world, including programs in Kenya, Somalia, Tunisia and other African countries. In addition, African countries are likely to receive a significant proportion of the $55 million requested for the Terrorist Interdiction Program/Personal Identification, Secure Comparison, and Evaluation System (TIP/PISCES), as well as some of the $237.1 million requested for the Conventional Weapons Destruction program (CWD) to secure and combat the illicit proliferation of small arms and light weapons, including Man Portable Air Defense Systems in the Sahel-Maghrib region and ‘countering the PRC malign influence in Africa and Asia through high-visibility, high-impact demining efforts’ (US Department of State 2023a, 154).
Peacekeeping Operations (PKO)
The Biden administration intends to maintain funding for Peacekeeping Operations (PKO) at nearly its current level. The administration is requesting $260 million for regional and bilateral programs to enhance the ability of African partners to conduct counterterrorism operations in East Africa (specifically in Somalia and South Sudan), sustain counterterrorism operations in East Africa and West Africa, conduct maritime security operations, and strengthen land and maritime borders. It is also asking for $33.4 million for the Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism Partnership in the Maghrib and ‘across the Sahel and Lake Chad Basin countries (including potentially the littoral West African countries of Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Benin, and Togo)’ (US Department of State 2023a, 157).
It is also requesting $52.5 million in regional PKO funds to pay for a variety of programs, including the African Maritime Security Initiative, African Regional Counterterrorism program, the Countering Strategic Competitors program and the Partnership for Regional East African Counterterrorism.
In addition, African countries are likely to receive some of the funding requested for the Prevention and Stabilization Fund ($5 million) ‘to bolster the capacity of partner governments to conduct [counter-terrorism] operations’, the Global Peace Operations Initiative ($71 million) ‘by reinforcing partner country capacity to generate, train, deploy, and sustain peacekeepers’, the Global Defense Reform Program ($18 million) ‘to enhance the ability of these countries to provide for their own defense in an effective, transparent, and accountable way’ (US Department of State 2023a, 156–157).
International Military Education and Training program (IMET)
The Biden administration plans to boost spending on for the International Military Education and Training (IMET) programs for African countries (under which African military officers receive professional military training at home and at military facilities in the United States) to $38.6 million. Major recipients include Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Chad, Tanzania, Mozambique, Angola, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and South Africa. The request specifically identifies Djibouti, Ghana, Kenya, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal as ‘priority recipients’ (US Department of State 2023a, 158).
Foreign Military Financing program (FMF)
The budget request for FMF funding (through which the United States provides loans and grants to African governments for the purchases of US-made military equipment) includes another $6 million for Djibouti in FY 2024 to ‘help bolster the bilateral relationship with Djibouti and counter malign [Chinese] influences in the region – a top U.S. national security priority’ (US Department of State 2023a, 160).
The request also calls for another $10 million in FMF for Morocco and $45 million for Tunisia. The Biden administration says the Tunisian armed forces ‘remain on the front lines of the fight against ISIS and other terrorist groups and the instability emanating from Libya, and serve as an important apolitical institution in Tunisian society’ (ibid., 161). This appears to be an attempt to demonstrate America’s concern about the deterioration of democratic institutions in that country.
In addition, African countries will receive some of the $50 million in FMF funding that is being requested for the Countering People’s Republic of China Fund. The money will be used ‘as seed money to incentivize partners to commit national funds to modernizing their militaries and divesting from PRC-provided equipment’ (ibid., 162). This is intended to ‘reduce opportunities for the PRC to coerce and exert influence over [US] partners’ (US Department of State 2023a, 162). And the budget includes $113 million to fund a new global FMF line called ‘Emerging Global Priorities’ to ‘address emergent foreign policy priorities in the age of heightened strategic competition’ (ibid.) with China and Russia. It will be used, in part, ‘to support regional stability in Africa and NATO’s southern flank, especially if Tunisia shows signs of a return to democratic governance’.
Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program
The delivery of 12 A-29 Super Tucano counterinsurgency aircraft to Nigeria through the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program was completed in July and October 2021, not long after the inauguration of President Biden. The sale to the Nigerian Air Force (which cost Nigeria $593 million), completed an arms deal initiated by the Obama administration and continued by the Trump administration. The planes are armed with twin machine guns, and can carry up to 1550 kilograms of additional weaponry, including air-to-air missiles, bombs, rocket pods and gun pods. And on 14 April 2022, the State Department announced that the Biden administration will proceed with the sale of 12 Bell Helicopter AH-1Z helicopter gunships to Nigeria, armed with 20mm machine guns and guided missiles (US Defense Security Cooperation Agency 2022). The deal (worth $997 million) was initiated by the Trump administration in January 2021, before the inauguration of President Biden.
US Congress questions Biden’s policy
In December 2022, Reuters published two reports on its investigation of major human rights violations by the Nigerian military. In the first (Reuters 2022a), it reported that Nigerian security forces have murdered thousands of children captured during military operations against jihadi insurgents. Babies, infants, and young children were executed because they were believed to be child soldiers or the children of insurgents. In the second (Reuters 2022b), it reported that since at least 2013, the Nigerian military had conducted a secret, systematic, and illegal abortion program that ended at least 10,000 pregnancies among women and girls. Many of them had been kidnapped and raped by jihadi insurgents.
In reaction, US Senator Jim Risch (R-Idaho), the ranking Republican member of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wrote to Secretary of State Antony Blinken to request a review of US security assistance to Nigeria (Reuters 2022c). Risch also called for the State Department to examine the potential use of American sanctions against Nigeria for its violence against women and children. In his letter to Blinken, Risch said
I look forward to hearing more about the Department’s planned response to the serious and abhorrent allegations levied against a long-standing beneficiary of U.S. security assistance and cooperation which, if deemed credible, have done irreparable harm to a generation of Nigerian citizens and to U.S. credibility in the region. (Reuters 2022c)
In February 2023, two members of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, Representatives Sara Jacobs (Democrat, California) and Chris Smith (Republican, New Jersey), sent a letter to President Biden calling upon him to cancel the sale and review US security assistance and cooperation programs in Nigeria (Jacobs 2023; Sahara Reporters 2023). As they pointed out, ‘the assistance we have provided has done little to stem the conflict – in fact, insecurity has worsened from the abuses committed by Nigerian forces’ (Jacobs 2023). Therefore, they concluded,
we believe continuing to move forward with the nearly $1 billion arms sale would be highly inappropriate and we urge the Administration to rescind it. Given the recent reporting of Nigeria’s previously unknown mass forced abortion program – which allegedly ended at least 10,000 pregnancies – and the targeting of potentially thousands of children, we also urge a review of security assistance and cooperation programs in Nigeria. (Jacobs 2023)
Of course, US arms sales to Nigeria are also a response to the escalating violence and political instability throughout West Africa, the Sahel, and the Horn of Africa: military coups in Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Gabon; the Tuareg rebellions and the Islamic extremist insurgencies in the Sahal; military rule in Chad; the civil war in Sudan between rival military commanders; continuing ethnic conflict in Ethiopia (particularly in the Tigray and Amhara provinces); and the war in Somalia between the government and al-Shabaab insurgents. And the president of Nigeria has now assumed the rotating post of head of the Economic Community of West African States. American military support probably played a role in the decision by the recently elected Nigerian President Bola Tinubu to suggest that Nigeria and other ECOWAS countries might send troops into Niger to restore the democratic government.
And even more guns!
On 27 March 2024, US Vice President Kamala Harris announced that even more American weapons would be sent to Africa (Deutsch Welle 2023; Reuters 2023; Voice of America 2023). She travelled to Accra, Ghana, and held a joint news conference with Ghanaian president Nana Akufo-Addo. She revealed that the Biden administration would give $100 million worth of new military support over the next 10 years to Ghana, Benin, Guinea, Cote d’Ivoire and Togo, in addition to the aid in its budget request for these countries. The bulk of the money – at least 86 million – will be delivered over the next three years, according to the Biden administration, and does not require congressional approval.
Although it is impossible to calculate a precise figure, it is clear that security assistance programs administered by the State Department will spend approximately $600 million on programs in Africa in FY 2024 under the administration’s budget proposal (US Department of State 2023a). At the same time, the Defense Department budget request includes approximately $750 million in spending on Africom, including the costs to operate the US military base established in Djibouti, conduct Drug Interdiction and Counter-Drug operations, and provide equipment and training to African military and internal security forces. The Defense Department also spends large amounts of money each year to dispatch ships to make calls at African ports, to conduct annual training exercises like the annual ‘Flintlock’ exercises in West Africa and the annual ‘African Lion’ exercises in North Africa and the Sahel, to send teams of Special Forces instructors to conduct training in African countries, to conduct drone attack and surveillance operations, and to send excess/surplus defense equipment to African recipients. But it is only possible to provide a rough estimate of these expenditures. Taken altogether, the United States government spends at least $1.5 billion on African security programs every year, and probably as much as $2 billion.
This does not include funding for the State Department’s Development Assistance and Economic Support Programs, much of which is directed to countries facing humanitarian disasters and/or violent conflicts. For example, the Biden administration is asking for $12.5 million for the Economic Support Program in Libya ‘to mitigate the effects of violent extremism and other ongoing conflicts and threats’ (US Department of State 2023a, 123).
The militarisation of US policy toward Africa and the constant expansion of Africom has had disastrous consequences for Africa. From a small headquarters established in Stuttgart, Germany, in 2008, Africom has constructed a major military base in Djibouti and signed base access agreements for the use of local military facilities all across Africa; Africom has deployed drones and dispatched military units to bases in African countries, including Somalia, Niger, Kenya, Uganda, Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo; and it has conducted training, intelligence-gathering, and combat operations throughout the continent, most notably in Somalia, Libya, the Sahel and Uganda. President Donald Trump curtailed Africom operations in Somalia for a short time, but they were immediately resumed by President Biden. Other than this brief episode (which was little more than a symbolic fulfilment of Trump’s pledge to put ‘America First’), the militarisation and escalation of US military activities in Africa has proceeded unabated under four American presidents and has enjoyed broad bipartisan support in Congress.
America is certainly not the only external power that has contributed to the militarisation of Africa, the resurgence of military coups, the rising toll of violence against civilians, the increasing violations of human rights, and the repression of popular struggles for democracy and economic development. France, Belgium, Portugal and the United Kingdom, of course, bear a heavy responsibility as the chief colonial powers in Africa. Russia and China have also played a major role by making Africa a major arena in their strategy of challenging America’s global hegemony. And a number of new external actors – most notably Turkey and Iran – have been increasingly active in Africa as part of their efforts to extend their influence in predominantly Muslim countries and to promote trade, particularly in advanced military drones and other weapons systems.
But America bears a unique responsibility for its historical role in the militarisation, political destabilisation, economic underdevelopment, impoverishment and exploitation of Africa. American policy will continue to undermine Africa’s peace and security, and its political and economic development, until American policymakers abandon their futile and disastrous policy of relying on military and security programs to control the continent.
References
- Deutsch Welle. 2023 U.S. Announces Aid for Sahel amid Russia Expansion. February 17. https://www.dw.com/en/us-announces-aid-for-sahel-amid-russia-expansion/a-65020067/
- Jacobs S. 2023 Reps. Sara Jacobs, Chris Smith Push Biden Administration to Rescind $1 Billion Arms Deal with Nigeria. February 16. Washington, DC: Office of US Representative Sara Jacobs. https://sarajacobs.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=694
- Moeller R. 2008 PresentationDelivered by Robert Moeller at Africom Conference; Fort McNair, Washington, DC. National Defense University. February 18.
- Reuters. 2022a The Abortion Assault. December 7. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/nigeria-military-abortions/
- Reuters. 2022b Smothered, Poisoned and Shot. December 12. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/nigeria-military-children/
- Reuters. 2022c Senator Wants a Review of U.S. Security Assistance to Nigeria Following Abortion Report. December 19. https://www.reuters.com/world/senator-wants-review-us-security-assistance-nigeria-following-abortion-report-2022-12-19/
- Reuters. 2023 Blinken Brings U.S. Aid to Sahel for Fight against Islamist Insurgencies. February 17. https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/blinken-brings-aid-praise-niger-it-battles-insurgents-2023-03-16/
- Sahara Reporters. 2023 U.S. Lawmakers Write President Biden to Halt $1 Billion Nigeria Weapons Deal. February 16. https://saharareporters.com/2023/02/16/us-lawmakers-write-president-biden-halt-1-billion-nigeria-weapons-deal/
- US Defense Security Cooperation Agency. 2022 Nigeria – AH-1Z Attack Helicopter Related FMS Acquisitions. April 24. Washington, DC: US Department of Defense, US Defense Security Cooperation Agency. https://www.dsca.mil/press-media/major-arms-sales/nigeria-ah-1z-attack-helicopter-related-fms-acquisitions
- US Department of State. 2023a. Congressional Budget Justification: Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs. Fiscal Year 2024. Washington, DC: US Department of State. https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/508-compliant-FY-2024-CBJ_FINAL_4.26.2023.pdf
- US Department of State. 2023b. Congressional Budget Justification – Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs. Supplementary Tables. Fiscal Year 2024. Washington, DC: US Department of State. https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/FY-2024-Congressional-Budget-Justification-Supplementary-Tables-1.pdf
- US House Armed Services Committee. 2023 House Armed Services Committee Hearing on U.S. Military Posture and National Security Challenges in the Greater Middle East and Africa. March 23, 2023. March 24. Washington, DC: US House Armed Services Committee. https://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/Transcripts/Article/3340646/house-armed-services-committee-hearing-us-military-posture-and-national-securit
- US Logistics Command. 2004. Thinking About Logistics: Readings in the Issues and Concerns Facing Air Force Logisticians in the 21st Century. Washington, DC: US Logistics Command, US Air Force Logistics Agency. US Logistics Command, US Air Force Logistics Agency. https://books.google.com/books?id=3jyTjL8ntCsC&pg=PA33&lpg=PA33&dq=%22prevent+establishment+of/disrupt/destroy+terrorist+groups,+stop+the+spread+of+weapons+of+mass+destruction,+perform+evacuations+of+U.S.+citizens+in+danger,+assure+access+to+strategic+resources,+lines+of+communication+and+refueling/forward+sites%E2%80%99+for+the+deployment+of+American+troops+throughout+the+continent+%22&source=bl&ots=zpKDvyTSMj&sig=ACfU3U0hb4-qCCvyTEY_YdWaHtzDapO-CQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjD9trlyL6AAxWHOTQIHRc1CHgQ6AF6BAgJEAM#v=onepage&q=%22prevent%20establishment%20of%2Fdisrupt%2Fdestroy%20terrorist%20groups%2C%20stop%20the%20spread%20of%20weapons%20of%20mass%20destruction%2C%20perform%20evacuations%20of%20U.S.%20citizens%20in%20danger%2C%20assure%20access%20to%20strategic%20resources%2C%20lines%20of%20communication%20and%20refueling%2Fforward%20sites%E2%80%99%20for%20the%20deployment%20of%20American%20troops%20throughout%20the%20continent%20%22&f=false
- US Senate Armed Services Committee. 2023 Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing on Posture of USCentcom and USAfricom in Review of the Defense Authorization Request for FY24 and the Future Years Defense Program. March 16, 2023. March 17. Washington, DC: US Senate Armed Services Committee. https://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/Transcripts/Article/3332606/senate-armed-services-committee-hearing-on-posture-of-uscentcom-and-usafricom-i
- Voice of America. 2023 U.S. Pledges Humanitarian, Economic, Security Aid to Niger. February 16. https://www.voanews.com/a/us-pledges-humanitarian-economic-security-aid-to-niger-/7008904.html/
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4 February 2024
Blinken Trip to Africa:
America’s Impotence in the Post-Hegemonic World
By Daniel Volman
4 February 2024
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to four African countries—Cape Verde, Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria, and Angola—on January 21-26, 2024, demonstrates just how worried US policymakers are about recent developments in Africa. Despite the demands on his time from the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, Secretary Blinken obviously knows he has to pay attention to Africa. He and the Biden administration face six overlapping, simultaneous crises in different part of Africa: the Sahel, Nigeria, Sudan, The Horn of Africa (Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia), The Great Lakes Region (DRC, Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda), and Northern Mozambique.
Washington is looking to make a deal with the putschists in Niger to maintain the US drone base at Agadez in northern Niger; this is Blinken’s highest priority. Washington is also anxious to deal with the deteriorating situation in Nigeria; this is Blinken’s other major priority. And Washington is competing with China for political, economic, and diplomatic influence in Africa, which is why Blinken will highlight the Lobito Corridor project in Angola, which shows that the US can succeed in the competition with China for economic influence and prestige.
Blinken is right to emphasize that US is doing better on investment and trade these days, while China is doing far worse than generally portrayed. Chinese President Xi has been severely disappointed by the “Belt and Road” strategy, and has directed his government to abandon many current projects in Africa and to cut back on future Chinese plans for investment Africa. At the same time, the success of the US African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and other American economic initiatives in Africa—however limited that success might be—shows that the US can compete with China on its own terms.
But the trip also demonstrates—by the omission of any significant initiatives other than pledging $45 million in weaponry and other military assistance to the remaining members of ECOWAS—that the Biden administration is incapable of responding to the challenges it confronts in Africa, at least for the time being. It also shows that while Biden may still be committed to making a trip to Africa during his term in office, that can only happen if he wins a second term this coming November. So Blinken has to go to Africa instead, even though it distracts him from missions in what the US considers more important parts of the world.
It surely is no coincidence that on 25 January, the publication Semfor revealed that Judd Devermont will leave his post as Senior Director for African Affairs in the US National Security Council by mid-February 2024. Mr. Devermont took office in October 2021 pledging that he would promote a less militaristic US policy toward Africa. He has concluded, it appears, that his efforts have failed and that remaining in office is a pointless waste of his time.
And on 1 February 2024, the Governor of Zamfara state announced the creation of a vigilante force, following a similar action taken by the Governor of Katsina state in October 2024. Even Nigerian state governors have so little confidence in the government’s ability to protect the population that they have resorted to arming civilians so they can protect themselves. That same day, a coalition of 40 civil society groups petitioned Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, expressing concern at the deteriorating security situation and calling upon him to take “actionable steps” to reduce the violence and end human rights abuses by government security forces. Blinken has his work cut out for him in Nigeria, and throughout the rest of the continent, at least until November 2024.
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2 January 2024
Biden Responds to the Collapse of US
Counterterrorism Strategy in Niger
By Daniel Volman
2 January 2024
For two months after the coup in Niger on 26 July 2023, the Biden administration refrained from calling or chose not to call it a “coup” because that would have triggered American legislation that would have required it to suspend security cooperation and most other forms of assistance to the junta. It hoped that by maintaining relations with the junta, it could make a deal with them to permit 1,100 US troops to remain at two Nigerien military bases (at Niamey and the drone operation facility constructed by the United States at a cost of some $110 million at Agadez).
On 10 October 2023, after two months of frustration, the Biden administration declared that there had been a coup and the legislation took effect. To date, the junta has not taken any action regarding the presence of US troops. Some US personnel have been withdrawn from Niger and the remaining troops have been consolidated in Agadez. They continue to conduct drone surveillance and reconnaissance flights, but only to monitor threats to their own security, which means they are no longer conduction useful counterterrorism operations in the Sahel.
However, the Biden administration has not given up on its strategy of relying on military force to create security, build democratic institutions, and establish political stability in the Sahel and other parts of Africa. Instead, it has decided to doubled down on this strategy by escalating or expanding US military operations in Africa and strengthening US security relationships or cooperation with political leaders and military officers in Nigeria (current chair of ECOWAS), Ghana, Senegal, Chad, and other key African partners or proxies. And it keeps trying to reach an agreement with the junta that will allow it to keep American troops based in the country and to resume military cooperation with Niger.
At the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on “Instability in the Sahel and West Africa: Implications for U.S. Policy,” on 24 October 2023, Phee declared that there’s also a significant risk that violent extremist organizations might expand their influence or capabilities in the region. “The coups that have occurred recently in Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, and now Niger,” she said, “illustrate the democratic regression that threatens not only the people of the Sahel but their neighbors and our partners in coastal west Africa.”
In the case of Niger, Phee testified, “we are working with the regional organization ECOWAS. The African Union and Africa’s regional economic commissions are essential partners in advancing democracy and peace. That is why – although we promptly paused the majority of U.S. assistance for Niger after the coup – we delayed at the request of our African partners the formal assessment that the outcome constituted a coup while they sought to restore President Bazoum to office. Acting Deputy Toria Nuland traveled to Niamey in August to try and convince the generals to restore constitutional order. I later traveled to west Africa to consult on how to engage a quick and credible restoration of democratic rule. Secretary Blinken met with ECOWAS Foreign Ministers at the recent UN General Assembly to propose a phased approach to resuming U.S. assistance based on concrete actions to return the country to democratic rule.”
On 3 December 2023, Kathleen FitzGibbon, the newly-appointed US Ambassador handed her credentials to the foreign ministry in Niamey, Niger. Ms. FitzGibbon formerly served as Division Chief, West and Southern Africa, and then as Director of the Office of Africa Analysis, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, at the State Department in Washington, DC.
On 4 December 2023, the US Special Operations Command Africa began a weeklong conference on counterterrorism in Africa, called “Silent Warrior ’23” and held in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. The conference involved military officers from more than twenty African countries and over a dozen other nations with interests on the continent. According to a story on the conference in Stars and Stripes, “at the top of the agenda were deep dives into the major extremist threats in Africa: al-Shabab in Somalia, affiliates of ISIS and al-Qaida in the Sahel, and ISIS in Mozambique.” In his opening statement to the conference, General Michael Langley, commander of Africom, didn’t directly address the situation in Niger, according to the story; but he alluded to it when he stressed the need for militaries to respect civilian authority. “Good governance is a key to countering violent extremist organizations,” General Langley said. “Yes, we’ve had some challenges across the continent . . . We know that civilian government, they’re the boss. We [the military] execute the missions.”
On 5 December 2023, Celeste Wallander, the US Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, testified before the Africa subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee at a hearing on “The Sahel in Crisis: Examining U.S. Policy Options.” According to Ms. Wallander, “In the short and medium term, we will support African-led counterterrorism operations to disrupt the most acute threats, with a particular emphasis on those targeting U.S. interests. In the long term, we will emphasize bilateral security assistance to African defense and security forces in order to build their own homegrown capacity to counter these threats without extensive external assistance.”
She noted that military coups in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have resulted in restrictions on military cooperation, led to increased attacks by jihadists, and opened the way for greater Russian influence and military involvement. “Violent extremist organizations thrive in areas of instability and seek to leverage that instability for their own ends, as evidenced by the attacks we’ve seen in Niger since the coup,” she said.
“Given this elevated threat environment, the Department of Defense is committed to working with our interagency partners to continue to monitor and disrupt the violent extremist organization threats, while constructively engaging with regional states to restore productive, democratic governance in those countries,” Wallander said. “In doing so, we are consistently working to strike a balance between offering the practical assistance that our African partners need to face emerging threats, while reinforcing our professional values to help them build strong, resilient institutions that will reinforce not only their physical security, but their democratic stability.”
The Pentagon’s requirement “to monitor indications and warnings of violent extremist organization activity in the Sahel has not changed,” she insisted. “For the last ten years, our posture in Niger has proven critical to this effort. Moving forward, we have worked side by side with the Department of State and other interagency partners to define conditions for restoring our activities and operations in Niger. Nigerian officials must quickly and credibly transition back to democratically elected, civilian led government.”
Testifying at the same hearing, Molly Phee noted the threat that violent extremist violence posed to the countries of coastal west Africa, “including Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, and Togo.”
On 6 December 2023, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, met with Nigerian Minister of Defense Mohammed Badaru Abubakar and Ghanaian Minister of Foreign Affairs Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey in New York City, New York to discuss UN peacekeeping operations in Mali and Sudan, and the coup in Niger. On 7 December 2023, she gave an interview to Thomas Naadi of BBC News in Accra, Ghana. When he asked her if the US was “now recognizing the military junta in Niger as the legitimate authority?” she said “Look, what we’re trying to do is get to a solution that will shorten the transition back to civilian government. So, we’re engaging with this military [in Niger] to put pressure on them and to urge that they return to a civilian government. We’re also working closely with our regional partners. We’re working with ECOWAS.” And, she went on to announce “we’re working to find new ways of providing support, new ways of providing training and equipment to governments on this continent, and particularly in this region.”
On that same day, 7 December 2023, US President Joe Biden issued a Letter to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and President pro tempore of the Senate regarding the War Powers Report, to inform them about deployments of US military forces equipped for combat, including operations in Somalia, Kenya, and Djibouti, in the East Africa Region, and in Niger and other countries in the Lake Chad Basin and Sahel Region. The administration, Biden stated, “continues to work with partners around the globe, with a particular focus on the United States Central and Africa Commands’ areas of responsibility. In this context, the United States has deployed forces to conduct counterterrorism operations and to advise, assist, and accompany security forces of select foreign partners on counterterrorism operations.”
In the East Africa Region, he reported, “United States Armed Forces continue to counter the terrorist threat posed by ISIS and al-Shabaab, an associated force of al-Qa’ida. Since the last periodic report, United States Armed Forces have conducted a number of airstrikes in Somalia against al-Shabaab in defense of our Somali partner forces. United States Armed Forces remain prepared to conduct airstrikes in Somalia against ISIS and al-Shabaab terrorists. United States military personnel conduct periodic engagements in Somalia to train, advise, and assist regional forces, including Somali and African Union Transition Mission in Somalia forces, in connection with counterterrorism operations. United States military personnel are deployed to Kenya to support counterterrorism operations in East Africa. United States military personnel continue to partner with the Government of Djibouti, which has permitted use of Djiboutian territory for basing of United States Armed Forces. United States military personnel remain deployed to Djibouti, including for purposes of staging for counterterrorism and counter-piracy operations in the vicinity of the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, and to provide contingency support for embassy security augmentation in East Africa, as necessary.”
And in the Lake Chad Basin and Sahel Region, he reported, “United States military personnel in the Lake Chad Basin and Sahel Region continue to conduct airborne intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance operations and to provide support to African and European partners conducting counterterrorism operations in the region, including by advising, assisting, and accompanying these partner forces. Approximately 648 United States military personnel remain deployed to Niger.”
In fact, according to Africom, force levels are holding steady at about 1,000 American military personnel in Niger. This includes both uniformed service members and military-affiliated civilians.
On 8 December 2023, Molly Phee, the US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, traveled to Nigeria to meet with regional leaders at the ECOWAS Heads of State Summit on 10 December 2023 and to consult with them on Niger and the Sahel. Then, on 12 December 2023, Ms. Phee traveled to Niger for discussions with Nigerien officials, including Prime Minister Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine. And, on 13 December 2023, she announced that the US was ready to resume security cooperation with the junta if it met certain conditions.
Ms. Phee said she had met with the top ministers in Niger’s ruling military council—the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland (CNSP)—and encouraged them to announce a timeline for a swift transition back to civilian rule. The junta must announce “a deadline for a rapid and credible transition” leading to “a democratically elected government,” she told a press conference in Niamey. And “we have confirmed that we are ready to resume our cooperation if the CNSP takes the steps I have outlined.” “I encourage the CNSP to respond positively to the ECOWAS offer for negotiation; the United States supports the resolutions of the regional organization.” ECOWAS offered to ease sanctions if the junta agrees to a notably “short transition.”
“In our discussions,” she told a press conference in Niamey, “I confirmed the intent of the United States to resume security and development cooperation in phases, reciprocally as the CNSP takes action.” She went on to say that “I have made it clear to the CNSP that we want to be a good partner again, but the CNSP has to be a good partner to the United States.” And she said she urged the junta to respond positively to an offer for high-level negotiations with ECOWAS, which announced on 10 December 2023 that it would ease sanctions on Niger if talks with the military leaders went well.
Following his meeting with Ms. Phee, Prime Minister Mahaman Lamine Zeine said on 13 December 2023 that “If the Americans want to say here with their forces, they should tell us what they want to do.”
When the United States declared that a coup had taken place in Niger, it seemed almost certain that the junta would expel US troops, just as they had expelled French troops earlier. It is now clear, however, that the junta is interested in negotiating a deal with the Biden administration. It remains to be seen what conditions Washington will insist on and what concessions it will make to the Nigerien junta in order to start conducting counterterrorism operations in Niger again.
On 4 January 2024, however, the Wall Street Journal revealed that Washington is now “seeking to base military drones along the West African coast” and “is holding preliminary talks to allow American unarmed reconnaissance drones to use airfields in Ghana, Ivory Coast and Benin.” According to the report, retired US Air Force Major General Mark Hicks, a former commander of US Special Operations forces in Africa said that “the Niger coup has forced our hand,” and “there’s really not much option other than to fall back and operate out of the coastal West African states.”
Moreover, said a senior US military official, “coastal West African countries that used to be insulated no longer are” and, according to the report, “suggest Washington believes Mali and Burkina Faso are so inundated with Islamist militants that they are beyond the reach of Western help, and that it fears Niger, which until a July coup was the staunchest American ally in the region, is now unreliable.” So, according to US and African military officers, the US has proposed basing drones at the Ghanaian Air Force base at Tamale, the airfield at Parakou in Benin, and three airfields in Cote d’Ivoire.
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African Security Research Project 