JOHANNESBURG—Leading into the U.S. election, analysts who focus on Africa say that in 2025, the new administration should pour resources, investment, and goodwill into the world’s second-largest continent, which they say has been heavily neglected by the United States in the past.
If Washington does not, it risks losing access to materials vital to the world’s future and its own security and progress, they say.
With current foreign policy priorities focused on the Israel–Gaza conflict and the war in Ukraine, the complexities of Africa are far down on the current administration’s agenda.
Stephanie Cawood, director of the Center for African Studies at the University of Free State in South Africa, told The Epoch Times that before the Russian invasion and before the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, President Joe Biden and his officials “were making a concerted effort to put a bigger American footprint on Africa.”
“They had this attitude of, ‘This is the youngest continent and the fastest-growing continent and it is the most mineral-rich part of the world; we’re sick of China and Russia eating Africa’s cake and we want in on the action,’” she said.
“But then the U.S. government got sidetracked and Africa has pretty much fallen off the radar in Washington. And now, the U.S. election looms.”
Elizabeth Sidiropoulos, who heads the South African Institute of International Affairs in Johannesburg, said it’s “not surprising” that neither former President Donald Trump nor Vice President Kamala Harris has said anything about Africa in campaigning.
“It doesn’t register in the minds of average Americans,” she told The Epoch Times.
“If the next U.S. government doesn’t find a firm foothold in Africa very soon; if it doesn’t find ways to erode the power in Africa of China, its greatest geopolitical foe, the American economy will suffer, and average Americans will feel that because it’ll hit them in their pockets.”
Michelle Gavin, senior fellow for African policy studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, told The Epoch Times: “For Americans, the election issues, rightly so, are immigration, reproductive rights, jobs.
“But I am worried that in the context of national security concerns, there’s this anachronistic idea that Africa is a peripheral part of the world that doesn’t affect the United States, and this simply isn’t true.
“China certainly doesn’t consider Africa to be peripheral.”
Beijing moved into Africa two decades ago, investing billions of dollars in mega infrastructure projects and forging close ties with most of the continent’s top producers of critical minerals, metals, and rare earth elements.
Demand for these minerals is spiking as the world transitions to renewable energy.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy’s 2023 Critical Materials Assessment, rare earth elements are necessary to manufacture a wide range of modern products.
Critical minerals and metals have also become indispensable to defense, said Gregory Wischer, founder and principal of Dei Gratia Minerals, a critical minerals consultancy.
“Therefore, mineral supplies can help sustain military power, while mineral shortages can severely undermine it.
“For example, the Allied powers’ control of most of the world’s minerals before World War II proved instrumental in their eventual victory over the Axis powers.”
South African military analyst Helmoed-Romer Heitman told The Epoch Times that modern-day warfare “is now next to impossible” without the critical minerals found in abundance in Africa.
“Take lithium for example. This soft, silver-white metal is an essential ingredient in the high-capacity renewable batteries that the U.S. Army has now started using to power many of its tactical vehicles,” he said.
“Rare earth elements are also used to make military lasers, night-vision goggles, and missile guidance systems.”
According to Sidiropoulos and many other observers, one of the United States’ major policy failures has been its inability to secure adequate direct supplies of critical minerals, metals, and rare earth elements, specifically from Africa.
“China, by virtue of its strong presence in Africa as the continent’s largest trade partner, has bought mines across the continent, with the aim of dominating global production of these valuable elements forever,” Martin Creamer, a South African mining analyst, said.
“China started doing this while [President] George W. Bush was preoccupied with waging his war on terror, and successive administrations in Washington didn’t have the foresight to pick up the ball, so China ran with it,” he told The Epoch Times.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a U.S. think tank, said Beijing now produces 60 percent of the world’s rare earths and is responsible for processing nearly 90 percent.
Creamer said this dominance “means Beijing controls global supply changes, leaving the United States in the lurch when it needs certain minerals and metals essential to the development of its economy.”
“The battery shortages happened because China wanted the batteries for use in its own EV market. The United States, because of its own shortages of the elements [needed to make the batteries], could not fulfill domestic demand,” he said.
Guy Martin, an analyst at DefenceWeb, Africa’s major military news portal, told The Epoch Times that China’s “overwhelming control” of supplies of minerals and metals represented a global security risk.
“I believe it’s dangerous for any one power to have a monopoly over anything defense-related because it can use that monopoly to gain unfair leverage over others, and some autocratic leaders could use it for nefarious purposes,” he said.
Martin said he’d spoken with several U.S. defense contractors about the issue.
“They told me they can’t get the materials they need to make weapon systems of various kinds, like missiles and fighter jets, because lately, China has been putting restrictions on exports of these processed minerals and metals, leaving the United States and others in the lurch, big time,” he said.
Wayne Sussman, an elections specialist who will be analyzing the U.S. polls for several South African media outlets, sees “hope” of a second Trump presidency “loosening” China’s stranglehold on minerals.
“I think Trump has the guts to take China on in Africa in a meaningful way,” he told The Epoch Times.
“Yes, Trump says America has too many fingers in too many pies on foreign soil, but I think his administration will realize that it lost significant ground in the race for minerals in Africa over the past few years and it needs to get back in that race in a big way to help trigger prosperity in America.”
However, Gavin says that Trump’s “unwillingness to recognize the science around climate change” could count heavily against his administration making inroads into Africa.
“Extreme weather is ravaging the continent, with African countries demanding money from a global loss-and-damage fund to be established by the West, with the United States expected to be a major contributor to this fund,” she said.
“I expect Trump to oppose this vehemently, and that will make it very difficult for his government to win more access to African resources.”
Sidiropolous said Harris would “certainly” continue “large parts” of the Biden administration’s approach in Africa.
The U.S. government is investing billions of dollars in a railway that from 2026 will connect three of Africa’s most mineral-rich countries— Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Zambia.
Creamer described the railway as a “severe dent” to China.
“I’ve spoken to several Chinese mining companies and they’re worried that the Lobito project will cut their supplies of minerals and metals like coltan and copper,” he said.
In the absence of a major railway from mineral-producing areas to the Atlantic on Africa’s west coast, Chinese companies have been using Beijing-funded railways to transport resources to the eastern ports of Mombasa in Kenya and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.
“From these ports, the minerals are shipped eastward,” Creamer said. “But the U.S.-controlled route to the Angolan port of Lobito will mean minerals are far more likely to flow to Western markets, cutting into China’s near-monopoly.”
Sussman said should Harris be elected, her gender and race will influence the way she’s perceived in Africa, but “not necessarily” positively.
“Africa remains a very patriarchal place,” he said. “It’s a tough place to be a woman and it’s a place where many people appreciate Trump’s projection of masculinity.
“Many African leaders find it difficult to do business with women, and especially with women who are pro-abortion and who are pro-LGBT rights.”
Sussman said that Harris’s “blackness” could put her under a lot of pressure with regard to dealings in Africa.
“I’m thinking back to the Obama administration. When he was elected, I remember Africans saying, ‘You’re a son of the soil; you have Kenyan ancestry, so we expect you to deliver special things to us, to have a special relationship with us.
“But Obama never delivered anything really special to Africa, and certainly nothing on the scale of George W. Bush’s PEPFAR [President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief] and Bill Clinton’s AGOA [African Growth and Opportunity Act].”
Gavin worked as a special assistant to President Barack Obama and as a senior director for Africa on the National Security Council from 2009 to 2017.
She said America’s first black president, because of his race and his connection to Africa, was “sensitive to being perceived as too engaged in Africa so he tended to make sure he prioritized the American people.”
Sidiropolous said Harris has shown “positive” signs of responding to pressure put on her by virtue of her ethnicity.
“During Biden’s presidency, Harris has played a lead role in forging better relations with Kenya, for example, a powerhouse economy in East Africa that many thought was lost to China,” she said.
But Sussman said millions of Africans “don’t want Harris” and are rooting for Trump because they view him as the “Christian candidate.”
Professor Martina Iyabo Oguntoyinbo-Atere, theologian at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria, told The Epoch Times: “Africa is the global center of Christianity and will be for generations to come. Africans love a crusader, and in Trump, they see a crusader.”
Oguntoyinbo-Atere said almost a third of the world’s evangelicals live in Africa; 20 percent of the world’s Pentecostals and charismatics and 15 percent of the world’s Roman Catholics, plus large populations of Orthodox Christians.
“Trump appeals to them because he seems to speak for them,” she stated. “He also speaks like them, very boisterously and charismatically, at his rallies, which resemble African Christian rallies.”
Oguntoyinbo-Atere said that “the fact that he’s seen as anti-abortion ... plays very well in Africa.”
She added that African Christians also “love” Trump “because of his flaws, not in spite of those flaws.”
“Trump sometimes uses bad language, and sometimes his personal conduct leaves a lot to be desired,” she said, referring to the various allegations made against him in court proceedings.
“But many African Christian leaders are equally controversial and also have questionable morals. Africans forgive them and they forgive Trump because they consider him to be a human being and not some political bigwig.”
Sidiropolous said as “imperfect” as U.S. democracy is, most Africans continue to regard it as a “reference point.”
“That’s why they’ll be watching the forthcoming election with hawk eyes, like the rest of the world,” she said.
Gavin pointed out that both Trump and Harris have promised to “elevate” America’s status as the globe’s leading power and to “restore it to past glories.”
In the context of these pledges, she said, it would be a “huge miss” for either of them to neglect the globe’s youngest and “one of the most dynamic” regions.
“This is a huge swathe of the world where American policies are, in many cases, dangerously unfit for purpose. Harris or Trump will have little choice but to take on the very complex task of transforming America’s standing in Africa.”
