Trump’s New Africa Policy Focuses on Deals… and China

U.S. foreign policy towards Africa has been totally upended since Donald Trump returned to power earlier this year. Gone are the decades-old humanitarian programs that have been replaced by a new strategy that focuses on expanding U.S. commercial ties and countering China’s presence on the continent.

The State Department’s most senior diplomat for Africa, Troy Fitrell, the senior official in the Bureau of African Affairs, appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Sub-Committee on Africa this week to explain the new policy with a particular focus on how the U.S. should challenge “China’s malign influence in Africa.”

Eric, Cobus, and Geraud review Fitrell’s statements on China through a point-by-point analysis, exploring whether Washington’s new approach is truly fresh or merely a rehash of what previous administrations have tried to do for years in Africa vis-à-vis the Chinese.

Show Notes:

Transcript:

ERIC OLANDER:

Hello and welcome to another edition of the China in Africa podcast, a proud member of the Seneca Podcast Network. I’m Eric Olander. And as always, I’m joined by our two favorite co-hosts.

I don’t want to say favorite because we love all of our kids, but our two most regular co-hosts. Geraud Neema joining us from the beautiful island of Mauritius, CGSP’s Africa editor, and our managing editor, Cobus van Staden from beautiful Cape Town, South Africa. A very good morning to both of you.

GERAUD NEEMA: Good morning.

COBUS VAN STADEN: Good morning.

ERIC OLANDER: Well, we’re going to focus today on U.S. foreign policy towards Africa. Obviously, this has been a topic that’s been in the news a lot since the Trump administration came into power. We’ve seen so many different changes to the foreign policy. And we got a look this week in detail about what the Trump administration wants to do in Africa, but also what’s happening on Capitol Hill and the discourse surrounding what the U.S. wants to do and the discourse around Africa. Both you guys have spent quite a bit of time in Washington and following the U.S.-Africa story. We’ve talked a lot about on this show about the importance for countries and policymakers in Africa about China literacy. When we were in Washington last year, we heard a lot of complaints from U.S. stakeholders that said African policymakers also have to improve their U.S. literacy as well in terms of understanding the policymaking process, who the key players are. Geraud, you’ve spent quite a bit of time this year in Washington and you just, in fact, have just come back this week from yet another trip to the United States. When we talk about U.S. literacy and how well do you think African policymakers and academics and other stakeholders understand the U.S., particularly in relation to China and the great power competition, how would you assess the situation?

GERAUD NEEMA: It’s the same situation that I think that we see on the continent regarding many African countries, many regard great power, great power, politics and foreign policy apparatus and designing and shaping. And I do believe that there are issues like many African countries do not take the time to take the time to learn and to study it, to analyze deeply the foreign policy and the shaping of the foreign policy of countries like the United States or China or even France. I think France is the less complicated for many African West, many Francophone African countries because it’s quite straightforward and some other countries like Belgium.

And I tend to believe that it’s also related to the colonial past in a sense where not colonizing country have African country have more difficulty to understand countries that did not colonize them in the case of the United States and China. So it’s not really surprising. We have the case where, as you mentioned, it is where many African countries do not just understand the process between the relationship between the White House, the State Department, the Hill, K Street in terms of lobbying, do not understand how many the congressional committees subcommittee when they make a recommendation, when they make a note, what does it mean?

Is it a policy? Is it is it a strong statement? What does it represent?

And unfortunately, at the end, you do find yourself in the mix with a lot of lobbies that end up shaping the perspective and the relationship that many African countries do have with Washington, D.C. So my assessment will be it’s still lagging a lot, lagging very, very much lagging. If I have to if I have to put a note out of 10, I would say two or three. It’s two or three out of 10.

ERIC OLANDER: My God. You know, Cobus, this is a little surprising to hear what Geraud is saying. And also we’ve seen it.

I mean, when we talk about the context of China, you could make the argument that China is a relatively new player in Africa. And so it takes time for area studies to develop and for experience. But the United States has been engaged in Africa for a long for decades, if not more than a century.

How is it possible that what Geraud was saying is true, given the deep historical ties and the, you know, during the Cold War? And it’s just a little bit surprising, given the prominence of the United States, that there is this knowledge gap that appears to be so prominent as, again, as what what we found and also what Geraud was talking about.

COBUS VAN STADEN: Yeah, it’s interesting for me. I have to admit it’s a little bit of a mystery for me, too. I guess, you know, kind of one one thing that I think this issues of the of knowledge legacies in African government departments, you know, in terms of the like knowledge transfer as personnel leave, you know, I think, you know, there’s problems with that frequently.

I think diplomats have to relearn everything from scratch, you know, once their counterparts leave. That’s I think is one problem. And another problem is that the U.S., despite the relationship having been long, the U.S.’s overall presence on the continent has been quite limited, you know, kind of especially over the last 25 years or so. But, you know, kind of, yeah, like this, this they seem to be kind of other issues involved there, too, you know, including the way kind of like it, like the way Africa deals with external actors. You know, like there’s a there’s a lot of there’s almost like like every all of these external actors kind of get flattened in terms of their, you know, in terms of their kind of like access to the continent or not, you know, and they’re kind of outsiders. And, you know, African officials frequently function as a kind as kind of gatekeepers, you know.

So so in a way, like, you know, like there’s something in there, but I’m not articulating it very well. I think the other issue is also is that this is a very confusing moment to look at the U.S. simply because, you know, like we’re now seeing policy being made by tweet, for example. Right.

So it’s just objectively harder to understand how the U.S. is working right now under Trump. But I think it’s a long term problem. Sorry.

Go ahead, Géraud.

GERAUD NEEMA: Allow me to add another element in terms of nuance. I think in terms of level of ignorance that we do perceive when it comes to China, my perception is like African countries do not understand, for example, don’t understand China’s strategy or do not understand China’s goals in terms of like how China is changing, how China is approaching countries are approaching continent and all of that. But they don’t they have less problem into understanding how to engage China in a sense where China had kind of simplified, even though it’s complex, but somehow simplified the way it’s engaging with African countries in a sense where you don’t have you don’t have lobbyists in the mix.

You don’t have for you don’t have, for instance, what’s congressional committee. You don’t have congressional subcommittee making statement. So when the ambassador is saying something, the African country knows that this is China speaking.

This is the official voice of China. Be careful there, Gérard, be careful. The thing is, the thing is, you have to see where where where Beijing has contradicted his ambassador when the ambassador said something.

But when you go to the United States, you do have now there is a level of not understanding the US strategy, especially given the current context. But also you do. There is also a knowledge gap in terms of structure of power and how those structure of power are relating, especially now when you do add third party actors like lobbyists in the midst of like how foreign policy are designed, our messages are perceived.

It just makes the situation much more complex. So at the end, as I was saying, to compare with the China, a US ambassador can say something. We’re going to do this.

We’re going to do this and that. And then you have an African delegation going to D.C., meeting different people, going to the Hill, going to the White House and maybe hearing some nuanced perspective or what they’ve been heard about what they’re going to do. So it’s just it add much more confusion on how they understand or they do not understand how the US is functioning.

ERIC OLANDER: But I just want to challenge the notion that the Chinese ambassador is representative of the whole of government. The Chinese ambassador is a representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And one of the things that you’ll see is that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in China is one of the weaker ministries, the Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Environment are tend to be much more powerful in China.

And they oftentimes don’t have the insights into that. So the diversity of actors on the Chinese side, it can be maybe not as varied as the United States, but oftentimes much more complex. And the ambassador himself is not always the point person.

And we saw this in Zambia, for example, where people were asking the ambassador about the debt renegotiations. And the ambassador at that time said Ambassador Du said, I don’t know. And he was not lying because it was the Ministry of Finance who represents the China Exim Bank that was participating in the negotiations.

And so, again, just trying to point out that there’s a lot of complexity there.

GERAUD NEEMA: You’re right. There are complexities. But the thing I wanted to add is the fact, for example, when the ambassador would say something, even if there is if represent foreign affairs, the Minister of Commerce and all of that, when he’s going to say something, you would you would not see, for instance, the Minister of Commerce coming out and say, by the way, what the ambassador said, it’s not what we wanted to say.

You see what I mean? You’ll not see the kind of contradiction happening because the ambassador says something. And in the case of Zambia, as you said, if he doesn’t know, you say, I don’t know, because it’s basically admitting this is not my preview.

The one’s going to talk is the one’s going to have the ability to say to engage China in that in that direction. And this is the kind of nuance I just want to point to point out, in the sense when the ambassador would say something, even if at the end he messed it up, he messes up, you will not see the other structure coming out and say what the ambassador said that was not the case. They would just always come back to the ambassador correcting his messages.

The ambassador will come and say something much more aligned with what it was meant, what was meant to be said to begin with.

ERIC OLANDER: Well, in terms of foreign policy, as Cobus talked about, there’s been a lot of changes with this administration compared to not only the previous administration, but really the past 60, 70 years of American foreign policy. Africa has borne the brunt of more change from the Trump administration than other regions. So just this week we got word of a new travel ban where I think six of the countries, almost half the countries are in Africa.

Also, the Trump administration wants to zero out the Millennium Challenge Corporation, which was focused for Africa. They want to zero out the 550 million dollar contribution to the African Development Bank. They also cancelled USAID initiatives across Africa, which were disproportionately represented in the USAID portfolio.

And they’ve talked about and it’s not happened. And it was again, there’s no indication that it will right now. But about closing a large number of embassies across Africa and cutting U.S. diplomatic personnel. So all of this points to a reboot of U.S. foreign policy towards Africa. And there is a concerted focus on two things. One is a commercial diplomacy and two is China.

Let’s quickly kind of run through this new commercial diplomacy. I want to set up our conversation today. There’s a new point person in charge of Africa policy.

And again, this is another change. We do not have an assistant secretary of state for African affairs, at least not yet so far. The assistant secretary normally is the top diplomat in each region.

What we have now is a senior bureau official for the Bureau of African Affairs. His name is Troy Fitrell. He has quite a bit of background in Africa, 30 years in the Foreign Service.

He’s the former ambassador to the Republic of Guinea. He was the director of offices of West African Affairs and Southern African Affairs in the State Department. And he was the deputy chief of mission, which is the number two guy in the embassy, in the embassies in Ethiopia and in Mauritius, where Jero is.

So right now he is the main point person on Africa, not to be confused with Massad Boulos, who is the senior adviser for Africa and the father in law of Tiffany Trump. Not really clear on how all that works, because this is all new. But I want to read for you the new priorities that Fitrell has laid out in terms of how the priorities for U.S. foreign policy in Africa. And I’d like to get your guys’ take on this. Number one, making commercial diplomacy the core focus of U.S.-Africa engagement. This is about deals and transactions.

Also, to work with African government partners in priority countries to implement the top five market reforms identified by the private sector. Didn’t specify whose private sector, Americans or Africans, including tariff and non-tariff barriers, implementing key sustainable infrastructure projects in priority countries and unlocking private capital, having the State Department lead more commercial diplomacy trips, connecting a greater share of the 300,000 export oriented U.S. businesses to the African continent and reform U.S. trade promotion initiatives to take on greater risk. Giro, we’re going to come to you later, because a lot of this is going to be focused on critical minerals.

Fitrell, earlier this week, appeared before the U.S. subcommittee on Africa in the Senate. And this is one of these these types of exchanges that dreadfully boring to watch from start to finish, but really important to be able to get a sense of what people are talking about and what the mood in Washington is and what some key players are. So let me run you guys through some of the opening statements from some of the senators and also Fitrell.

And that will set the tone of our conversation. So the chairman of the subcommittee on Africa in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz. Many of you may know him.

He’s a very well-known American senator. And this is a committee meeting to talk about China’s and this is their words, not mine, China’s malign influence in Africa. And let’s listen to what Senator Cruz had to say on that.

SOUNDBITE:  These hearings will allow for the formulation of U.S. policies and will more fundamentally demonstrate that the United States has a policy towards Africa. Today’s hearing is on China’s malign influence in Africa. China represents the most significant long term.

Strategic threat to the United States. I believe that fundamentally China is a global threat that must be confronted globally, region by region. Among those regions, pressingly, is Africa.

China is exercising its military, economic and political power and advancing its authoritarian agenda, all while undermining the sovereignty of African nations and the strategic interest of the United States. Politically and diplomatically, China is leveraging its growing influence to marginalize U.S. allies, most notably Taiwan. The Chinese Communist Party is pouring billions into its Belt and Road initiative, trapping African countries in unsustainable debt and using these arrangements to block American interests.

The primary reason why China is investing so heavily in Africa is critical minerals. China already dominates critical mineral global supply chains, and China is aggressively locking up control over these resources across Africa. That leaves the United States vulnerable to being cut off.

ERIC OLANDER: So as is customary in all of these committee hearings, the chairman gets to make his or her opening statement, then the ranking member gets to make their opening statement. And the ranking member is the highest ranking member of the opposition party. In this case, it’s the Democrats.

And Cory Booker, a senator from New Jersey and a very strong advocate of a of U.S.-Africa engagement, made his comments and explained why he thinks the United States is a better choice for African countries than China.

SOUNDBITE:  I have found great partnership over the years with Secretary Rubio when he was a senator. He has been someone who has understood the urgencies of the continent, especially through the context of that great power struggle. He looked and has said many times that people are the continent’s most important advantage and the U.S. policy towards Africa, according to our now Secretary of State, is to double down on our investments in our partnerships with African people. Not only will this approach directly benefit the United States, but it will undercut the PRC’s influence by ensuring that the United States is the trusted partner of choice. You see, our values are our advantage. I’ve talked to so many African leaders that I know my more eminent colleague, Chris Coons, has, and many of them tell us they don’t want to deal with with China.

They prefer us. But China is showing up in places we are not making connections and partnerships that we are not. If we are going to compete there, let’s compete with our American values.

They will win every single time.

ERIC OLANDER: OK, so Geraud is already starting to chuckle. We’re going to get to Geraud. But let me just give the final opening statement.

This one came from Ambassador Fitrell himself, again, talking about China’s malign influence in Africa. Again, that is the name of this committee hearing. And let’s hear what he had to say.

SOUNDBITE: All right. Thank you, Chairman. Chairman Cruz and ranking member Booker.

And thank you, Senator Coons, for being here. And thank you for your interest in this subject. This is something I’ve dedicated most of the 30 years of my career to.

And I find it incredibly, incredibly fulfilling and a positive task for all the challenges we have in Africa. These are absolutely exciting times. And I think the strategy we’re going to put forward to that is going to be extremely helpful in advancing American American interests and priorities while countering China’s interests.

As the senior bureau official for Africa, I’m honored to discuss our strategic priorities and the measures we’re taking to ensure their engagement furthers the Trump administration’s goal of making America safer, stronger and more prosperous. Africa’s growing economies and population provide extraordinary opportunities for Americans and U.S. businesses. I think Senator Booker expressed most of those statistics pretty accurately, so I’ll skip those.

But but new sectors are also gaining ground. The regional the region’s digital economy, valued at 180 billion in 2024, has quadrupled in the last 10 years. These are opportunities.

And in the face of these opportunities, the U.S. share of exports to sub-Saharan Africa has been in decline for decades. In 2000, the U.S. was the second largest exporter to sub-Saharan Africa. But Beijing’s government backed strategies to capture African market share have led China to export 137 billion in just in the last year, more than seven times what the United States has exported.

This underscores a fundamental point. The opportunity in sub-Saharan Africa is not theoretical. It’s already being seized by our adversaries.

For too long, the United States has prioritized development assistance over commercial engagement, and this has already begun to change under the Trump administration. We’re now focusing on investment led growth, which is more sustainable. Trade over aid is now truly America’s policy for Africa.

And we will prioritize engaging the African continent more strategically as peers and as partners. And the approach could not have come soon enough. Greater U.S. economic engagement is urgently needed to bolster African efforts to counter China’s growing influence. China has long recognized the important role of Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa’s resources are part of Beijing’s global hegemony ambitions. China’s strategy for economic dominance relies on a centralized, state-directed and nationally resourced approach to dominating global markets and strategic supply chains, limiting foreign competitors and making other economies dependent on China. This is harmful to both American and African interests.

China exploits Africa’s natural resources in its play for dominance and control over global critical mineral supply chains. This is a clear example of the economic, political and national security threats that China’s influence in Africa poses. As Secretary Rubio stated during his confirmation hearing, it is in the interest of global peace and stability that we speak with China, but we cannot allow Beijing to continue to flout the rules, undermine us economically or allow it to damage or weaken our alliances and our presence in the world.

ERIC OLANDER: So, Cobus, those were the opening statements. What did you take away from the tone, the rhetoric and the emphasis from Senators Cruz and Booker and then Fitrell himself? What was your what’s your reaction to what you just heard?

COBUS VAN STADEN: You know, it’s kind of powerful, of course, like we’ve heard we’ve heard these these, you know, you know, statements many times. They it’s also an interesting and interesting kind of like view of how what’s the way of putting this? It’s like, you know, for for all of the all of the Democrats, you know, rhetoric about Trump blowing up everything and like decrying Trump’s influence and so on.

They are folding very effectively into the Trump like agenda. Right. So there’s very little.

There’s there’s very little difference between the no, you didn’t hear any difference between Booker and Cruz. The I think, you know, obviously they they’ve been pushing this kind of like trade aid, you know, situation overall. I think that the general the general feeling for me is that is is, you know, not to sound mean, but like this sounds like a group of people who would not be able to like if you gave this group of people a map of Africa with no names of country names and you ask them to fill in those country names, they will not get half of them correct.

They will not. And, you know, kind of. And so so it’s like all of this, like general general vibes, like a lot of vibe talk, a lot of, you know, oh, we’re going to be investing.

Sure. We’re going to be trading. What?

Sure. And then, you know, kind of and then, you know, China, China, China, China. And but meanwhile, you know, like the same the same week that this was happening, you know, like an ICT team from Kenya was winning like a Huawei competition in Beijing for coding.

You know, so those same kids can’t even get into the US. You know, they certainly can’t get into US universities now. So what’s the point?

That’s kind of my feeling is what’s the point?

ERIC OLANDER: So you hear Senator Booker say, and this is something we’re going to hear again in our discussion today, that in private, African leaders will tell him they don’t want to work with the Chinese. They want to work with the Americans. They prefer the Americans.

This is a key talking point. Do you recognize some of the points that the senators and Fattrell made as somebody who, obviously, you’ve spent time in a number of African countries, you meet with a lot of senior stakeholders. Do you recognize the Africa that they are talking about?

GERAUD NEEMA: No, I’m going to go straight forward. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Not at all.

Not at all. I’m sorry. That’s what you say when I heard that.

You see, I was like, I was like, what are you talking about? I mean, really, really, what are you talking about? I don’t want to get to the point, like, it’s flat-lying, but I will not, I won’t say that, but I did not recognize that Africa you’re talking about.

In private, you’re gonna have very different comments. You’re gonna hear even much more harsh comments toward the US, toward the European, especially when it comes to criticizing China. In private, you’re gonna hear people really expressing their views about, you know, you Americans are talking big games, but you’re not present.

You’re gonna have some stakeholders, because some stakeholders are very much polite. They’re gonna come and they’re gonna tell you what you really want to hear. America is great.

America is perfect. America is the idealist, especially right now, especially under the Trump administration, where you have the bullying diplomacy. No one wants to get on the wrong side of the administration.

They’re gonna tell you what you want to hear, but in private, they’re gonna really behave in a very different way.

ERIC OLANDER: So, Geraud, let me just stop you here. A reporter called me this week to ask me for my comment on Futrell, and we spoke off the record, because I didn’t really have enough to go on, but I explained to him that in most African countries, if not all African countries, being gracious to visitors, particularly from far away, is very important. And I explained that.

I said, if I was ever to have the chance to meet, say, President Museveni or President Felix Tshisekedi, and I went into their offices, they would probably say, you know, they have their staff kind of do a briefing. Who is this white guy from the China Global South Project? What they do is they would say, I have a podcast, we have a newsletter, and President Tshisekedi would probably tell me, with all the sincerity in the world, I listen to your show every week.

You have the best newscast, the best program, that newsletter, forget about all those other things, The New York Times, The Guardian. You are the best one. I know that President Tshisekedi would tell me that to flatter me, and I would walk away thinking to myself, guess what, Geraud?

The president says he loves our podcast and he listens to it every day. I have a feeling Senator Booker is falling for that a little bit, that when they’re in, they say, you know those Chinese guys? Do not like them.

And then when the Chinese are in town, they’re like, those Americans, whew, God, do you know what I mean? That’s what I think is, and they are literally taking it literally.

COBUS VAN STADEN: Meanwhile, they’re talking as if like the Ramaphosa Oval Office incident didn’t happen at all, right? Kind of like, as if they didn’t torch the relationship with one of the most important African countries live on air, right? As if African countries somehow didn’t notice that.

ERIC OLANDER: There’s also a data point that I want to bring up, Geraud, in all of this. The same week that this hearing took place and that Senator Booker says that Africans would prefer to deal with Americans compared to Chinese, the most reputable polling agency on the African continent, Afrobarometer, released their updated 2425 Favorability Index. And it ranks in terms of popularity, perceived influence of countries and institutions.

It has China, regional organizations, African Union, United States, European Union, former colonial powers, India and Russia. China was at the top at 60% favorable, 19% unfavorable. The United States came in at 53% favorable, 19% unfavorable.

This is a big change because up until recently, the U.S. and China were neck and neck at about 58, 59%. Now China is seven points ahead and is more favorable than any other foreign entity. So this is a data point that did not come up in the hearings.

And so I think it’s something to be really questioned when you hear these people talking about this, that they’re being very selective in what they focus on.

GERAUD NEEMA: Not even selective, not even selective. They’re not being factual. They’re not even being realistic.

It was not even talking about fact. It was talking about like made-up fact. And here we’re talking about the kind of Africa where head of state are complaining about how difficult it is to get the investment or aid coming from the United States, the conditionality.

We are talking about how the U.S. is interfering in different African foreign policy. We’re talking about all those issues where African leaders have been complaining in the way that the U.S. engage with them. And here you have someone comes and say, you know what, when they talk with us, they tell us they love us so much.

They prefer us to China. And we’re building to what Kobe said. We’re talking as if from a post-Trump situation did not happen.

Where when they compare how they received when they go to Beijing, how they welcomed the patient treat, the decorum, all the honor they give them, it’s as if all of those are not happening. But somehow when he comes and say, you know what, those Africans, they prefer us than they prefer China. It’s talking about African head of state who goes to U.S. like three, four, five times hiring lobbies just to be able to have a five minutes, a 10 minute with the State Department or even the White House. But when they go to Beijing, it’s all the time, sure, they’re gonna meet Xi Jinping himself. They’re gonna have a 15 minute head to head. So what African head of state is talking about?

Especially in private? Come on, I’m like, and to all that, you have an introductory comment telling you the Belt and Road Initiative, African countries are not happy about the debt. I say, what are you talking about?

I didn’t even want to go into the critical mineral spot because come on, anyway, I’m like, anyway, so yeah.

ERIC OLANDER: Oh, we’ll get there, we’ll get there. We’ve got more on critical minerals coming up. Okay, well, so the hearing started after the opening statements, then Senator Cruz asked Futrell to provide his overview of China’s presence in Africa and to go region by region.

And I think this is an important part of the discussion because it gives us a sense of how does a guy like Futrell frame and understand China’s engagement on the continent and how sophisticated is he and nuanced about it all? Remember, he’s been in Africa for 30 years. He’s been a DCM, he’s been an ambassador, he’s been a senior official.

So one would think that he would have a pretty nuanced understanding of the topic. And I’ll leave it up to you guys to tell me what you think after we hear his review of all the major regions.

SOUNDBITE: As we run around the continent, most of the playbook that China uses occurs everywhere around the continent. But there are some regional trends. So as I roll around, everything is true everywhere in Africa, but there are some focuses that change a little bit.

If I were to start in Central and Southern Africa, of course, it most heavily relies on the mineral space and the extractive space. These are the minerals that they’ve gone into fast and hard. And part of the playbook that I think you’re asking for was first just being there first and having an incredibly high risk tolerance.

And by being able to go in without having to worry about meeting the needs of their shareholders or their board of directors and being able to focus on just capturing that market without worrying about turning a profit right away, that allowed them to keep and maintain the entire supply chain. Of course, we try and open a minerals processing plant in the U.S. There’s a lot of permitting and issues in that. Same with Europe.

But in China, where they don’t care, they were able to toss that up right off the bat. And then once they had a sort of a dominant position there, they were able to use that to continue to maintain. One of the things we’ve seen recently is the global’s need for lithium is almost infinite, vastly, 30, 40 times more than we currently have.

So there’s a lot of interest in engaging in new lithium, new lithium operations. So as Western companies were looking to both look at mining, at processing, and at the whole supply chain, China immediately dumped a lot of lithium on the market, crashing the price. And of course, what you see there then is, then as these Western companies were going to solicit financing and talking to banks and doing that kind of work, with the crashing lithium price, suddenly the projects were no longer viable.

And that kind of manipulation is a big part of the threat that they have against the United States. When we look in East Africa, we see a lot in the regards of infrastructure kinds of investment. The traditional roads, rail, bridges, that kind of thing, hydroelectric facilities.

But let’s not forget digital infrastructure. Being in first in that matters as well. A lot of these can be found as just debt vehicles.

I’ve on multiple occasions dealt with governments that have asked my help in finding investors to privatize some of their, because they can’t maintain the debt. But then they find that the market value of this item is double or is half what they still owe on the facility. So they’re just trapped into that forever.

That’s hugely problematic. And in the digital side, of course, if you want to be part of the modern economy, you’re going to need to have trusted safe networks. And so basically every country on the African continent has come to me to ask help in encouraging the big tech companies, Oracle, Microsoft, Google, et cetera, to come to their country.

But they won’t come if they can’t trust the networks that are there. And so many of the countries are faced with the issue of if we want to have a modern digital economy, if we know where we need to be in the future, we actually need to rip out those systems and replace them because we simply can’t operate in isolation with substandard technology in which all of our data is now subject to Chinese manipulation. And that’s been hugely problematic across the continent.

In West Africa, it’s often kind of a mix of the two. But one thing I would add to that that’s not frequently mentioned is in addition to this insatiable desire for minerals, it’s all sorts of extractives, including timber, the deforestation, but especially fishing. When you look at the fishing grounds of especially Western Africa, but really of all coastal Africa, that is the protein for the people.

But when you see these Chinese trawlers coming in and utterly destroying the fishing grounds, and you can see them on over-the-shelf, unclassified satellite imagery, trawling back and forth, then suddenly doing a beeline 60 miles offshore, meet a byboat, offload all the fish, come back to port and say, oh, we didn’t catch anything again today. And they don’t catch anything any day, at least according to their official records. And meanwhile, the amount of food available for the Africans is much more expensive in much less supply.

And this is a direct and tremendous threat. And forgive me for going on a little bit more on that subject, but it’s not one that normally gets mentioned. But it is indicative of the business model that the Chinese entertain on the continent.

ERIC OLANDER: So there you have it, Giroud and Kobis. Fitrell gave a review. So debt, poor quality infrastructure, substandard technology, overfishing and depriving Africans of food and protein.

That’s his understanding. How well do you think he understands this issue? It’s obvious he’s not a subscriber to the China Global South Project, but Kobis, let’s start with you again, just giving us your sense of where do you think, again, right now, you’re a top US diplomat for Africa.

What’s his reading on this? How well do you grade him?

COBUS VAN STADEN: The problem with this kind of situation is that it, as always, with, again, when these talking points are recycled, it’s like a smorgasbord of narratives and half-truths and undigested chunks of reports. Some of the problems he points out are actual problems. Like, for example, Chinese factory ships do overfish, but so do Portuguese and Spanish factory ships, and that’s not a problem for the US, right?

ERIC OLANDER: But he doesn’t, yes, but he also, he’s very selective, and just on this point, Kobis, he’s very selective at never holding any of the African leaders accountable for what’s happened. If they’ve got bad debt, then they shouldn’t have taken those loans. We know for a fact that the Ghanaian government has not enforced their own fishing laws, has fined Chinese fishing trawlers, but never collected on the fines, and the governance question in many of these issues is very much at stake, and I think this is one of the things you hear from Americans constantly, is saying, everything is the Chinese fault, nothing is the fault of the African side in creating the situations that we’re in.

COBUS VAN STADEN: Well, you know, kind of, I think that’s true. I think that that is true, but that is, it’s happening because it’s part of a bigger kind of thing that I picked up very strongly throughout all of this, all of this discussion that we’ve been listening to, is a complete indifference to actual African people, complete indifference to development plans, to priorities, to, you know, kind of to the future of African people, actually, you know, only interested in Africa as a site of extraction, and only interested in Africa as an arena for geopolitical competition. That’s it, I think.

That is my takeaway, is that, like, you know, again, they can’t find an individual African country on the map.

GERAUD NEEMA: As you say, Geraud, it is not even questioning the fact why Africa is engaging with China the way we’re engaging with China. It was interesting to me when you were talking about the strategies, like, as if he was blaming China to have a high tolerance to instability, to risk in Africa, as if he was blaming…

COBUS VAN STADEN

Like, oh, them and their nefarious risk tolerance, you know, it’s like… You guys are starting to sound a little bitter here. No, no, seriously.

GERAUD NEEMA:

When he was talking, I was like, when he started with us, like, is it a bad thing? Is it a good thing? You are complaining that China is managing…

ERIC OLANDER:

I mean… You’re going to hear that he says later in a soundbite that he wants the US to emulate some of that on the risk tolerance side.

GERAUD NEEMA: Okay, I hope so, I hope so. But he’s making some good point. The Chinese fishing thing is making some good point.

But he’s also taking some very short, very ideological, political, and shortcuts narrative into explaining how we’re engaging in Africa. As Geraud said, it’s not really… You’re not picking up the sense is understanding where African priorities are and why we’re engaging with China the way we’re engaging with China.

Talking about infrastructure, when you say bad infrastructure, quality of infrastructure, you’re going to mean African because you’re going to have different kind of infrastructure. You’re going to have good quality infrastructure. You’re going to have…

The way infrastructure have changed the lives of many African countries, the way they’ve impacted the economic growth of many African countries cannot be denied. It cannot be denied that when the US was just not present, I wouldn’t say was, where the US is just not present right now, you cannot complain that China is present. When he talks about critical minerals, the case of lithium, for instance, he talks about China oversupply.

This is not the full story because when you… I’m going to speak about only on the lithium cases. In the case of the lithium, you have the case of oversupply.

And in oversupply, you have China and Australia, China, Australia, and Chile leading the oversupply of lithium on the market. Chile and Australia being US ally, basically. And you also have China on that.

You also have low demand of EV batteries in China explaining why the lithium price went low. All of those factors, he just sums it up by saying China is oversupplying the market, basically taking a very complex issue using a very simplistic narrative through a geopolitical landscape, lenses to explain why this is happening, the way it’s happening. So those are the things I believe that he’s making some good points, but the way he’s explaining them, the way he’s looking at them is not really through the perspective of African countries on where our priorities are, why do we engage the way we’re engaging with China, and where the US can actually understand from an African perspective, our priority and how they should be engaging the way they need to engage with us.

ERIC OLANDER: And also this framing on the technology side that the only reason that Western and American tech companies are not coming into Africa is because of so much Huawei and ZTE in the network is, well, it’s just not true because if you look at Vodacom and C-Cell, for example, in South Africa, some of the largest network operators, they have a blended stack. They’ve got Huawei, they’ve got Ericsson, they’ve got Samsung in the stack. Safaricom as well has a blended stack as well that also includes Huawei and Ericsson.

The larger players do not want to only have from one provider. So this notion that a Western tech company cannot integrate with Chinese tech in a place like Africa just isn’t supported by the facts.

GERAUD NEEMA: Now there are some- It’s also forgetting the case of quality in terms of technology. I’m gonna mention two cases here. Tunisia and Morocco, in the last three months, Huawei won market of the 5Gs because when they look into the demand they wanted, when they put the requirements on the table, they realized that CMS was not up to par to what Huawei was offering in terms of technology, advanced technology in 5G, and in terms of prices.

It was not about we like China or not. It was just like, in terms of technology, they looked at CMS, they looked at Huawei, they looked at the guys. Huawei offering is much better technology into that.

And this is another element, for instance, you could not put forward because it’s an admission that from a technological perspective, we are now starting to lag behind what China is doing right now in terms of 5G and every new technology that they’re working on.

ERIC OLANDER: And this has been an issue that we’ve been covering for a number of years. And Cobus, you brought this up three or four years ago on a show where the conversation was, that often takes place, is that the Americans won’t invest in a tech stack that is dominated by Huawei. And the conversation back from the telecom operator is, well, what do you want me to do?

You want me to rip out my Huawei and then buy yours, but who’s gonna pay for the debt or what I still owe on this Huawei equipment? And the Americans will come back and say, that’s a you problem, not a me problem. And so what ends up happening is that we have this case where the Americans are not presenting an alternative that has the financing, that has the pricing, and has all the advantages that the Chinese do bring to the table, which is why not one African country, not one, including Eswatini, has taken the American advice to avoid using Huawei.

Not one, okay? I mean, and so I think that record speaks for itself right there. And I think so, Fitrell on that point is highly misleading.

Let’s continue on with our journey. Not surprising in a discussion like this, the question of Chinese military bases came up. And this is again, for longtime listeners of the show, they will be very well aware of our position on this, that there is no verifiable evidence that the Chinese are seeking to build a military base on the West Coast of Africa.

The only people who are saying this are the United States Intelligence Services, the Pentagon, and then it gets echoed in Congress. They say they have intelligence that says otherwise, but they have not released it. We are long past trusting the United States after the Iraq War about intelligence that they won’t show to the rest of the world and say, just trust us.

And we have spent years actually researching the PLA think tanks, the PLA literature. And again, we have seen no evidence of any kind that there is a plan or a thought to put a base on the West Coast of Africa. There is some great research that’s available from people like Paul Nantulia at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies.

Also the RAND Corporation has done a number of studies on this that debunk this narrative. But let’s listen to Senator Chris Coons from Delaware. By the way, Cobus, just to, because I have a feeling I’m going to get some pushback on this, Senator Chris Coons has been going to Africa for a long time.

And Troy Fittrell has been in Africa for 30 years. So I think that if you gave them that map challenge, they would probably do quite well. Senator Cruz, I think you’re absolutely 100% right.

But let’s listen to Senator Coons right now talking about this concern about a Chinese military base in Africa.

SOUNDBITE: I’ve been working hard with other senators on things that try and address current issues. Senator Ricketts and I recently went to the Philippines to look at the status of the Luzon Corridor, also a DFC-led project. Countering Chinese efforts to secure naval bases or military bases around the world, I think is a key part of our competition with China.

Their first overseas naval base is in Djibouti. Their first overseas major military base arguably is in Djibouti. There have been repeated reports they are attempting to secure a base in Gabon.

And Senator Ricketts and I have introduced the COUNTER Act, which is to require a strategy specifically focusing on sustaining broad-spectrum positive relationships with countries where we are at risk of having them agree to host a Chinese military facility. Do you think that’s necessary? Do you think it’s wise?

What’s your understanding of the current status of this issue?

I think it’s absolutely necessary to compete against that notion. We want to have deep, complex, and positive relationships with all countries in Africa. But in particular, we make it clear to those countries that might be flirting with that kind of a relationship with China that they would be jeopardizing the ability to have that kind of relationship with us.

ERIC OLANDER: So you remember Gabon from a couple of years ago. That’s when during the Biden administration, then the head of the Africa desk at the National Security Council, Judd Devermont, and Molly Fee, who was then the Assistant Secretary of State, all went schlepping out to Gabon. I think it was Gabon, and to try and- They went to Gabon as well at some point.

Was it?

GERAUD NEEMA: No, no, they went to Gabon.

ERIC OLANDER: And so- They went to Gabon later on, but they also went to Dubuque. And that’s right, they went to Equatorial Guinea as well, all trying to dissuade the governments there from a Chinese military base. Again, they will tell you, we know things you don’t know.

And I go, okay, well, until the rest of the world knows this, this feels a little bit, you know, just like the wag the dog. Again, in all the years that they’ve been saying this, this point, there is no evidence of any kind that they want to do this. Cobus, what say you?

COBUS VAN STADEN: I think increasingly, like what, you know, like, you know, in the past, I’ve sounded abstruse and academic, you know, kind of when I, you know, when I was complaining about the kind of role that Africa plays in like the symbolic imaginary of the US. And this is an example of that for me. It’s like Africa is essentially a kind of a fantasy space for the US, you know, kind of not a real set of actual countries, but this kind of zone, you know, kind of zone of places, of a zone of riches and a zone of contestation, right?

And, you know, and this kind of plays into that, you know, not a lot of discussion about what China may want to get out of a base in West Africa because China is itself a kind of a, this kind of zone of fantasy for the US, right? Kind of like, you know, China just wants bad things for the US. China just wants to destroy the US, right?

Kind of so there is this kind of, and Africa is, you know, is the ultimate kind of like a flat plane, like undifferentiated plane where all of this action is going to take place, you know? Like it’s so, so it’s Africa cannot escape its status as a backdrop and as a hinterland. In this logic, there’s no kind of like African priority here, right?

So this is the vibe I’m getting, you know, kind of is that it’s a kind of a way in a way of, yeah, of not dealing with the actual US-Africa relationship which has been significantly damaged in very concrete ways over the last only two or three months, you know? So there was a lot of new things in the Africa-US relationship. None of that is being addressed, you know?

So, you know, and Africa is just playing its role again as fantasy land, essentially, I think.

ERIC OLANDER: Geraud, what I find so remarkable about this discussion on the bases is how impenetrable the Senate and the Congress are, and to some extent the White House as well, this elite policy discussion in Washington to facts. Again, it’s perfectly fine to have these discussions if there was some evidence and some facts that were out there. But they talk about the military bases and they talk about debt traps as if it’s a known fact.

We all know that there’s debt traps in Africa. We all know that the Chinese want to build a base, right? And yet, year after year after year, we sound like complete dunces and broken records saying, no, there is no evidence.

We don’t take a position whether or not, you know, this is a good thing or a bad thing. There’s just no proof of it. And I find it remarkable that the Senate, with all of their resources, you should see how many staffers these guys have to do research.

You and I have spoken to many of them. And yet, these conversations still keep going. It’s not surprising to me.

GERAUD NEEMA: I think there is- I think it’s, I mean, it’s just remarkable to me. For me, it’s not surprising.

It’s intentional. It’s not a mistake. It’s not an overlap.

It’s not like negligence. It’s intentional for them not to look at the facts because they have a narrative they have to push. They have a narrative they have to defend and they need a justification for that narrative.

So they need to put on the table that there is a death trap narrative. They need to put on the table that, yes, there is an intention for China to open a U.S. military base in the West Coast of Africa. They have to put on the table that, yes, the West African country loves us.

They cry after us. They call us that we are the good guys, the Chinese, the bad guy. They have to, they have to.

I mean, you have to understand that when you are drafting foreign policy, an act of foreign policy, and you do have your strategy and you and I, we had that conversation before. You told me that the U.S., over the years, they’ve come to the conclusion that we are the good guys. Everything that we do, it’s good.

We are the good guys. So since we are the good guys, them, they are the bad guys, we need to have a justification for what we are doing. So at that point, once you are in that binary view, in that ideological view, you become naturally impenetrable to facts.

You don’t want the fact that are telling you otherwise. And for me, it’s not surprising. It’s normal, and it’s death trap, the infrastructure, the spying, all of that.

It was expected, just the title itself, the title of the Congress, the discussion itself, malign influence. I mean, it tells you everything. It just tells you everything.

ERIC OLANDER: Geraud, I do not think that you’re going to get an invitation to the July 4th barbecue at the U.S. Embassy in Mauritius this year. I just think that’s not going to happen.

COBUS VAN STADEN I think also, one has to kind of like see what the wider logic is that this discussion fits into, right? Like during, like right after Trump announced the new travel ban, like which includes a lot of African countries, like he was partly, you know, he was right after that, he was in, you know, again, one of these online, over like, you know, on like lively, live broadcast, kind of over office situations, this time with the German chancellor. And he was, Trump was saying that, oh, yeah, like you, Germany, have all of this problem with all of these people that you don’t, you know, coming over that you don’t want, and we’re avoiding that same problem, right?

Like this, this is what Trump said, right? This is, this was the explicit making clear that this travel ban is about not having more Africans and more Muslims in the U.S., right? And so within that larger context, where Africa is a whole continent of black and Muslim people, you know, kind of just threatening to come over, you know, the, in that context, you have to then, to not look fully explicitly racist, you know, or to not acknowledge the full explicit racism that underlies some of this, you have to then also be concerned about African, oh, but they’re being exploited and being, and there’s so much opportunity, they are the future, this young population, and we need to work with them, right? So that conversation sits inside this larger, this larger logic of keep them away, right?

It’s, they, it’s two sides of the same coin.

ERIC OLANDER: Well, one of the other themes in the discussion, and this was about an hour and a half, this hearing, was an acknowledgment that the Chinese are able to move faster because they have a much more integrated development finance system. And one of the things, and we’ve heard this for a long time in the United States, that the U.S. has the tools available to compete with the Chinese. The United States has an Ex-Im Bank.

The United States has a Development Finance Corporation. The United States has up in, well, it had up until recently the Millennium Challenge Corporation. It has many of the same tools that China’s- And the money, if they wanted to.

Well, they have the money, but in different ways. And so what, one of the things that the senators were prodding Fitrell was to see how, if they’re gonna focus on this commercial diplomacy, how can the different organs of government in the United States work together? So this came up from Maryland Democrat Christopher Van Hollen, who again talked about the imperative of better coordination among the agencies.

And let’s listen to how Fitrell responded to that in the context, of course, of the Chinese.

SOUNDBITE: You pointed out in your testimony that China can act swiftly and they’re risk tolerant. You also pointed out rightly that they don’t have to worry about meeting their stockholders’ requirements, right? I mean, these are fundamental differences between the way China approaches Africa and the United States does, right?

And so it seems to me, if we’re going to be able to compete, we have to use these tools. Senator Coons was very involved in the DFC effort. Senator Booker just raised concerns that I share about the plans, as I understand, to get rid of the MCC.

But I guess the point is, you can’t beat the China offer, which often comes in as a debt trap, but it comes in appearing to be less costly without something better, right? I mean, you can’t beat nothing. You can’t beat something with nothing.

And that is why these tools are so important. So maybe you could lay out a little bit exactly in your six points how you envision beefing up those tools. And I do want to close by saying this is not an either-or proposition in my view, like the development assistance.

We can pursue active private commercial engagements, which we should, and frankly, every administration, Republican or Democrat, for the last 15 years have said that that’s their goal, and to do it on an equal basis. But you don’t have to cut humanitarian assistance to Sudan in order to, at the same time, pursue commercial interests. And I think that that’s been devastating, frankly, to our own interests, as well as the interests of people in Africa.

But maybe you could just take up this issue about how we can deal with a competitor that doesn’t have to demonstrate an immediate return to their shareholders, because that’s the fundamental question here. You talk about getting more, you know, commercial attaches and others, and I’m all for that. But at the end of the day, an American company is not going to go in there unless they think they’re going to be able to deliver for their shareholders, and it’s hard to see how they can without some support from using these other tools.

So could you elaborate on that?

Thank you very much, Senator. The reason why we’ve been making such a big deal about the commercial diplomacy is because that’s the thing we’re doing that’s dramatically different from before. That’s the thing that’s being promoted and advanced in our strategy that is different, and that’s why we’re doing that.

I’m a huge fan of DFC, but even DFC understands that the way it was built, the way it was designed, and the way it needs to go forward may be different. It’s about being faster, more nimble, instead of just being the only investor, about being the leader of a blended finance. These types of reforms will make it a better entity, but it’s an entity on which, frankly, our entire strategy relies.

We need that kind of finance, that kind of aggression, and that kind of optimism. Some of it is also, if you look at the Ex-Im Bank, I believe they have a 2% failure cap, and they don’t reach it. I think they’re at about 1.2%. Personally, I would like to double that cap to 4% and ensure that they reach it. I want them being aggressive. I want them, frankly, having some loans that don’t work. It’s not just a matter of the number of successful projects that you have, because if that’s all you’re focused on, then you’re behaving just like a normal bank, and we have plenty of normal banks.

We need these investment arms to do the things, to lead, so that the private sector can then engage afterwards, to attract.

ERIC OLANDER: So this notion that the Chinese are not accountable to investors or shareholders, again, is very reductive. They look at everything as if it’s the Chinese state. But, Géraud, as you know very well, these Chinese mining companies, for example, are extraordinarily profit-driven and very sensitive to price fluctuations.

We just saw, for example… They’re anti-publicly listed, like C-Mark is publicly listed. Well, that’s exactly it.

They’re oftentimes listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange where they are accountable to shareholders. We just saw, for example, Qingshan, one of the biggest mining companies, bail out of Chile, a project there, because it wasn’t profitable. So, again, it’s a very reductive approach to say everything is state-controlled.

And, again, they’re kind of drawing us back to the Soviet era where there was no private enterprise. And even the state-owned enterprises, they do operate in many instances like profit-driven private enterprises. So, here you have it.

He wants American development finance agencies, the DFC, and the Ex-Im Bank to be more aggressive. Let’s just put the scale of the Ex-Im Bank, again, into context here. This was budgeted by Congress with $60 billion, half of which was dedicated to Africa.

So, we’re looking at a fund of about $30 billion, but we don’t know when the expiration date is on that. That could be for the next 20 years, it could be for the next 50 years, it could be for the next two years. And so, when we look at the scale of what Chinese money in Africa for development finance and what DFC is bringing to the table, radically different.

I mean, we had $52 or $51 billion in the last FOCAC. Again, we don’t know how much of that FOCAC money actually gets spent, but the numbers that are allocated from the Chinese are significantly larger than what’s available for DFC. So, there you have it, Géraud.

This is into your space, because a lot of what DFC is going to finance is going to be in the critical minerals, and going to be in mining and extractives. What did you think of what Fitrell had to say?

GERAUD NEEMA: It was very interesting in a sense where at least you understand the dynamic of the market. You understand that there is a need of approaching China. If they want to compete, there is a need for them to adapt to the reality.

There is a need for them to provide financial infrastructure, political infrastructure to allow American companies to invest. And it just reminds me of the comment they were making earlier about the priorities of the US trade diplomacy, commercial diplomacy now, where priorities are set by private sectors in a sense where they need now to consult the private sector to talk with them and say, what is the strategy here? How should we be approaching this country?

How should we be engaging with this kind of country? What are the risks that need to be mitigated? What kind of risk insurance can we, that thing that you like so much, what risk insurance can we provide to you to allow you to be protected against all kinds of risks that are related to the country you want to invest?

And at least that you understand that. But now, how do you go from that to really making it happen? How do we now have a coordination element?

Because at the end, that’s the thing, it’s a coordination problem. And the way the US political system is set, the way the economic system is set, does not allow that kind of level of coordination to be able to compete with China. And this is, I think, no matter how hard they will try, unless they deny themselves, they deny the way they run policy, they run economy, they won’t be able to create that level of coordination that China has with its public and private sector alike when it comes to investing in strategic projects around the world.

ERIC OLANDER: Cobus, the way that it was being framed by the Senators and by Fitrell is that it’s a one for one. And what Geraud was telling us is there are structural differences between the US system and the Chinese system. The secret weapon of the Chinese in Africa and other parts of the world, which was not mentioned in this discussion by Fitrell, is not the development financing from things like DFC or Ex-Im Bank.

It’s by a company called Sinoshore. And Geraud brought up this issue of risk insurance. This is the thing that corporations in Europe and the United States are telling governments that they want.

They say you need to provide us a backstop in order for us to go and invest in these higher risk markets, or perceived to be higher risk markets. The United States does not have a risk insurance agency that will give GE a guarantee to go into country X to be able to do Nigeria or do something like that. Sinoshore does this.

So this perception that they are one for one, like for like, is actually quite flawed, Cobus, and I’d be interested to get your take on that.

COBUS VAN STADEN Yeah, you know, it’s you know, they’re not the same. They don’t kind of function in the same way. What I think really kind of frustrates me about this is that I feel like I’ve heard the same kind of set of talking points from Democrats, from Republicans for maybe at least 10 years.

ERIC OLANDER: Since we’ve been doing this show for 15 years. I mean, literally from the beginning. Going back to Hillary Clinton, remember when she was Secretary of State, going to Congo, saying the same things about the Chinese that are being said today.

COBUS VAN STADEN And also saying the same things about the US actually. You know, kind of like casting everything into this kind of weird, like, semi-future tense. You know, it’s like, oh, we need to do this.

Oh, you know, kind of like this is where we need to move towards. This is what the Chinese are doing. This is how we should pervert.

Year after year, you know. It’s like, if you want to do it, do it.

Like, you’re a big fat, rich country, like just do it. Like, if you want to rip out like pay to rip out all of the data networks on the continent and replace them, just do that then. You know, it’s like, it’s this weird kind of like everything is kind of like, yeah, the discourse is like at a boil.

But the actual kind of engagement is relatively a lot more lukewarm. But it is this kind of like having your cake and eat it situation where they don’t really want to be involved in Africa, but they can’t be seen to not want to be involved in Africa. They have to appear, you know, kind of like burning to be in Africa, but they don’t actually want to be there.

You know, so there’s this kind of like weird like one step forward, two steps back kind of situation, and you just end up where you started always, right? Kind of like you end up with the same set of talking points again, repeated. And it feels a little bit like repeating those talking points has its own purpose.

It feels a little bit like, almost like a ritual, you know, kind of to just like run through them once again, you know?

ERIC OLANDER: Well, I mean, Futrell acknowledged that in his opening statement that U.S. exports from Africa to the United States have been falling and U.S. trade has been falling steadily. U.S. engagement, for the most part, despite the best efforts of the U.S. government, has not really picked up in any meaningful way. I mean, there’s a lot of talking points, but the data, if you look at the data, it all kind of points down.

Okay, we’ve got two more points. We’re running over in time, so we’ve got to be a little more efficient. I’ve got one for you, Gérô, and we’ve got one for you, Cobus.

Okay, so Geraud, we’re coming down your lane right now on critical minerals. This was a major theme of the hearing. It came up over and over again.

I just picked one of the talking points in order for you to reflect on it. This is some reflections from Ted Cruz, again the Republican senator from Texas, asking about the importance of critical minerals and, again, the challenge that’s presented by China.

SOUNDBITE: Ambassador, I want to get back to the topic of critical minerals. In your opening statement, you described the really dominant position China has with critical minerals in Africa. Unfortunately, America lost significant ground in the Biden administration.

You focused on the supply chain, and President Biden cancelled mineral leases for the twin metals mine in Minnesota. The administration also deliberately rejected Alaska’s Ambler Road project and blocking domestic critical minerals mining only reinforces our overseas critical minerals supply chain reliance, and that’s a market, unfortunately, that China dominates. Less than 1% of the global rare earth element refining capacity exists in the United States.

Most U.S. mined or collected rare earth element material is sent to China for separation and processing. Trump’s executive order calling for, quote, immediate measures to increase American mineral production has put us back on the right course. We need your leadership to marshal resources to cultivate partnerships in the critical minerals sector in Africa, and for the United States to be an alternative to China and Africa, we need to create real alternatives in Africa.

We need to translate the talk and policy into tangible action and impact. Could you please describe the efforts underway within the department to work with our international partners across Africa and U.S. companies to build a more resilient, transparent, and diversified supply chain of critical minerals from Africa to the United States?

Thank you very much for raising that. I spend more time working with the American private sector than I do with government officials, because they’re the ones who are going to be key to solving this issue. It would be easy and cheap and ultimately disastrous to continue to rely on China for these sorts of things.

We do have to have our own domestic capacity. I’m not the one who does domestic work, but there are people across this government that do, and we engage on a regular basis. When it comes to making sure our allies and partners are involved as well, I spent a good bit of time this morning with the European Union’s Peace and Security Committee because they’re concerned about these issues as well, and they also have a challenge that they need to invest in minerals processing and usage.

It’s my job to get the throughput for that processing. As we have operations in Houston for developing critical minerals processing, we have new operations also coming up the Mississippi Valley, particularly in Arkansas, I believe. It’s my job to get the throughput for that, and that’s where I’m engaging with the mining companies, with the transportation companies, and the power companies to make sure that that’s doable.

ERIC OLANDER: So there we have it. They are very excited about critical minerals. By the way, I didn’t include this, but he said also he’s all in on the Lobito Corridor, and that is the corridor from Kowloosi and from Zambia that would bring minerals to the Atlantic Coast port of Lobito, and then presumably to the United States.

They say they’re starting to build a little bit of a processing capacity in the United States, nowhere near anywhere close to what the Chinese have, but Giro, when you hear that, what do you think?

GERAUD NEEMA: I hear that they’re really trying to catch up. They’re really trying to catch up. They realize how much they’ve been far behind in that competition.

But at the same time, the more I think I realize that do they have enough tools to be able to compete? Do they have really enough tools to be able to be present where it’s really present? Especially now where you have African countries demanding for local processing, transformation, refining.

Yes, the U.S. is building processing plants now in the United States, but at the same time, when you go to Africa, they’re going to tell you, we also need the same thing back home here. We want them to be built here for us, for our local market, for our domestic consumptions. How are we going to reconcile all of that?

Because at some point, they’re going to have to come to agreement to peace with that, that this is a demand that’s going to remain, whether we’re dealing with China or not. But this is the demand that many African countries are going to put on the table. They’re going to maintain those demands on the table, no matter who’s the partner in front of them.

And those are the kind of things I think that they don’t always consider, they don’t always take into account when they look into those competitions with China and how they engage with China. And of course, as you mentioned, Lobito, being one of those projects that they’re presenting as to be the main element of the strategic competition or return of the U.S. into African countries. But we’re going to still have to see how many U.S. companies are willing to come. We have, in certain countries, companies like Kobold coming into the DRC now, and also in Zambia. But elsewhere, we’re going to have to look closely how that deployment, how that engagement is now taking place in critical minerals, and how really they’re working hard or not to be able to have competition. But so far, there’s no really competition happening because they’re still way far behind.

ERIC OLANDER: I think the important thing also here is to recognize scale. He’s talking about one or two new processing centers in Arkansas and in Houston. You’re talking about Kobold, which is a private company going into the DRC.

You can go to Zhejiang province and you’ll find dozens of processing facilities. You talk about the Tenke Fungurume mine run by CMOC Group, which is the largest copper-cobalt producer in the world. The scale is enormous.

And so I think we’re looking, we’re not even in the same ballpark when we’re talking about what the U.S. And for the U.S. to compete with the Chinese, it’s going to take at least 10 to 20 years to build the technology to do it. And then what we’ve known about the U.S. and what Senator Cruz brought up is the permitting issues. And again, it’s not just the Biden administration.

This is something that has transcended Republican and Democrat administrations. It’s the structure of the power in the country. That’s right.

There are a lot of special interests in the United States, and many of them are conservatives, by the way. Western ranchers who typically support Trump do not want that land turned over to big mining and processing. So we have a much more complex situation.

Cobus, we’re going to close with you. I’m doing this as a gift to you because you are a South African. It sounds like a trap coming your way.

No, no, no. This is legit. Right at the very end of the hearing, Cory Booker brought up the question of South Africa, expressing his anxiety over the direction that U.S.-South Africa relations goes to. This has nothing to do with China, but I just thought it would be interesting to get your take on this. By the way, there’s no white genocide in South Africa anymore. Now that we know that.

Well, I saw the funniest political cartoon that said there’s a genocide and only 59 people decided to leave, which I thought that was a very kind of funny take on it. But let’s dive into, again, Cory Booker asking Fitrell about U.S.-South Africa.

SOUNDBITE: So South Africa produces 75% of the world’s platinum. So many critical minerals flow through it. I’m worried about our policy towards South Africa limiting our critical mineral acquisition.

They’ve been left out of some now key consortium. Could you just comment on that really quickly and cogently?

Actually, the South Africans main points when they came to visit just a few weeks ago were that this is the area in which we can find great opportunities for cooperation. Again, we have something like 600 American companies active in South Africa. That kind of engagement is possible, so I would be hugely supportive of that.

ERIC OLANDER: There you go, Cobus.

COBUS VAN STADEN Points of agreement. Yeah, well, you know, the South Africans would be into that too. You know, they’re trying to make it happen, but it’s not looking great at the moment.

Yeah, you know.

ERIC OLANDER: I mean, they’re worried about the critical minerals. That’s the funny thing, because remember Naledi Pandor threatened in a Washington Post editorial she was the former foreign minister that said, if you push us too far we could cut off the supply to the United States of these critical minerals. And already the United States is suffering.

COBUS VAN STADEN Yeah, it’s not only platinum. Manganese, I think it’s a bunch of other ones. Chromium, that’s the one.

But it’s not only platinum itself. It’s platinum family minerals, which means that you know, it’s the rare earth versions of the rarer versions of platinum. You know, kind of South Africa also has a lot of, you know, kind of in that larger family.

ERIC OLANDER: And I think one of the lessons that African countries may want to take from how China’s negotiating with the United States China cut off the rare earths, and that brought Trump to the table. It really did. And I know that it’s not in the it just doesn’t seem to be in the dynamic of Cyril Ramaphosa’s political strategy to play that hardball and say, you know what?

You’re getting a 90 day pause on platinum exports. That’s it. You’re cut off for 90 days until you can figure out how you want to deal with us.

And I don’t, he’s not he’s not going that way, you know, but I don’t know. That’s what the Chinese did. And it seemed to be very effective because from Elon Musk down they are worried about the access to rare earths.

You know what I mean?

COBUS VAN STADEN I think what the South Africans see is that they is that, I think they can play that card, but like but the issue is, I think the South Africans are worried that they’re going to be turned into the new Iran, basically. You’re very close to that right now. Where the full kind of arsenal of the US state is just kind of like turned on the country, you know, because the thing is once that’s locked in, it can go on for a long time, right?

Like ask Cuba. You know, so it’s one of those things where I think the South Africans are, they’re trying to kind of like walk that line and not land on that side, I think.

ERIC OLANDER: Just a very pragmatic decision on the point of Ramaphosa because also, again, we’ve talked about this previously somewhere around 200,000 jobs are tied to American businesses in South Africa. So there’s a lot at stake for South Africa to take that harder line.

COBUS VAN STADEN There’s a lot at stake. In the longer term also like, you know, just I think the way things have gone so kind of badly with the South Africans, I think it’s shifting perceptions of the US, you know, kind of in a country that was actually very pro-US, you know, kind of in many ways. Like South Africa is always portrayed as being super pro-China but actually when you’re in South Africa, you realize that in a lot of ways, China is still quite an unknown quantity for a lot of South Africans.

You know, like they’re not you know, they didn’t grow up with China, you know. They did grow up with the US and this is really that the relationship has really shifted. You know, and I don’t think the US necessarily cares, but it’s still true.

ERIC OLANDER: So, let’s wrap up. Did you guys learn anything from this hearing? Anything new or was it the same old?

Geraud, what’s your takeaway from all this? What do you want people to think about Troy Fittrell and the discussion that happened this week on Capitol Hill?

GERAUD NEEMA: Same old, unfortunately. Same old? Okay.

The title, the lining, the opening line comments, all of that. Same old. Troy Fittrell, of course, tried to make some good points, some valid points, but this seems still same old valid point.

I didn’t hear something new. I didn’t hear something. Oh, we haven’t heard that from Michael Langley.

We haven’t heard that from, you know, people before. It’s exactly the same wording. Basically, almost a copy-paste of different testimony, just change the wording here, change the old of the languages here, but it’s the same old.

And that’s quite unfortunate for me. And I think that it’s not really beneficial for African countries. It’s not really beneficial to the US-Africa relationship.

I mean, conditional that they really want to have a serious US-Africa relation for Africa itself and not because of geopolitical tension, not because of geopolitical agenda. And I think for me it’s something quite unfortunate. But before going to Geraud, I just wanted to throw you a question.

Maybe it’s a curveball. I don’t know. But it goes back to the first comment that we were talking about, understanding the US diplomacy.

You mentioned Troy Fitzgerald and Massad Boulos. What’s their relationship? Because it’s now, when you’re in Africa, you’re kind of like, because we think in terms of hierarchy, who’s the boss of who, and who has much more power, who has much more leverage?

Because if you don’t know that, you won’t be able to engage with the State Department in a meaningful way. Do you have an answer on that? Who’s more important?

I mean, has more influence?

ERIC OLANDER: So, the reason why Trump is using these senior advisors, these special representatives, is because he does not trust what he calls the deep state. And that’s the bureaucracy of the State Department. And the State Department in particular has been a rival of the Trump administration for a very, very long time, going back to the first time around.

So he’s skipping a lot of the bureaucracy and going to these special appointees, these political appointees. And that’s not just in Africa, that’s in other parts of the world as well. And not relying anywhere near as much on the institution of the State Department.

In terms of boss or no boss, that doesn’t really make a difference in, you’re thinking the old way of government power in the United States. There is only one boss right now, and that is Donald Trump. And the countries and the people that get to him are the ones that have power.

So that’s why you see the German Chancellor make his way to the Oval Office. And that’s even why Ramaphosa went and did not go through the normal channels of communication, because they want to speak directly to him because Trump ultimately makes all the decisions. Troy Fitchell right now is the most senior African diplomat in the State Department managing the bureaucracy of American diplomacy and foreign policy.

I will tell you that he is considerably less powerful today than under previous administrations that had an assistant secretary, for example. Which, there is no assistant secretary. There was this chain of command.

Also, Marco Rubio, who’s the Secretary of State, has not shown a lot of interest in Africa so far. So I don’t think that people like, you know, Fitchell or Boulos may get a lot of the secretary’s time. So that’s just speculation on my part, but just given the fact that Rubio seems to be more concerned with things that are happening in Asia, in Europe, the Middle East, Russia, Ukraine, Africa is not, seem to be, at least so far we haven’t seen a lot of diplomatic activity on his part.

Let’s go to you, Cobus, for the last word. Did you learn anything from these comments and from this discussion? Or for you, was it like Giraud and was it the same old, same old?

COBUS VAN STADEN —Well, you know, kind of, I think it was instructive in one way, in that, you know, this was the first kind of glimpse of what the post-AID U.S.-Africa relationship looks like, right? Like, you know, the aid industry has been one of the most well-developed U.S. presences on the continent, right? It was highly professionalized, like in lots of ways extremely efficient and very, very well run.

And it built a very concrete relationship between the continent, right? Now that’s gone, and it hasn’t been really replaced by anything else. You know, obviously, it’s just been kind of, you know, rolled back, so you know, it hasn’t been a long time, but the vibe itself is that for me, is that obviously the relationship is being rephrased in terms of a new set of priorities, but those are a relatively narrow set of priorities.

And the glimpse I got of the relationship is that the relationship is smaller, I think, than it used to be on a real kind of like on-the-ground level, and that it’s shifted more towards a kind of a space of planning and strategy and flattening of the continent. You know, so it would be funny to do like just a count of the number of times Africa as a continent was mentioned in the discussion versus individual African countries, for example. You know, so in that sense, I think it’s kind of, it pushed the continent back, further back into a space where it essentially functions as a kind of a symbolic entity rather than an actual, a real place.

ERIC OLANDER: Well, we did not intend to go this long and to make this effectively a double show, but we think that it’s an important discussion to have at this moment to better understand, again, the rhetoric and, as Cobus pointed out, the vision of U.S. foreign policy, whether it’s enlarging or getting smaller and whatnot. This is a critical time, and again, U.S. literacy is just as important as China literacy. It’s also interesting to hear what the Senators and Fitrell, how they see China and whether or not they are as nuanced and sophisticated as they need to be, which at this point from what we heard, at least in this performance, and it’s very performative, these appearances on Capitol Hill.

Again, as Geraud pointed out, it’s much the same that we’ve heard, not just for the past one or two years, but really for the past 10 to 15 years, so not a lot of change there. Let’s leave the conversation there. Thank you both for this extra long show on a Friday afternoon.

I really appreciate it. Friday afternoon, I hear.

GERAUD NEEMA: I didn’t even see the time passing.

ERIC OLANDER: You know, hopefully our diehard listeners are still with us and viewers on YouTube. We’d love to hear what you think. Leave your comments on YouTube.

Also, like and subscribe if you aren’t there. And if you’re listening to us, we’d greatly appreciate if you subscribe to us. The podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

And of course, if you want to support the work that we are doing with Geraud and Cobus and the rest of the team in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, go to ChinaGlobalSouth.com slash subscribe. Subscriptions are very cheap. Last time I mentioned that it was cheaper than a coffee and a Starbucks coffee and a muffin in Hawaii.

And then you get much better value out of this subscription to China Global South. And I would encourage the Senate staffs of Ted Cruz and Cory Booker and Senator Van Hollen to subscribe because I think you really need it. You guys really really need it.

And Troy.

GERAUD NEEMA: I believe they know that we exist. They hear us.

ERIC OLANDER:

No, they don’t pay any attention to us, but you know. But I do like the idea that if we met Felix Tshisekedi, he would say we are the most important media in the world. I’d appreciate that very much.

Let’s leave it there. We’ll be back again next week with another edition of the China in Africa podcast for Giraud and Cobus. I’m Eric Olander.

Thank you so much for listening and for watching.

by Eric Olander

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