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Africa and the New World Order: U.S. Pulls Back and China Moves Forward

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Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the show. I’m Eric Olander. And as always, I’m joined by CGSP’s head of research, Kobus van Staden, joining us as always from beautiful Cape Town, South Africa. A very good afternoon to you, Kobus.

Good afternoon.

Kobus, today we’re going to focus on U.S.-Africa relations or U.S.-China-Africa relations. It’s a very complex scenario that we have to go through today. But before we get into the U.S.-China relationship and the U.S.-China-Africa relationship, let’s talk about some new numbers that came out last week from Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center on Chinese loan commitments to Africa in 2024. These are the latest numbers that they have.

This is interesting because in 2023, we saw a big jump in lending. And then in 2024 now, the figures dropped significantly by 46% to $2.1 billion. Just six projects in five African countries, which again, when you consider the fact that back in 2016, they were funding at a pace of $28.8 billion across the continent. So a huge drop.

And again, a big drop from the year before. Let me just quickly run through the different projects and then I want to get your reaction and get your sense of what you think is going on here. Four categories:

• Transportation
• Energy
• Water
• Financial services

$1.2 billion across three road and transport infrastructure projects in the DRC, Kenya, and Angola. So roads are the big one. $760 million for an electricity transmission line in Angola.

And then $85 million for rural well drilling in Senegal. And finally, $76.5 million to Egypt’s National Bank for local, small and medium sized enterprise support. A very different lending profile, Kobus, than what the Chinese were known to do in Africa. Big railway projects, big port projects, major infrastructure, huge loans. Those days seem to be over.

Yeah, this is very interesting for me. I’d love to get, and hopefully we’ll be able to speak with some of these researchers to unpack it more because there’s a lot of questions for me.

Because, you know, in the same report, they were also highlighting the rapid kind of increase of different kinds of financing mechanisms in response to the reality that African countries can’t absorb much more sovereign debt than they really have.

So it’s difficult for me to contextualize the fall in lending within the context of this kind of proliferation of financing instruments. And I was wondering kind of how those two come together.

Well, we are going to be speaking with the researchers. We’ve got invitations out. And so I expect in the next couple of weeks, we’ll have more details on that. Just to give some context here: for the 25-year period between 2000 and 2024, Chinese loan commitments to African countries totaled $181 billion, 1,319 loans to 49 different states.

So a huge impact over the past quarter century, but we do seem to be now in a new era that is far more austere.

We have more of this on our website, and we’re going to have some of the researchers from BU to join us on the show later. But today, let’s focus on the U.S.-China-Africa relationship.

But first, Kobus, we have to start with the latest news coming out of the U.S. and out of Washington.

A story in The Guardian came out, and it just feels like every day we’re getting another one of these.

Let me just read you from this story:

“U.S. diplomats have been encouraged,” I’m quoting here from The Guardian story,
to, quote,
“unabashedly and aggressively remind African governments about the generosity of the American people,”
according to a leaked email sent to staff in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs.

And this is from Nick Checker (actually Nicole Checker), who is the acting assistant secretary for the Bureau of African Affairs. And here’s what he said, quote:

“It’s not gauche to remind these countries of the American people’s generosity in containing HIV-AIDS or alleviating famine.”

Kobus, that was absolutely true for the better part of 30, 40, 50 years, when the United States was far and away the most generous aid donor in Africa and around the world. Somewhere around $11 billion a year of aid would go to African countries. Tens of millions of Africans are alive today because of PEPFAR, and that’s the anti-HIV programs.

But that all came to a very abrupt end at the beginning of the Trump administration. So, it feels a little tone-deaf to be hearing the acting assistant secretary of state to be saying how grateful Africans should be right now.

Yes, you know, tone-deaf is one word for it. I think this happening in the same week, or coming out in the same week, As President Trump was also, again, taking time in divorce to particularly kind of single out Somalis, you know, kind of for, you know, a lot of criticism. It’s just interesting for me. It’s kind of revealing, you know, kind of that there’s still, despite all of these things, despite the travel bans, despite all of these very clear indications, like really no one can be mistaken that, you know, kind of the Trump administration doesn’t have a lot of interest in working with Africa or dealing with Africa, yet people still need to be, to express, you know, kind of gratitude. So, that’s just, it’s just funny to hear.

Well, let’s get a perspective from a Washington insider on this and so much more. And also, we’re going to talk about U.S.-China-Africa relations. Our old friend, Judd Devermont, who’s been on the show many, many times in the past.

Today, Judd Devermont is an operating partner at Kapunda Capital and a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. And if the name Judd Devermont doesn’t sound familiar, it should, because he was also the top African policy official in the National Security Council during the Biden administration.

Judd joins us on the line from D.C. A very good morning to you, Judd.

“Hey, good morning, Eric. Good morning, Kobus. It’s great to be back.”

It’s wonderful to have you back on the show again. Listen, you’ve been watching what’s been happening in U.S.-Africa relations over the past year. We’re going to get to this column that you wrote about China. But first, I’d want to get your sense of what’s happening from your vantage point in the U.S.-Africa relationship that you worked very hard personally to try and build up, but now it does feel like it’s in a very different place.

Yeah, guys, we’re in an upside-down world. I mean, it’s really hard to even navigate the twists and turns and how dramatic the change has been. You know, you read, Eric, a part of that email, but that wasn’t the section that was most jarring to me. The section that was most jarring to me was that he said, quote,

“But to put it bluntly, Africa is a peripheral rather than a core theater for U.S. interests that demand strategic economy.”

Framing Africa as strategic has often historically served bureaucratic and moral imperatives, not hard interests. And then he adds that

“Africa, the stakes are limited, indirect, and largely negative (risk management).”

But isn’t he saying the quiet part out loud there? I mean, let’s be honest that even in the Obama and Biden administrations, it was difficult to get Africa on the agenda. You’ve struggled for a long time to put Africa on the agenda in D.C. And I mean, maybe it’s jarring to hear it, but it does sound actually rather accurate.

I think there’s two things about it. First of all, it is true that it is hard to get Africa on the agenda. And I’ve worked in three different administrations, Republican and Democrat. Aspirationally, there’s always been an effort to move Africa up and allocate resources. There are sometimes turf wars and battles around resources.

But because of this email, I decided I’d go back and look at old National Security Strategies:

• The first one in 1987 under Reagan said Africa requires or deserves increasing attention.
• In 2006 under President Bush, it said Africa was a high priority.

So now, reality and rhetoric may not always meet together, but that has not been the way in which people within the bureaucracy and many of our political leaders have thought.

So that’s one.

Number two, saying the quiet part out loud and then expecting your team to do the work is a whole other question, right? How can you inspire and engage and give a sense of mission to your teams in embassies all over the world, all over the continent when you’re saying

“this isn’t that important and we’re really just in a defensive mode.”

So I think it works on two levels.

1. One, I don’t think it’s accurate. I disagree. Obviously, I wrote a strategy under President Biden that highlighted the increasing strategic importance of Africa.
2. I think that historically, people have believed that Africa is important. They may have not been able to put the resources against it.
3. And then three, how are you going to be a functioning, effective administration when you’re telling your workforce that this isn’t that important?

Kobus, let me get your take on this. When the top U.S. diplomat for Africa, the equivalent—remember Wu Peng, who’s the ambassador in South Africa, used to be in that role, in the Chinese role, in the equivalent in China. But when you hear that from the top U.S. diplomat in Africa, what’s your reaction?

“I’m not really surprised, actually, you know, kind of in the sense, I mean, I’m surprised your people say it, but I’m not surprised that that is the general thinking because obviously,” Obviously, US-Africa relations have shifted significantly under Trump 2.0. But before that, during the Biden administration, the two of us were in Washington. I remember a State Department official saying, when I repeatedly tried to ask what their core strategies or objectives in Africa were—beyond general ideas about what would be good for Africa or development—they really wanted to achieve something particular for themselves.

This official said that, in the end, what the US really wants to achieve is for African problems to remain in Africa, so they do not cross the Atlantic towards the US. There is this kind of containment logic to a certain extent.

I think the logic of framing the relationship as a moral obligation, or trying to sell it as an example of the US doing good in the world, has obviously run out of steam. This was clear under Trump, but the running out of steam actually preceded Trump.

So, in a way, Trump’s approach just said things more bluntly, but the substance is not that surprising. Africans probably are not surprised either because they don’t feel a lot of interest from the US.

Did you get a chance—both of you—to reflect on this? You both have very interesting insights. Judd, I remember going all the way back to when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State and went to Kinshasa. She was really the first to articulate that the reason why Africa is important to US foreign policy is because of China, China, China.

We heard China, China, China for the next 25 years. That was the framing for why Africa was important to the US.

Now, however, we have the new National Security Strategy that effectively says:

• The US is not going to compete against China in other parts of the world.
• The Western Hemisphere is the priority.

Is it surprising to you, Judd? And Kobus, I’d like your take too. We’re no longer seeing competition with China as the key framing mechanism shaping policy. Nick is not talking about China anymore; he’s saying it’s not important.

This is a very sharp pivot from the past quarter century.

Yeah, I think there are two things I want to say. First, just responding to what Kobus said: the job of policymakers leading the Africa team is to make the best case possible for why Africa deserves more attention. This is not about bureaucratic savvy, but because everyone appointed to African-related influence in an administration believes the continent is important for reasons we can discuss.

It’s a little jarring for me to hear the person in charge of Africa policy say, “let’s put our hands up and say it’s not important.”

Regarding your question, there is always an effort to find the angle that resonates with the current administration. When I was in the Biden White House, I wanted to avoid letting one issue wag the dog. I didn’t believe our policy should be:

• Like the 1980s, mainly focused on the Cold War.
• Like the 1990s, either about HIV/AIDS.
• Like the 2000s, focused on counterterrorism.

I thought China was part of the story but not the whole story. Defining our interests in Africa by one issue is a huge disservice, and it limits discussion to just that issue.

This administration has said clearly that China is not important—not just for Africa but globally. The National Security Strategy (NSS) gives China a much more muted presence. In fact, it calls for a genuine, mutually advantageous economic relationship with China.

By the way, all the concerns from the Trump and Biden administrations about China globally are still in that document. They still talk about:

- A free and open Indo-Pacific
- Taiwan
- Cyber threats

They just don’t say the word China explicitly. China is no longer the primary actor of concern for these activities. Instead, the vision of China in the world and what it means to the US is much narrower.

Of course, this narrower vision causes cascading effects in how we talk about China and Africa. And by the way, as I said in this piece that we’re going to talk about, when I would make the argument about China and Africa, oftentimes I’d still lose resources. The resources would go to the Indo-Pacific or other places. So I just think it’s important to have that framing.

What are you trying to articulate? What is the case that you are making? And does it resonate?

So maybe it would then be helpful. Just kind of circle back to that same kind of question that I was asking your former colleague in the U.S.

So, outside of moral imperatives to support development, for example, or to support global health, narrowly looking at the U.S. in kind of interests, like what are core interests for the U.S. in Africa, particularly as it relates to critical minerals? Of course, we jump number one onto this conversation.

But if we leave for the moment the stuff under the ground in Africa kind of out of the conversation, which is difficult to leave out for a while—

Yeah, but Kobus, I’m sorry. Why would you do that?

Because the Trump administration has made it abundantly clear that that is the priority. I mean, you saw the U.S.-DRC mineral deal. There is nothing else. So leaving the critical minerals off the table really takes everything off the table for the Trump administration, as they’ve articulated it.

I’m leaving it off the table because for critical minerals, you don’t even really need a real relationship with the country itself, because you can simply work with mining companies to extract that.

So in terms of the actual work of diplomacy in Africa, where you actually need to set up relationships, critical minerals is not actually that relationship dependent, but other things are—like other more kind of core priorities would be.

So, like, what do you think that kind of relationship-based priorities are?

Look, I wrote this in the strategy, and I still believe it. I don’t think the Trump administration cares a hoot about this, but I believe the future is African demographically. I think that for global stability, you need a global order. And I don’t believe that we can build a global order that really works without African voices.

And in particular for the U.S., a global order that continues to work for the U.S.—building relationships with African leaders and publics, understanding their priorities, their interests, their agenda, and working together to craft something that is inclusive and enduring—in some respects, is the challenge of the 21st century.

And I don’t think you can negate or ignore Africans for that.

And everything else that we’ve talked about, by the way, those all underpin that partnership:

• Investing in health
• Investing in democracy
• Investing in security and conflict resolution

Countries that are in conflict or have low socioeconomic growth, or many of them that are maybe trapped by autocratic or authoritarian rule, they’re not going to be the best partners when it comes to building this global order.

You know, I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again.

It is astounding to me how many Africans are now leading all the most important global bodies in the world.

Now, again, the U.S. is stepping away from them, but I’ll just say it for the audience, right?

• The head of the World Trade Organization
• The head of the World Health Organization
• The head of the International Labor Organization
• The head of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation
• The Francophonie
• The Commonwealth
• Even the Olympics

Those are all headed by Africans.

So if you have a goal, which I do, in terms of crafting an international order, rewriting an international order that works for the world, but particularly works for U.S. interests, for freedom of navigation, for rules of the road on trade, Africans have to be at the table.

And that is one reason why we should be investing in them.

And you can’t have good cooperation with partners if you’ve imposed visa sanctions, if you talk disparagingly about them, if you cut all your assistance, if you pull all your ambassadors, if you say that this is not important to you.

So that’s my position. And I understand that may sound out of time, but I genuinely believe that. I get it that you believe it. I mean, it’s nothing that I recognize from current U.S. policy, as you’ve acknowledged.

And I think you—you know, I’m not going to say anything that shocks you, but the president has been very clear that he thinks Somalis are garbage. He’s believing in these kinds of made-up fantasies about white genocide in South Africa. He’s threatened to—I mean, he actually did bomb parts of Nigeria. The majority of the countries on the visa ban list and now the visa bond list are African countries. I mean, you really can’t do more damage in the way you’re framing things than what’s been done over the past year.

And one of the things that we were in Jakarta last week meeting with a variety of stakeholders, and one of the things that we picked up here in Jakarta, and I’ve heard this elsewhere in Southeast Asia, is just how U.S. credibility has collapsed to a level that I think most Americans have no idea because they don’t hear it in the mainstream discourse in the U.S.

But it is shocking to see how far U.S. credibility has collapsed. By the way, we have data on this coming out of Europe now that only one out of eight Europeans has any positive things to say about the United States. And in Africa, the assaults from the U.S. on Southeast Asia and Europe, well, Europe’s been pretty rough, but nowhere near as what we’ve seen with Africa.

How do you feel that U.S. can recover, if it can recover, from what’s happened? And we’re only one year out of four years into this administration.

Yeah, I mean, what did Mark Carney say at Davos earlier this week, that there’s been a rupture?

“It’s a rupture. Not a transition, it’s a rupture.”

And there’s no denying that. And there’s no justifying, at least in my mind, for where we are headed and heading.

For me, the most important thing to be doing is building the people-to-people relationships that still exist. Kobus was just talking about this a couple podcasts ago about the way South Africans still think about the American people, if not the Trump administration.

And two, thinking about what comes after the damage that has been wrought by this administration. When the Biden administration came into power, they talked about building back better. That’s a fallacy at this point. We’re starting over. We have to start over, because what we knew prior to 2025 is being eviscerated as we speak.

And we’re going to have to, I think, people who are like-minded, Africans and Americans and other partners, we’re going to have to build something totally different. And so at this point, we have to think, what is that going to be? And how do we do it in a way that is going to be more equitable?

Because as you’re right, right now, the U.S.’s brand is being severely damaged. And the only way to restart is to reset. We need to relaunch, right? We need to relaunch the U.S. brand.

It’s going to be maybe a decadal, multi-decadal effort. But let’s start with first principles. Let’s start with commonalities. Let’s acknowledge, we’ll have to acknowledge what has happened.

And then we should be critical both of the moment that we’re in right now. But we can also, if we’re going to be really thoughtful, be critical of previous administrations, Republican and Democrat, whether they worked or didn’t work. And what else do we want?

But I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said, Eric. Like, it’s a terrible time right now for U.S.-Africa relations. And the only question to me is, in this moment, what can we preserve, you know, outside of a government-to-government relationship?

And then what can we think about starting over and building from scratch and building anew and relaunching a relationship that is really battered right now?

One of the interesting things, like, as Eric mentioned, we were in Jakarta last week. And so, one of the very interesting conversations we had was with people from this Indonesian think tank who do regular opinion kind of surveys of Indonesian perceptions of China.

And one of the interesting takeaways was that the Indonesians don’t tend to think of China as either an adversary or particularly a massive ally, even though there’s very high approval for working with China in particular fields. And they actually phrase it as they don’t see China as an adversary or an ally. They just see it as basically a big mountain of opportunities.

I get a similar kind of vibe in Africa as well. You know, kind of there isn’t, outside of maybe some leaders or some countries, there isn’t a very close organic historical relationship with China. But still, China is seen as, in lots of ways, in a lot of key fields as basically the only game in town.

So, I was wondering if you could reflect a little bit about that. Like, you know, from your perspective in the U.S., like, how do you see the China-Africa relationship as it looks now? And what kind of spaces do you think that leaves for the U.S.?

I remember listening to that episode, Kobus, and the parallels which at least my friends, African friends, have said about the way they think about China, I think is very consonant with the way the Indonesians were explaining it to you or talking to you about it.

I think right now the China-Africa relationship, or the way the U.S. looks at it, is pretty narrow. In some respects, that’s a positive thing. But it’s all become just wrapped up in critical minerals. And the truth is, at this point, we don’t even say China when we talk about critical minerals. Or at least it’s three or four or five or six lines down, right? I think this administration thinks about China in Africa that way.

There’s still a constellation of think tanks, congressmen, and others and bureaucrats who have a different view, which is either a balanced view about the way China and Africa plays, or it’s more of the hawkish view that we saw in the first Trump administration and the Biden administration. So what’s interesting is you’ve got an administration talking one way about China in the world or in Africa, if at all. You’ve got this residue of other elements of the ecosystem still talking about it in an old way with its problems.

And trying to find a way forward, I think, is one of the big challenges that we have. But it just isn’t part of the conversation in the same way anymore. And partly because I think the Trump administration is driving it that way.

Yeah. I mean, it was really never a big part of the conversation in D.C. It was always people like you and to some extent us that are trying to force it onto the agenda and people to talk about it. And so it was always a tough thing.

Well, you and I and Kobus wanted to talk about it in a balanced and nuanced way. But people were very happy to talk about China and Africa in a very black-and-white way.

Yeah, that’s fair. I mean, but the way I’m looking at it now, and especially because we cover these details so much, we see the momentum that the Chinese have in Africa.

And again, while in Washington, they only see critical minerals, what we see is this massive expansion of e-mobility. And we’re not even talking about EVs. We’re talking about:

• Bicycles
• Motorcycles
• Tractors
• Tricycles
• Farm equipment
• Boats
• Delivery vans
• Boda-bodas

I mean, you go down the list. It’s Chinese mobility across Africa.

We see huge expansions of Chinese technology, Chinese e-commerce services, Chinese space initiatives. I mean, we can go down the list of what we cover every day.

And this was what confronted Africans in the early 2000s when the U.S. and Europe basically withdrew from the continent for the most part. You know, the Cold War was over. Francis Fukuyama declared the end of history. Europe was kind of saying, “Do they know it’s Christmas in Ethiopia and all the starving babies?” And they just withdrew. There was no creativity in the policy, no vision.

And China took full advantage of that and came in and said, “We’re going to start FOCAC. We’re going to have a consistent relationship.”

And today we’re in a situation where starting this year, the FOCAC preparations for 2027 are going to get underway again. And yet Europe and the U.S. are completely missing in action when it comes to any type of creative vision for the continent. And yet the Chinese are having so many initiatives, one after another, that I think the gap between China and the rest of the world in terms of their engagement strategies on the continent is going to grow just immeasurably.

What’s your take on that?

Well, I have two reactions. First of all, it is just a truism that Washington is always playing catch-up, playing catch-up on the narrative about what China is doing. So if you listen to this podcast or you get the newsletter, you have a pretty good sense of the here and now.

That’s a free plug for you. That’s a very small piece of D.C. that does that, though unfortunately.

Let’s do it.

Yeah, but I’m giving you a plug. But what you find is, and I wrote about this in my Substack, is that you find that older narratives still sort of exist. So, you know, debt trap diplomacy or Chinese labor.

And so there’s one dynamic in which these conversations that you’re raising about e-mobility or how the provinces in China are doing more in terms of investment in Africa, that doesn’t— that’s not even in Washington’s ecosystem. That will take, unfortunately, it will take too long. And then they’ll be focused on that and China will be on to the new thing.

So one, there’s always this issue about the dynasticism of the China-Africa relationship and how long it takes for Washington to catch up. And even when the people who work on Africa are hip to it, sometimes you’ve got to then really diligently make sure your senior leadership knows it.

I noted in the Substack that I had to correct a senior policymaker twice about some old language that actually wasn’t accurate. So that’s just one I want to make sure I address that.

This other question about reinventing oneself — you know, you are right, Eric, that in the aftermath of the Cold War, in the end of the Bush 41 administration and in the beginning of the Clinton administration, there was a massive retrenchment in U.S. investment in Africa. We closed embassies, we closed U.S. aid missions, we cut the budget dramatically. We decided that we weren’t going to do much. And then Black Hawk Down happened and the Rwandan genocide happened, and the Clinton administration was like, “oh, I don’t think that we can do this. I don’t think that we can be bystanders.” This wasn’t a China conversation. This was just about the criticality of what’s happening in Africa.

Which, by the way, he later said was one of the biggest regrets of his presidency. And that began a reset.

And then under the Bush administration, really, we’ve got to, I think, the apogee of U.S.-Africa policy with huge amounts of investment, PEPFAR and MCC and all these other things. If you look at polling, right, U.S. is the most popular than it ever was during the end of the Bush administration.

And so I like to believe that America and as Americans, Eric, we have to believe that we have a power of reinvention. And I’ve seen it in U.S. policy before: we went from a very limited Cold War mindset to a sort of absenteeism to a reinvention.

And then, you know, now we’re in this new phase where I will acknowledge, and I used to say this on your podcast when I wasn’t in government, we were running out of steam. When we came in the Biden administration, we did try to put some more coal in the engine and try to go faster and go in a different direction.

I don’t think that we were fully successful in that. And now the boat’s not even moving. It’s going backwards. So it is going to take a huge amount of reinvention. And China’s going to move it in its own trajectory.

But we need a blue ocean strategy, right? It’s a business idea of, like, don’t go where everyone’s going and compete in that space. We’ve got to find our new a new space, a new definition, a new way of approaching it.

I don’t know what that answer is right now. It’s one of the reasons why I’m writing. I’m trying to think through what could that be. And it’s hard, right? It’s hard because you’ve spent a career rooted in a particular way about thinking about the continent.

And if we are going to succeed, if we’re going to have a strong relationship and it’s going to look very different, you’ve got to be able to cast out some of the old ways of thinking and be ready to do something new. And I find it hard. I’m trying really hard, but it’s hard. I’m invested in the way we used to work, and that world doesn’t exist anymore.

Following up on that point, if you turn it into the other direction, what do you feel has been – if one talks in real terms, what has been the impact of this kind of withdrawal of U.S. attention and energy and so on so far?

So, obviously, when the U.S. ARD cuts were announced, South Africa, particularly, the reporting was extremely gloomy, right? Kind of like it was like, okay, apocalypse is coming. You know, so far, obviously, a lot of people have suffered.

A lot of people have suffered from the withdrawal of food aid. A lot of people have suffered particularly from the disruptions of HIV care, not least because of the disruption it took in very, very advanced kind of like product development. You know, that would have definitely benefited the U.S. and other countries as well.

You know, and also the possible withdrawal or end of AGOA or South Africa’s possible exclusion from it. You know, like some people have lost jobs, right? You know, may lose jobs. But no apocalypse. Like, Africa, largely, is moving along.

And in a lot of cases, like, what was very revealing for me was the muted reaction in Africa. Even the stuff said about Somalia, the stuff, you know, the tensions with Nigeria, all of these things, very little reaction in Africa.

And there was a part of me that was wondering, do people even notice? Do they even care? You know, among African public. So, I was wondering, like, where you see the relationship going.

Judd, just before you get to that, I just want to interject here. No apocalypse, maybe in the mainstream discourse in Africa, but for the hundreds of thousands of people who no longer have access to antiretroviral medications, whose children have died.

The numbers of children who have died in Africa, the estimates from the USAID closures, are staggering.

So, I don’t know if that’s an…

Like, staggering in terms of what numbers, roughly?

I mean, I don’t have them off the top of my head, and I don’t want to put them out, but I read them in a real…

But we’re talking thousands of people.

Just to be real about it, you know, kind of interrupted HIV care is a relatively slow process, right? You know, so people are certainly sicker right now.

You know, we’re not seeing the kind of, for example, like, collapse in public health systems that some people have announced.

So, you know, we may, you know, and obviously this is a country of a vast continent of many, many countries. So, it is different in different places. But Judd, on the wider, in terms of the wider thing, even if we don’t even leave, like, kind of health impacts particularly off the table.

Like, what reaction do you think the continent is having?

Okay, you’re asking for the numbers. Here’s from The Lancet, which is a very credible source. They estimate:

• 63,000 adult deaths
• 130,000 child deaths
  until mid-April 2025 that they can trace back to the cuts of USAID.

Now, for a continent of 1.3 billion people, which is certainly significant. But keep in mind, it’s 1.2 billion people. I understand that. But that’s 200,000 people who are dead because of these cuts.

Yeah. I think, Eric, I’m glad that you said that because I don’t think we should minimize the human cost of these cuts.

You know, systems, African health systems were built around a lot of this assistance from the United States. And I’ll get to in a second why, you know, maybe there’s some cause for optimism in the long term. But in the short term, people are going to die. People are going to suffer. And I think that we just can’t ignore that.

Now, I think that there’s been a muted response, in part because there’s only a few African leaders who’ve even spoken out about this. President Mahama of Ghana has. You know, I don’t think there’s much to be gained by rallying against this.

And there’s a sentiment—I wrote about this in a different sub-stack on foreign assistance—there’s a sentiment from both African intellectuals and African leaders:

“Perhaps we were getting too reliant on this as well. And maybe we need to build out some of our own independence and self-reliance and have health sectors that we fund and we run and drive.”

So I think that there’s a pragmatism. There’s also the real threat that speaking up can lead to penalty. I mean, we’re seeing that, right?

And most African governments, I think, have struggled with how to navigate this administration, which I completely understand.

Your president, Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, had an Oval Office meeting that was very difficult to watch. And while he showed a lot of courage by going, he didn’t get any of the things that he wanted. They still have a 30% tariff. They’re probably not going to be in the G7, which we should talk about at some point. And they may be kicked out of the G20.

The Nigerians have actually— No, they can’t be kicked out of the G20. That’s a consensus decision, and China and a lot of countries won’t agree with it.

Sorry, let me say it again. The U.S. is threatening.

Yeah, but the U.S. doesn’t have the power to do that.

Right. That’s fine. That’s fair.

Also, what President Romposa asked for was that the U.S. would come to the G20 in South Africa, and they didn’t.

The Nigerians have done a better job trying to flip the script on some of these falsehoods about Christian genocide by saying,

“Look, we’re concerned about Christians dying. We’re also concerned about Muslims dying. What can you do to help us?”

But I think the governments are trying to figure this out.

The key question here is—and this has been a problem in our relationship—an asymmetry where the U.S. says:

“These are the things we’re going to do.”

And many African governments say:

“Okay, that’s great, thank you, is to be more self-reliant, to build relationships with each other.”

You know, this is the moment to see the African Free Trade Agreement really sort of take hold. This is about building relationships, not just with the U.S. or China, but with others.

And then setting up an affirmative agenda of what they want from their partners, because right now they’re not going to get much from the U.S.

I mean, there’s, you know, you can take some U.S. migrants and maybe avoid visa bans, but the relationship and the opportunities are pretty limited outside of the critical mineral space.

And so what I think Africans need to do, or what I would advise, is:

- Put out some, do the homework.
- What is your U.S. strategy?
- What is your global strategy?
- What is your agenda?
- What do you expect from partners?
- And be clear about that.

And in the meantime, this is the moment to strengthen your health systems, to strengthen your governance systems, to build the relationships that are going to allow you to navigate, survive, to persevere when they’re during this rupture, which is dramatic, spectacular, and devastating.

Very quickly, because I do want to get to your article on China, which you’ve published as part of a series on foreign policy, on think tanks.

And it’s this: you can really feel you are trying to hash all these things out. You’re clearly struggling intellectually with what’s happening and trying to make sense of it all.

And that’s why, you know, I feel like we get to kind of be in the room with you as you sift through all this.

And by the way, you’re not alone. We’re all trying to figure out what’s going on. So this is, this is just, we get to see what you’re doing. You wrote this, this column on China. And I’m curious why, what was the motivation to focus specifically on China? You’re a U.S. Africa guy. You’re a, you know, a creature of D.C. Now, what was the thinking about this China column that you put together?

Yeah, well, let me take a step back. I was out of the administration for about a year and a half. I left in February of 2024. And so there was another almost year of Biden, and then we were about six months into the Trump administration.

I want to accomplish three things in this substack:

• One is that I wanted to really look critically at what I did in our policies and illuminate the challenges of working through a bureaucracy and making policy in the United States.

• Taking personal responsibility for the things that I’m really proud of.

• Trying to think for the things that maybe didn’t land the way I wanted to.

As you guys know, I’m a big fan of U.S. Africa history—fan is a weird way to say it. I’m a student of it. And so I wanted to enrich… You’re quite the nerd, I would say. And I say that flatteringly, by the way. Thank you.

So I wanted to enrich these pieces with a sense of history: Where have we been? And all of that is in service of where do we go? Rather than writing pieces about what our policy should be towards Nigeria or South Africa, I don’t intend to ever do that in this context.

I wanted to think about the tools of statecraft and stagecraft and the different kinds of ways we engage with the continent. And so the first piece was on strategies. I’ve done a piece on:

• foreign assistance

• think tanks

• election statements

• the role of the vice president

You know, I have topics for days. But for me, thinking about how we engaged with China, talked about China, and trying to both excavate what were the challenges of it at this sort of the opening premises is it was kind of a lose-lose situation.

To flip the Chinese phrase of win-win, it is that:

“If you were hawkish on China, then maybe you were applauded, but I don’t think that was an input for a great policy.”

If you were nuanced about it, you actually were at risk of being criticized for being a panda lover. And if you tried to kind of find your way in between those two, you may just disappoint everyone.

And so that’s what I really wanted to do: thinking about how we approach China as part of statecraft and stagecraft on the continent, how we talked about it and how we did things.

I wanted to kind of go through some of my own experiences, some of the ways Washington wants you to talk about it or does talk about it, and try to put forward a different vision.

It’s a vision that:

• you can’t implement in this moment. There’s no question about it.

• I don’t think that I even came up with a real clear sort of answer because we’re all on this journey together.

But I wanted to lay out some of the elements that I think have been that you and I, Eric, you and I, Kobus, have talked about for years that have really been the hurdles and obstacles to affecting a policy that works for U.S. interests, which is what I care about, and African interests, which I also care about.

And that means taking a very clear-eyed look at what China means to Africans. It’s trying to, as best as one can, decipher what China is trying to do.

And maybe equally hard is being very clear about what the U.S. wants. So that was the idea.

I’ve got other regions that I want to work through:

• the Middle East

• Near East

• Gulf states

I’d like to do one on Western Europe at some point, too.

But I want to go through all of these facets of our relationship and illuminate it with history, share some of my personal experiences, and hopefully not create a blueprint for the future, but just put out some breadcrumbs that we can all sort of chew on and talk about.

How optimistic are you that there will be a way towards a more concrete relationship in the future, particularly around the issue, as you were saying, around shared interests or finding shared interests? Because I have to admit, it’s difficult for me to really see a concrete set of shared interests, you know, kind of that, particularly if one takes seriously how marginalized many African countries feel within the global system.

Kind of, so the level of global reform that it would take to really take African aspirations seriously does seem to mitigate against a lot of core U.S. interests.

Do you think there is a kind of a space for an actual real relationship that actually takes the stuff that the continent wants to do seriously?

I do. I mean, I think that policy is personnel, right? So that matters. One of the subsections I wrote was on the Oval Office, where I analyzed how many Africans got access to the Oval Office under every president since Kennedy. That really does matter. President Kennedy spent 25% of all foreign… Engagements with Africans. President Bush, as a percentage of his working day, spent more time with Africans than any other president before him. And I think there’s a reason why, in my opinion, President Kennedy and President Bush have one of the best records on Africa.

And so I do think that you need someone in the White House and at the Secretary of State level and at the national security level who really gets it and is passionate about it. President Bush and President Kennedy overrode their bureaucracy to have more meetings with Africans. There’s a great reference to, it’s like November, 1863, President Kennedy is weeks away from the assassination. He’s meeting with the Mauritanian President Uldada, and his staff is like,

“How many votes are there in Mauritania? Why are you meeting with this man?”

But President Kennedy had a real vision that this was important.

So I do think it will have a lot to do with who gets in there. But I also believe, quite honestly, that how are we going to navigate the challenges of our global community without African voices? And if there’s something that I’m really proud of in the administration, it is that we articulated that vision.

We achieved the following:

• We got the African Union (AU) in the G20.
• We got a third seat for the Africans at the IMF.
• We at least made the call for two seats at the Security Council.

I mean, we were not only just talking the talk, but we were walking the walk. And those are just small steps. That’s on our side.

On the African side, I think it’s not just being agenda takers, but agenda setters. And I think we’re still short on that. We saw a little of that in COVID. It was actually very powerful. But I think we could use more of this question:

“What is the world that Africans want?”

You know, they have an Agenda 2063. The Africa we want—what’s the world that we want? And I think that that is going to be how this is going to come together.

We’re going to come out of this administration without an international system, either in figurative or literal terms. We’re going to need leadership on the U.S. side that actually believes that Africans are important and that we have to have these relationships. And those relationships are critical for U.S. interests.

We’re going to need African partners who will be able to say,

“This is what we want from you and the international order.”

And we’re going to be very clear about that.

Judd, just one clarification here. We may have an international order. We will have an international order. It just may not include the United States. And the U.S. is not central to that new order.

That is a scenario that is very, very likely in two or three years.

I mean, I think that it is a scenario that is out there. I hope that is not the case. But I mean, we’re certainly driving towards that, especially when you have leadership that says that the international order has not worked for the U.S., which I don’t think anyone else would agree with that assessment.

Well, Judd Devermont’s ideas may be irrelevant in contemporary Washington, at least in policy circles.

That’s a little harsh, Eric.

Hold on, hold on here.

When President-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in December 2028 calls up, announces her new staff of Africa leadership, there is a very good chance that Mr. Devermont may be on that front line. He won’t say that, but I will. And that’s why it’s very important to listen to everything that Judd Devermont has to say.

He’s got a fantastic sub-stack over at PostStrategy. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes and also to the link to his excellent sub-stack on China. And you can, again, hear all the hashing out. Also, he’s got a great one on think tanks that I really enjoyed as he talked about.

So, not irrelevant.

Maybe that was a little too harsh, Judd. But it is certainly lonely days for you and your ideas and people like you with these kinds of nuanced views on these issues in certain corners of Washington.

All I can say is very kind, Eric, except for the part about being irrelevant.

But I would say, like, let’s all — we have to have this conversation. We have to have a conversation. I welcome the critical feedback, even if it hurts my feelings sometimes, but that’s the only way we get better.

And so let’s not call it backwater. Let’s call it, the main theater is having these conversations.

And let’s take the lesson from the Republicans here who, when they were out of power, spent that time very productively, whether or not you agree with the outcomes of it, coming up with Project 2025 and these extraordinarily detailed ideas and policy structures that were then implemented upon their return to power.

That is something I think that is incredibly important.

So putting these ideas out into the universe the way you are, very, very important, even if there is, again, a small audience. For this type of nuance in Washington today. But Judd, thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate it.

Thanks, guys.

Judd Devermont is a operating partner at Coupanda Capital and a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. And again, one of the leading voices on U.S.-Africa relations. We’re thrilled that he’s been such a loyal contributor to us on the podcast and also just in our conversations with him. So that’s been fantastic.

So Kobus and I will be back again next week with another edition of the show. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us. And of course, if you want to support all the work that everybody at CJSP around the world is doing and to stay on top of the latest trends in China’s engagement in the Global South.

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