Panic in Washington: US Lawmakers Admit They’ve Lost Strategic Control in Africa

United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Testimony, 2025

“It is incredibly self-defeating. I just don’t understand why we are taking a bunch of tools in our foreign policy toolbox and tossing them into a dumpster.”

• Michelle D. Gavin, Ralph Bunche Senior Fellow for Africa Policy Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

“I think we need to start giving African countries more of what they want and less of what they don’t. That seems like an obvious proposition, but frequently our Africa strategy does not appear to be guided by that principle.”

• Mr. Joshua Meservey, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute specialising in African affairs and great power competition.

“We are in a state of crisis right now when it comes to our relations with the continent. Competitors of ours, from Iranians to Russians to Chinese, and others who do not always align with us, such as the Emiratis, are flooding the zone while we are retreating in a stunning way.”

• Senator Cory Booker, United States Senator for New Jersey and member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The Global Centre of Gravity Shifts. Washington Is Falling Behind

In a moment of rare bipartisan candour, lawmakers in Washington are sounding the alarm over a strategic failure of historic proportions. The United States is rapidly losing influence in Africa. More strikingly, they are acknowledging this decline in public.

Over the past two decades, Washington’s engagement with the African continent was once guided by flagship development and security initiatives. These have been systematically dismantled. In their place is a vacuum now being filled by China, Russia, Iran and other assertive non-Western actors.

This is not merely a soft power contest. It is a geopolitical realignment that is redrawing the balance of influence across the Global South. US policymakers are only now beginning to comprehend the scale of their missteps.

Dismantling the Instruments of Influence

“PEPFAR, MCC, and YALI… gone. Not a good idea.”

• Senator Chris Coons, United States Senator for Delaware and member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

For much of the 21st century, the United States cultivated a position of influence in Africa through a suite of diplomatic and development programmes that earned significant goodwill.

The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), launched in 2003, saved millions of lives and became a flagship US humanitarian effort.

The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) provided performance-based development grants tied to good governance, transparency and market-oriented reforms.

The Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI), introduced in 2010, trained over 20,000 African youth in leadership, entrepreneurship and civic engagement.

According to testimony from members of the US Senate, these programmes are now either defunded, deprioritised or effectively dismantled.

The critique from Congress is damning. The US has voluntarily discarded some of its most effective diplomatic instruments. As one senator described it, they have been “thrown into a woodchipper” without offering viable alternatives.

China Fills the Void Deliberately and Strategically

“The favourite phrase now is ‘China is a reliable partner.’”

• Michelle D. Gavin

While US influence has waned, the People’s Republic of China has methodically expanded its political, economic and military footprint across the continent. African leaders have taken notice.

Beijing is not merely investing in infrastructure. It is redefining Africa’s global partnerships.

China is financing railways, ports, power stations and telecommunications networks in over 40 African nations.

It maintains embassies in every African country and regularly hosts summits with African heads of state.

The Chinese military has a permanent base in Djibouti and is reportedly pursuing a naval foothold on the Atlantic coast.

African governments now describe Beijing as a reliable, consistent and pragmatic partner. By contrast, the United States appears erratic, reactive and disengaged.

African Leaders Demand a Seat at the Table, not a Lecture

“Kenya and China are not just trade partners but co-architects of a new world order.”

• H.E. President William Ruto, State Visit to China, April 2025

Africa is no longer petitioning the West for assistance. It is shaping the terms of its own future. The continent’s leaders are forging new alliances, diversifying their economic partners and rejecting outdated models of conditional aid and donor paternalism.

This strategic shift is characterised by a turn towards non-Western powers for trade, investment and security cooperation. African states are also refusing to be drawn into Cold War-style alignments between the US and its rivals. They are insisting on mutual respect, not asymmetrical dependence.

The sentiment is not ideological. It is pragmatic. African states are asserting themselves as co-architects of a multipolar world. As President Ruto of Kenya recently declared, Africa is no longer a project. It is a partner.

Strategic Confusion in Washington

“Picking a fight with South Africa, a fairly important nation, and labelling them as committing genocide against Afrikaner farmers, while accepting Afrikaner refugees and simultaneously shutting out other refugees from Africa.”

• Senator Tim Kaine, United States Senator for Virginia and member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Across both Democratic and Republican administrations, US policy in Africa has become increasingly contradictory and incoherent. Senators are now openly acknowledging the strategic cost of these failures.

Refugee admissions have been slashed, even as conflicts escalate in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia.

US embassies in key conflict zones are being downsized or shuttered.

Faith-based organisations and civil society partners have lost funding for refugee resettlement, anti-corruption work and humanitarian missions.

South Africa, a critical diplomatic partner, has been chastised for its neutrality on global conflicts, while autocratic allies remain untouched.

Such double standards have severely undermined US credibility and strained ties with long-standing African partners.

Africa’s Youth: A Demographic Tipping Point, Ignored

“The existential crisis that every African government faces is youth unemployment.”

• Mr. Joshua Meservey

Africa’s population dynamics are reshaping the global labour market. By 2050, one in four people on Earth will be African. One in three working-age individuals globally will be African.

Yet US policy continues to overemphasise humanitarian aid and military assistance while largely neglecting industrial development, private-sector investment and skills training.

The US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), established to mobilise American capital in developing markets, has fallen short of its potential in Africa. Likewise, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), once a beacon of results-driven development, has gone dormant in key regions.

Without meaningful economic engagement, US senators now admit that Africa’s youth will either turn elsewhere or turn to unrest.

A Strategic Nightmare. Military Disengagement as Rivals Advance

“We know reliably that China has been pursuing a naval base on Africa’s Atlantic coast. That would be a national security nightmare.”

• Mr. Joshua Meservey

From a military standpoint, Africa remains strategically indispensable. The continent commands access to vital maritime chokepoints including the Suez Canal, Bab el-Mandeb and the Gulf of Guinea.

Yet while China builds dual-use port facilities in Equatorial Guinea and Djibouti, the United States is closing down key military cooperation programmes, losing access to forward operating sites and reducing diplomatic presence in conflict zones.

The result is a gradual erosion of US power projection and situational awareness, precisely as rivals advance their capabilities.

An Admission of Strategic Failure

“What’s happening right now is utterly stunning. Generations of Americans will pay the price for this.”

• Senator Cory Booker

The message from Washington is no longer one of dominance but of disarray. US lawmakers are now on record admitting that Africa has been deprioritised not by accident, but by deliberate neglect.

The consequences are profound.

Africa no longer supports US-led initiatives at the United Nations by default.

Authoritarian powers are expanding their influence unchecked.

US leverage in trade, diplomacy and security is collapsing.

Perhaps most damagingly, a generation of African citizens and leaders now views the United States as an unreliable partner. It is a once-dominant power now absent from the world’s fastest-changing continent.

Conclusion: Africa Has Moved On. The United States Has Not

Africa does not require rescue. It seeks partnership. Increasingly, it is choosing partners who invest in their infrastructure, respect their sovereignty and engage without condescension.

China, Russia, the Gulf States, Türkiye and others are already embedded in Africa’s new future. The United States, by its own admission, is falling behind. Not because it has been outmanoeuvred, but because it failed to act.

The new world order is not being written in Washington. It is being authored in Nairobi, Addis Ababa, Pretoria and Abuja. Whether the United States catches up is no longer Africa’s concern.

The message from the continent is unmistakable.

We have options. We are not waiting.

Aric Jabari is the Editorial Director of the Sixteenth Council.