To avoid Trump’s tariffs and fury, five African presidents acted like faithful colonial subjects and surrendered their dignity. On July 9, United States President Donald Trump launched a three-day mini summit at the White House with the leaders of Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania, and Senegal – by subjecting his esteemed guests to a well-choreographed public embarrassment.
A White House official claimed on July 3 that “President Trump believes that African countries offer incredible commercial opportunities which benefit both the American people and our African partners.” Whether by coincidence or calculated design, the meeting took place on the same day the Trump administration escalated its trade war, slapping new tariffs on eight countries, including the North African nations of Libya and Algeria.
It was a telling juxtaposition: Even as Trump professed to be “strengthening relations with Africa”, his administration was sanctioning African countries. The optics laid bare the incoherence-or or possibly the candour–of Trump’s Africa policy, where partnership is conditional and in many cases indistinguishable from punishment.
Trump began the summit with a four-minute address in which he boasted that the five invited leaders represented the whole of the African continent. Never mind that their nations hardly show up in US-Africa trade statistics; what was important was the gold, oil, and minerals hidden underneath their land. He thanked “these great leaders… all from very vibrant places with very valuable land, great minerals, great oil deposits, and wonderful people”.
At that point, the charade of diplomacy gave way, and the reality of the encounter was established. Trump became a showman rather than a statesman, no longer just hosting but dominating. The summit rapidly turned into a cringeworthy spectacle, in which Africa was not offered as a continent of independent states but as a resource-rich territory, led by acquiescent leaders performing for the lens. This was no conversation but a demonstration of domination: A scripted production staged upon a scene written by Trump in which African heads of state were assigned supporting roles.
Trump was in his groove, manipulating the event like a puppet master, guiding every African guest to play his role and respond positively. He “invited” (effectively commanded) them to offer “a few words to the press” in what was turned into a scripted display of obeisance.
Mauritania’s President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani broke the ice, both literally and figuratively, by applauding Trump’s “commitment” to Africa. The assertion was as factual as Washington’s recent slashes in foreign aid, retaliatory tariffs, and clipped visa policies on African countries.
One particularly cringe-worthy moment saw Ghazouani refer to Trump as the world’s greatest peacemaker, giving credit, among other things, for halting “the war between Iran and Israel”. The eulogy was issued without reference to the US’s ongoing military and diplomatic assistance for Israel’s Gaza war, which was strongly condemned by the African Union. The silence was complicity, a deliberate erasure of Palestinian pain for American approval.
Or perhaps aware of the tariffs hanging over his nation, Ghazouani, AU Chair in 2024, fell into the position of an eager supplicant. He virtually welcomed Trump to take advantage of Mauritania’s scarce minerals, eulogised and hailed him as a peacemaker while remaining silent on the massacres of tens of thousands of innocents in Gaza facilitated by the same weapons Trump supplies.
