I recently included this vignette in an essay I wrote for Foreign Policy, but the truth is that I’ve been thinking about this moment for as long as I’ve worked on Africa issues. It is always the first thing that comes to mind when senior U.S. policymakers propose setting aside our priorities toward the region in deference to European ones. To be sure, there are circumstances when close coordination is warranted and vital to U.S. national security interests. But, too often we have subordinated U.S. objectives or outsourced our work to Western Europeans, for the wrong reasons. It was not only a disservice to our agenda, but it was also detrimental to our interests. We missed opportunities, damaged our reputation, and allowed bad outcomes to unfold. It remains a strategic vulnerability for U.S. policy toward sub-Saharan Africa.

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When I served in the Obama and Biden Administrations, I had a lot of interactions with U.S. policymakers responsible for Western Europe, as well as counterparts at the Élysée in Paris and 10 Downing Street in London. They were almost always congenial, but I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a power asymmetry. In the U.S. interagency, it was unspoken but palpable that transatlantic interests trumped African ones. And in bilateral engagements with our allies across the pond, it was less subtle: a handful of Western European officials acted as if they knew more about Africa and had more at stake than we did. It’s no surprise that Africa-focused policymakers in Washington occasionally have been dismissed as having an inferiority complex.

(Mainly Bad) Reasons for Bending to European Policies

The reasons why African priorities have tended to take a backseat to Western European ones in U.S. policy have been remarkably consistent across time—whether we are talking about the 1950s, 1980s, or 2020s. That consistency should, on its own, set off alarm bells.

• Europe Matters More. In 1955, the State Department sent a memo to its posts about its policy toward sub-Saharan Africa: “if a showdown occurs between the needs of our European policy and those of our African policy, we shall have to recognize the superior demands of our alliance system in Europe.” In my experience, this overt ranking of Europe over Africa is no longer said out loud, but it continues to come through in tradeoffs and concessions, such as when we threw our support behind Paris in the Sahel in an effort to placate France over the AUKUS deal in late 2021.

• Europe Knows Best. There is often a deference to Western Europeans because it is assumed that they know more than we do. In his oral history interview, former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Chester Crocker recalled that “in southern Africa the British knew the region better than anybody, including ourselves. They had the long history.” That idea remains operative in decision-making circles decades later. I was slightly gobsmacked to hear senior U.S. officials repeat what a French counterpart told them about why something had happened in the region and adopt this received wisdom as their own. It had an outsized influence on their policy preferences, regardless of whether it was right or wrong.

• Europe Should Lead. There is also a belief that the Europeans should take charge in African countries because they’re their former colonies. In 1970, Nixon’s State Department cabled that “Rhodesia is clearly a British problem and responsibility.” This flawed logic, implying a division of responsibility derived in part from colonialism, resurfaced in the 2000s and 2010s, when European officials talked about Africa as if there are spheres of influence. In 2003, Britain’s UN Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock pointed to the United States as the “natural candidate” to respond to the Liberian civil war—just as Britain helped end Sierra Leone’s civil war and France helped stabilize the situation in Cote d’Ivoire. A similar approach shaped the international response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in the mid-2010s.

A more defensible reason—or at least one worthy of debate—is burden-sharing with European partners. In 1961, Deputy National Security Advisor Walter Rostow opined that “frankly, the U.S. has quite enough commitments in the world, and there is no compulsion in the American Government to extend those commitments where our allies, much strengthened by their remarkable growth in the 1950’s can deal with the situation” in Africa. In 2016, AFRICOM Commander Thomas Waldhauser delivered a more nuanced version of the same argument, explaining to Congress that “expanding U.S. resource contributions against al-Qaida in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb would come at the expense of other priority AFRICOM efforts – many of which do not benefit from the same level of commitment and resourcing from a major European ally.”

(Mainly Good) Reasons for Breaking with European Policies

Maybe it is obvious why the United States should develop its own policies and refrain from blindly backing Western European priorities over its own in sub-Saharan Africa. And yet, it has been the subject of bureaucratic fights from the earliest days of U.S. policy toward the region. While these policy disputes sometimes resulted in stalemates or even defeats, U.S. policymakers working on Africa issues have been painfully aware of the costs. In the 1960s, for example, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs G. Mennen “Soapy” Williams noted that “our national interest dictates support for HMG and the Commonwealth action” toward Rhodesia. But he also understood the risks of deference, conceding that “‘leaving it to the British’ may not completely protect American interests” in Zanzibar.

The argument for implementing a separate policy from the Europeans is straightforward: the United States has important interests at stake in the region, and Europe’s approach, at times, can be counterproductive, if not antithetical, to U.S. policy goals.

• Different Interests. The United States and its Western European partners don’t always have the same interests in the region—a source of policy tension that is often underplayed privately and publicly. From counterterrorism priorities to migration and democratic rule, our positions may usually rhyme, but they are not always the same. We also routinely disagree on how to pursue objectives and which countries to strengthen ties with. The French, for example, lobbied hard for the U.S. government to back the International Counter-Terrorism Academy (AILCT) in Cote d’Ivoire (one of Paris’s few remaining friends in West Africa), which struck me as redundant to other capacity-building efforts and a suboptimal use of our limited resources.

• Bad Instincts. As former colonial powers, Europeans sometimes act impetuously or haughtily and refuse to alter their positions despite significant changes. France, in particular, has struggled with these impulses. It overplayed its hand in an effort to reinstate deposed Nigerien leader Mohammed Bazoum in mid-2023, spurring the military junta to accuse Paris of seeking to reinstall him by force. At this year’s Africa Forward Summit in Nairobi, President Emmanuel Macron couldn’t resist interrupting a panel discussion to quiet the crowd and “restore order.”

• Toxic Legacies. Many Western European governments can’t escape the baggage of their colonial and postcolonial policies—a critical lens through which many Africans interpret European actions. France is beset by this problem, but the Belgians face it too; Rwanda this year severed ties with Belgium, accusing it of attempting to “sustain its neo-colonial delusions.” And, when the United States fails to set its own course, it is tarred with the same brush. As Ken Opalo stressed in a 2024 Foreign Affairs article: “it is abundantly clear that decoupling its policies from France is necessary for the United States to earn trust in West Africa.”

To be fair, by the end of my time in the Biden Administration, it became less necessary to push back on reflexive deference to Europe. Several former colonial powers had started to reduce their overall engagement in the region, while France’s policies had resulted in widespread rejection by African governments and publics, especially in the Sahel. I found myself winning the argument more often than not, as the risks of automatically following our European partners’ policies became more evident. To be sure, the U.S. government had its own challenges and missteps to address, but it became less about parroting European policies.

A New Paradigm

The way forward doesn’t necessarily require less engagement with Western Europeans, but it does require more cooperation with everyone else. Judging from the historical record, it is striking how often U.S. officials have consulted and developed policies in tandem with the Europeans. These governments were and continue to be privileged interlocutors. For instance, when I was senior director for African Affairs at the National Security Council, I had regular calls with my French counterpart. I also hosted European Union and UK diplomats at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building across from the White House. Indeed, our entire bureaucracy is set up to sustain these relationships. Different parts of the interagency have annual or semiannual exchanges with their counterparts, and the Department of State assigns Africa watchers at U.S. embassies in Paris and London to stay abreast of European policies toward the continent.

We have to widen our circle of cooperation. It is problematic to persist with coordination strategies rooted in the immediate postcolonial period. It starts with developing U.S. policies that advance U.S. interests and strengthen U.S.-African partnerships. But it also entails expanding engagement with other foreign stakeholders. After all, Africa’s partners are increasingly outside of Western Europe. Relations between African countries and counterparts in East Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East are continuing to grow and deepen. It is incumbent on the U.S. government to more consistently consult with officials from these regions, including through structured exchanges and dedicated personnel. There are even opportunities to work more with Central and Eastern Europeans. I was impressed that the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa in March 2025 posted a joint statement with 23 countries that included Austria, Bulgaria, Czechia, Hungary, Romania, and Slovenia.

And More for Africa

Last November, Statecraft podcast host Santi Ruiz engaged me in a thought experiment: If I were asked to rebalance the focus and attention different regions receive but couldn’t increase the total amount of diplomatic resources or staffing, would I put more resources into Africa? And, if so, where would I pull them from? I hadn’t anticipated this question, but my answer was immediate:

“I would bump it up by 10 points and give us the opportunity to have that grow as the continent becomes more significant. Then I would question, ‘Do we need to put as much effort in parts of the Global North, like Europe, as we do?’ There’s too much legacy in the investment in Europe and not enough investment in where the bulk of the population of the world is, which is in the Global South.”

That may be the crux of the problem. It isn’t about deference to Western Europeans. It is a failure to sufficiently invest in our African partners. Instead of routinely turning to our European partners for policy advice, we can more often ask African counterparts. Several U.S. presidents did just that. In their meeting in 1980, President Jimmy Carter solicited Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi’s views on Saudi Arabia, in addition to Ethiopia, Tanzania, Sudan, and Zimbabwe. President George W. Bush regularly engaged Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo on regional challenges, including Liberia, Sudan, and other pressing issues. As I said in an earlier post on the Oval Office, U.S. presidents who prioritize meetings with Africans more often than not have had more impactful policies in the region. Simply put, we should spend less time briefing groups of European leaders and pay more attention to our African partners. That, in and of itself, would help break our overreliance on Western Europe.

Post Strategy

I am convinced that it remains important to engage with Western Europeans on Africa policy, but not at the expense of U.S. interests and other global partnerships. We can’t subordinate our priorities or follow their lead just for the sake of the transatlantic partnership. It is an inversion of what is important to us: our partnerships with Africans. If we uncritically sign on to European policies, we will certainly fail. Our modus operandi needs to be reworked—broadening our engagement with other foreign governments and deepening our partnerships with African nations. Our policies will never succeed if we continue to act as if the world hasn’t changed.

I should admit that I don't follow sports particularly closely. But I am embarrassingly predictable: if there's an Africa connection, I'm interested. So, naturally, I rooted for and was heartbroken by Cabo Verde's loss to Argentina in the Round of 32 of this year's World Cup. What has long fascinated me, however, is how sports shapes politics, identity, and public life across the continent. Just as important, what should the United States do about it? Is there a diplomatic and policy play? In June 2019, I asked the same questions to a panel of experts and raised similar points on my podcast Into Africa. The answer is yes. To all of it.

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A key part of effective policy is the art of bridging divides. They can be geopolitical, ideological, or cultural, existing between governments, populations, or even individuals. The goal is to find common ground, forge a connection, and eventually align on decisions or actions that advance your objectives. Usually, U.S. officials pursue that through persuasion, making an argument that might win the day or offering incentives to encourage a different course of action. But sports can accomplish the same objective. While it is more indirect and a little harder to measure, few things connect to a person’s sense of identity and nationhood more powerfully than sports. And we don’t leverage it enough in our policies toward sub-Saharan Africa.

Sports as Connection

When U.S. officials show an interest in a country’s sporting teams, it is more than just a symbolic gesture. It is a sign of respect and an acknowledgment of a nation’s prowess and soft power. It can be profoundly important for strengthening ties. In August 1963, President John F. Kennedy phoned Nigerian Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa in what is believed to be the first two-way call between heads of state via satellite. Between the pleasantries and an aside about the Test Ban Treaty, Kennedy warmly noted Nigerian boxer Dick Tiger’s recent victory as undisputed world middleweight champion. It was a smart move. Kennedy aligned himself with a patriotic Nigerian whose trainer told The New Yorker that “he wants to win the title for Nigeria, like it was a Nobel Prize.”

When I was in policy, I had an ambition to do the same. I had proposed that President Barack Obama visit Nigeria and participate in a football clinic with the Super Eagles which had recently won the AFCON trophy in February 2013. I pitched it as part of the First Lady’s “Let Move!” initiative. (Of course, neither the trip nor clinic happened.) A decade later, I did successfully added a line about Angola’s national team in Secretary of State Tony Blinken’s press availability with Foreign Minister Tete Antonio in January 2024. Sadly, I can’t take any credit for the Secretary’s attendance at a match in Abidjan a few days earlier. I thought it was a brilliant stroke. An African journalist later commented that “Blinken watched an AFCON fixture in a stadium China gifted to Ivory Coast. Equally interesting that his Chinese counterpart - Wang Yi - who was in Abidjan before Blinken didn’t spare a moment to watch football.” It felt like we scored a point for the USA.

Sports as Counterbalance

U.S. engagement through sports serves another policy purpose. It can soften contentious relationships with governments. Whether through American athletes or personal interactions, sports creates opportunities to transcend political differences, preserve channels of communication, and connect with publics. The historical record is full of examples:

• U.S. diplomats leveraged sports to counter Malian hostility during the 1960s. In an oral history, a former public affairs official recounted that “the main access that we had really was personal contact largely through sports programs.” He pointed to visits by track and field icon Wilma Rudolph and a trio of Boston Celtics as extremely effective in reaching the younger population.

• In the 1980s, Ambassador Alan Hardy used his regular tennis matches with Equatoguinean leader Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo to keep the Embassy running and push policy in a difficult environment. He implored Obiang to ensure the Embassy had fuel for its generators and pressed him to eventually hold local elections. Hardy underscored that he had better access than his French and Spanish counterparts.

• In Zimbabwe, the U.S. Embassy leaned on the power of sports to address the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1990s. A former Ambassador shared that they paid for television ads that featured the national team championing the importance of condoms to prevent the spread of the disease. Sports diplomacy remains one of the few bright spots in the relationship; last week, the Embassy and Washington Commanders defensive end TJ Maguranyanga hosted a football camp for young Zimbabweans.

Sports as Censure

While sports usually strengthens relationships, it can also serve as a tool of censure against repressive regimes and geopolitical rivals.

• The international sporting community banned apartheid South Africa from football, rugby, cricket, and other global sporting events. In his book, African Soccerscapes: How a Continent Changed the World’s Game, Peter Alegi explains that FIFA’s suspension of South Africa in 1961 was a “major blow to the apartheid regime” and “raised awareness of the injustices of apartheid among sports fans around the world and instilled hope among South African liberation movements.” FIFA also suspended Rhodesia’s membership until majority rule was achieved in 1980.

• President Jimmy Carter enlisted Muhammad Ali to persuade African countries to boycott the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. Ali went to Tanzania, Kenya, Nigeria, Liberia, and Senegal, earning admiration from one U.S. diplomat for “his sense of timing and his ability to get inside his interlocutor’s head and heart.” Eighteen sub-Saharan African countries ultimately opted to skip the Olympics that year. In retaliation, the Soviet Union convinced Angola, Ethiopia, and Upper Volta to boycott the subsequent Olympic games in Los Angeles in 1984. (Side note: Upper Volta declined to participate in both the Moscow and Los Angeles Olympic Games, a unique distinction presumably explained by multiple coups during this period.)

In some cases, countries have been excluded from sporting events or prohibited from hosting due to human rights, insecurity, or corruption. In 2019, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) stripped Cameroon of its right to host the Africa Cup of Nations after serious delays in its preparations and amid a violent separatist rebellion near two planned venues. There have been non-African examples too. Russia lost its hosting rights and barred from numerous events after invading Ukraine in 2022. In 1992, Yugoslavia was banned from Euro 1992 due to UN sanctions over the Balkan wars. In general, though, CAF and FIFA have been reluctant to make political judgments about which governments should host major tournaments.

And Sports as Reinvention

There’s one more thing. I believe sports may offer an opening to resuscitate the image of the United States at some point in the future. Clearly, there are more substantive issues to address, from noxious immigration policies to paternalistic approaches to bilateral relations. But sports diplomacy will be an important avenue to reconnect with African governments and populations while reinventing how the United States engages with the region. We can borrow ideas from other parts of the world and build on both our successes and failures in Africa.

• Adopt a team. U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Mark Lippert became a devoted fan of the KBO baseball team Doosan Bears during his tenure in Seoul from 2014 to 2017. He later told Pod Save the World co-host Tommy Vietor, “I think the best part about it is when you are interested in Korean culture, Korean society, Koreans reciprocate and they reciprocate tenfold, right? And it becomes this great virtuous circle...We decided that baseball was going to be one of our things.” (On a related note, I have been told that Diplomatic Security has discouraged our ambassadors from attending local sporting events. If true, that is something we should rectify.)

• Promote U.S. events. During the Rumble in the Jungle boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, the U.S. Embassy in Kinshasa decided to adopt a “low profile.” The Department of State also declined to support the accompanying music festival. These were clearly missed opportunities. In the future, the United States should lean into major sporting events, as well as work with promoters and sporting leagues to host tournaments and exhibitions between U.S. and African teams.

• Celebrate African Excellence. When the United States denied entry to Somali referee Omar Artan because of “vetting concerns,” UEFA, in response, selected him to officiate the 2026 UEFA Super Cup on August 12 between Champions League winners Paris Saint-Germain and Europa League winners Aston Villa. UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin praised Omar Artan as “an excellent young but already experienced referee, who has proven himself at the highest competition level of the Confederation of African Football.” The United States should seek out opportunities to showcase African excellence, whether through invitations to meet senior U.S. officials or other high-profile engagements.

Of course, all of this seems unlikely in the near term. The Trump Administration has drastically reduced the budget and staffing of the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), which oversees sports diplomacy. It is also exceedingly difficult when most embassies in the region are operating without Senate-confirmed ambassadors and only 20 embassies and consulates are processing visas. A more ambitious approach will only come when our diplomats are empowered and resourced to experiment, build partnerships, and think bigger.

Post-Strategy

I am convinced that sports is an essential, if often overlooked, part of the policy repertoire. If we want to build durable, mutually beneficial partnerships with African counterparts, we need to do more than just persuade and provide assistance. We need to show that we value what our partners are passionate about. And there’s almost no better subject than sports. As Peter Alegi said to me in 2019, by paying attention, “the United States would simply demonstrate sensitivity to what African people care about, which most definitely includes sports.” Policies come and go, but showing up is what drives effective statecraft.

I have some experience here. When I was Director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), I launched two podcasts, Into Africa and 49, and have appeared as a guest on some 21 other shows. I’ve fallen into the same trap, especially when I joined podcasts as a government official. I shied away from sharing my thought process and explaining how we reach difficult decisions. I feared being intellectually vulnerable and presenting myself in full. It was a disservice to the policy and a missed opportunity to connect with a larger audience.

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When I joined CSIS in 2018, I was eager to start my own podcast. At the time, it seemed to me that there was a real vacuum for quality content on African politics and policy. One of the few shows out there was Ufahamu Africa, hosted by my friends Kim Yi Dionne and Rachel Beatty Riedl. I desperately wanted to add my voice, hoping to create a space where experts could share their insights and still have fun. When we started talking about Into Africa, we referenced the high-energy format of Pardon the Interruption and the dinner-party pathos of David Rothkopf’s The Editor’s Roundtable (later, Deep State Radio). It was almost certainly naïve and too ambitious for a show produced by a think tank. But it crystallized for me what is often wrong about foreign policy podcasts.

Be Human

A few months ago, my former bosses Jake Sullivan and Jon Finer appeared on Semafor’s Mixed Signals to promote their podcast, The Long Game. At one point in the interview, Jake observed that the medium “gives you an opportunity to really go deeper on issues and also to talk like an actual human being as opposed to a talking points machine.” He is exactly right.

Foreign policy practitioners draw on a specific vocabulary, designed to carry the day in the Situation Room but it is utterly unappealing on a podcast. Too many guests strive to sound like an expert or have internalized this speaking style. It is a surefire way to turn off a larger audience and perpetuate the perception of foreign policy as an elite pastime. Plus, it makes listening a chore—like something you have to spend time with before an exam.

My favorite foreign affairs podcasts are anything but policy primers. They reveal who the person is behind the microphone. You don’t need to form a parasocial relationship, but you do need to make a connection. I am not a sports fan by any stretch, but I like Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes’s banter about the New York Knicks or New England Patriots at the top of Pod Save the World. I have been a devoted listener to Bombshell, now Sirens, because Loren DeJonge Schulman, Radha Iyengar Plumb, and Erin Simpson always start with inventive icebreaker questions. As cartoonist and writer Jessica Abel says in Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio, “authority comes from directness and authenticity, not distance and formality.”

Most foreign policy podcasts fail this test. They are impersonal and emotionless, as if the rest of life stops at the recording of the show. It is even more wooden when you are a government official appearing on a podcast. I’ve been on The China in Africa podcast cohosted by my friends Eric Olander and Cobus Van Staden about a half-dozen times in different roles. When I asked an LLM to analyze my appearances on the show in 2020, 2023, and 2026, it immediately called out my inauthenticity when I was there in a government capacity. It both flattered and sideswiped me: “The 2023 interview is the clearest example of what government communication does to a person’s voice. You’re smart and disciplined in that interview, but you’re not you.” In other words, it wasn’t very good.

Keep Moving

Most foreign policy podcast guests make the same fatal mistake: they talk in paragraphs, not sentences. It is the quickest way to lose a listener. I understand the instinct. We have a lot of important, nuanced things to say. I regret podcasts where I started to enumerate 3-5 points and still had 'one more thing' to add. Podcasts are conversations, not briefings.

What keeps people listening is forward momentum. You want to hear people interject, react, and build on each other’s thoughts. The best podcasts feel interactive and dynamic. For Into Africa, I always hosted three guests on each episode to foster a real dialogue and prevent a monologue. Before we started recording, I told everyone that if they were speaking for two minutes straight, they had probably gone on too long. (Academics and former policymakers were often the worst at sticking to time.) For 49, my cohost Nicole Willet and I tried a different approach. We promised that each episode covering U.S. policy toward one country would last “15 minutes or less.” Keeping one eye on the clock forced guests to focus on what mattered most.

The problem is that foreign policy people, and especially sitting policymakers, are often less interested in a conversation. They have insights to share and points to deliver, and too often the podcast is merely the vehicle to do so. In fact, their staff is sitting right beside them scribbling notes on what additional points to add. When I recorded shows or did media hits as Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council, there was always a minder in the room or on the phone with me. It was hard to be personable when you have a script to follow—and if you're not engaging, why did you come on the show?

Admit Uncertainty

A hard-earned lesson for me has been to avoid being a know-it-all. That may seem obvious in one’s personal and professional life, but it is slightly counterintuitive on a podcast. If you are being asked to analyze a recent development or explain a new policy, it is natural to adopt the posture of the expert speaking authoritatively about the subject. It is effective until it isn’t.

A good podcast guest is an open book, willing to share not only what they know but how they arrived at their conclusions. They do not need to project certainty at all times. Not only is it unlikely to be true, but it is rarely as compelling.

When I went back and listened to my 2023 interview, I never said “I don’t know.” Not once. When Eric pressed me on whether U.S. trade numbers were actually moving—a fair question—I responded, “Well, I think the results are there,” and immediately pivoted to specific deals. In my other appearances, when I was not in government, I was much more willing to admit what I did not know. Indeed, in one interview I said, "I don't know what that answer is right now. It's one of the reasons why I'm writing,” a reference to why I started this newsletter.

Of course, you do not always have to say “I don’t know” when you have doubts. But you can still be honest. When I joined Santi Ruiz on his exceptional Statecraft podcast last year, I wanted to be candid. I acknowledged that "I don't think I got that right 100% of the time” when navigating the bureaucracy and confessed that I didn’t always succeed in my objective to inject more complexity in our relationships with African counterparts.

I am not sure anyone learns anything by presenting oneself as having all the answers. Foreign affairs is inherently uncertain, and it is okay to bring listeners into that uncertainty. Even the biggest foreign policy success story has its setbacks and lessons learned—why shield the listeners from the truth that we are all fallible and struggling to get it right? There’s nothing more compelling than connecting with others by trying to make sense of a complicated world.

And Go Beyond

One final reflection. This is not about how to podcast, but where one does it. Back when I started experimenting with the medium, U.S.-based podcasts largely dominated the conversation on African politics and policy. Even now, I must admit that my podcast diet is mostly shows like The Horn, Next Africa, and BBC Focus on Africa—all of which have ties to the United States or Western media.

Last year, I went on Frontier Matters hosted by Feyi Fawehinmi and Tobi Lawson who also write the fantastic Substack 1914 Reader. It might have been the best and hardest interview I’ve done in my career. They asked questions like, “Do you still believe that a U.S. retreat automatically hands the keys to Beijing, or has the strategic math changed?” and pushed back with observations such as, “I find it weird that the continent with no electricity is going to decide the future of AI.”

This is the future of podcasting. We need to listen to and, if possible, participate in podcasts being produced by African content creators. I Said What I Said is a cultural phenomenon in Nigeria, while Podcast and Chill commands a massive audience in South Africa. Kenya has its own thriving podcast ecosystem as well. Most of these shows are about entertainment or relationships, but that’s where the most riveting content and conversations are happening. If we limit ourselves to the same small subset of foreign affairs podcasts, how will we ever break through with new, more impactful policies?

Post Strategy

I am convinced that foreign policy podcasts work best when they stop sounding like foreign policy. We can’t treat them like a panel discussion at a think tank. Podcasts will only become more important and rewarding if we depart from the old ways of explaining policies, analyzing developments, and talking to the same people. None of this will be easy, but I’m going to fight the urge to always present as an expert. If we want to change the conversation, we have to admit that we don’t have all the answers.

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During the conference, I tried to distill my reflections into five points. These are not exhaustive and not specific to U.S. Africa policy. Admittedly, I received some pointed criticism during the Q&A. (I accept that I focused too much on the U.S. side of the equation and gave short shrift to the crucial collaboration with African partners, an omission I will try to rectify here.) These points may seem obvious, but they bear repeating. It is remarkably easy to get them wrong, and I take a lot of responsibility for not heeding my own advice in instances where we dropped the ball.

Ideas are the Easy Part

There is usually no shortage of what we should do differently when it comes to U.S. policy toward Africa. Some ideas are blindingly simple while others are infuriatingly complex. Some concepts are quite modest while others are revolutionary. When we were considering deliverables for the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in late 2022, we were inundated with proposals. I found that the shape of an idea often depended on who was tabling it. In fact, it was almost laughably predictable which ideas came from which parts of the policy community.

• The bureaucrats usually voted for practical and incremental. For example, expanding a program to a few additional countries or increasing the funding for a specific initiative. Despite the ambition of the Global Fragility Act (GFA), the initial U.S. Strategy to Prevent Conflict and Promote Stability (SPCPS) country and regional plans proffered very little that was new or different.

• The political appointees favored the bold and transformative. In a previous post on initiatives, I talked about my idea to rethink security assistance through positive conditionality. We called it the 21st Century Partnership for African Security (21PAS) based in part on ideas that scholars had promoted for years. It never gained traction.

• The academics routinely gravitated toward the radical and unprecedented. In December 2022, my friend Cobus Van Staden argued that the Biden Administration should have tackled U.S. fiduciary laws to address private sector lending and make it “easier to deal with debt restructuring processes.” (He also acknowledged that probably wasn’t possible.)

Ultimately, though, what distinguishes a successful idea from an unsuccessful one is whether you can implement it. The graveyard is full of good ideas.

Ownership is Everything

One of the keys to successful implementation is buy-in. You need the most important stakeholders to be equally committed to the idea. That starts at the top; President Biden, for example, would ask who he should hold accountable if the initiative fails. But it is more than just the boss. It is essential that your interagency colleagues and other critical voices are behind the effort. If they don’t agree with the program, they are going to half-heartedly implement it or they will try to tank it from the outside. Even a well-negotiated agreement can unravel if key constituencies never buy into it. UK and U.S. media attacks on the proposed transfer of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius went a long way in scuttling the deal this year.

Most importantly, it has to have support from African partners. When we negotiated several ceasefires in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), for example, we did more than secure commitments and compromises. We worked with the relevant parties to draft statements and monitor progress on the ground. I believe that’s the secret to successful mediation.

• The international community, notably the quartet of the United States, UK, Norway and Italy, worked closely with African negotiators, including General Lazaro Sumbeiywo who served as Kenya’s Special Envoy to the IGAD-led Sudanese peace process. At the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005, Secretary Colin Powell said “all of us owe General Sumbeiywo a great debt of gratitude for his extraordinary efforts.” Kenya continued to affirm its commitment to the agreement in subsequent years.

• The same dynamic played out in West Africa. President George W. Bush worked closely with West African leaders, especially Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, to end the civil war in Liberia. During his 2003 trip to the region, he thanked Obasanjo for his commitment to regional peace, reiterating that the United States will “work with Nigeria and ECOWAS on issues such as Liberia.” This shared ownership resulted in U.S. support for UN peacekeepers and Nigeria offering temporary asylum to former Liberian leader Charles Taylor. Neither side could have delivered the outcome on its own.

Rigorously Plan, Ruthlessly Track

Successful implementation requires relentless attention. It takes thoughtfulness and care to implement policy initiatives and peace deals. While it may be exciting to announce a major new effort, it is worth very little if you aren’t prepared to execute on it.

I’ve had my share of successes and failures. When I was an NSC director during the Obama Administration, I led a process that tracked every step of the Somali political transition in 2012. Along with interagency colleagues, we anticipated potential delays and worked through a complicated process that culminated in the election of Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mahamud and U.S. recognition of Somalia for the first time since 1993. (As an aside, the interagency resisted conducting similar exercises for other transitions—whether in the Sahel or in Somalia in 2021-22). I am less proud of my inability to usher in a new partnership on food security during the Biden Administration. Despite significant buy-in from African stakeholders, we struggled to fully develop the framework before the announcement and stay on top of multiple requirements afterwards. Even with strong buy-in, we couldn’t compensate for rushed planning and challenging follow-through tasks.

When there is thoroughness to implementation, it can lead to extraordinary outcomes.

• Some of the most long-lasting U.S. initiatives toward Africa started with careful design and repeated stress-testing. In 2024, former deputy National Security Advisor Gary Edson explained that the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) concept was based on a body of research which showed that aid was more effective in good policy environments. It was followed by significant consultations, repeated refinement of the concept, and meetings with OMB to secure independent funding to ensure it could deliver on its promise.

• This kind of rigor has defined the best U.S. responses to humanitarian and health crises. During the 1973 Sahel famine, U.S. Ambassador to Upper Volta Don Easum recalled organizing “truck transport to bring hundreds of tons of surplus U.S. sorghum to Ouagadougou from the Ghanaian port of Tema—a rough-road distance of 550 miles.” The Obama Administration’s response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was similarly grounded in detailed planning and consistent monitoring—a standard worth remembering as the current outbreak remains uncontained.

Overshare and Overdeliver

Too often, we go silent after a big announcement or fail to explain next steps, including some challenges that we might face in the process. Even if implementation is proceeding apace, it can sow the seeds of doubt and shake the confidence of observers and partners. I am grateful to Ambassador Johnnie Carson who understood this dynamic and pushed us to do more to talk about what we had accomplished since the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit. We belatedly began doing interviews, appearing on podcasts, and issuing updates on implementation. The reluctance to communicate, in contrast, is part of the reason why the first Trump Administration’s Prosper Africa struggled to launch. (To be sure, Prosper Africa also suffered from being an underdeveloped concept when National Security Advisor John Bolton unveiled the initiative in December 2018.)

One lesson is to set expectations early, especially when the work will be lengthy and difficult. That doesn’t mean scale back your ambition but rather be clear about how your efforts may face significant hurdles and require months, if not years, of focused work.

• During the Carter Administration, there was a clear-eyed approach to ending minority rule in Rhodesia. Nancy Mitchell, author of Jimmy Carter in Africa: Race and Power, noted that “Carter doggedly sought a negotiated peace in Rhodesia. He set a goal—peace, justice, and independence—and he pursued it with a determination that rivaled the vigor with which he had sought the presidency.” U.S. Ambassador to Zambia Stephen Low agreed, telling an interviewer that “You have to have a framework set up and a basis for agreement worked out so that you are ready…I had no idea at the time that that is exactly what was going to happen before the year was out. Yes, it was discouraging at the moment we left, but I had no doubt that we had been moving in the right direction, or that we should continue.”

• It is counterproductive to declare success before there is true progress. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Hank Cohen, in his memoirs Intervening in Africa: Superpower Peacemaking in a Troubled Continent, questioned whether the George H.W. Bush Administration was unhelpfully driven by “signature obsession” in trying to negotiate the end of the Angolan Civil War in the early 1990s. The same affliction has plagued the Washington Accords in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where most participants have acknowledged that the signing event in December 2025 was premature.

Get Ready for What’s Next

In my experience, what is usually neglected in the implementation process is planning for what’s next. Most conflicts don’t stay resolved forever and most initiatives become stale over time. When I was an analyst, I found myself surging to work on crises in Mozambique and Burundi 21 years after the Rome Accords and 10 years after the Arusha Accords, respectively. The international community had declared mission accomplished and moved on to the next problem. There wasn’t enough consistent monitoring and diplomatic engagement to preempt backsliding.

That same dynamic has plagued the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). The landmark trade legislation, passed in 2000, was renewed in 2015 with few substantive changes. Despite a thoughtful U.S. Trade Representative report entitled Beyond AGOA in 2016, there have been surprisingly few serious efforts to rethink or modernize the program. When I served in the Biden Administration, there was little appetite to do much beyond shifting to biannual eligibility reviews. It is a reminder that successful initiatives can become stagnant if policymakers fail to plan for what comes next. AGOA’s lack of dynamism in part explains why the program briefly expired and remains on uncertain footing today. As U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer recently observed: “I know a lot of people want it to be long. For me, the better the program is, the more likely it is to be longer. The less ambitious it is, the less reason there is to make it endure for longer.”

One Final Thought: Who’s on Your Team?

There’s one point I neglected to share at the conference—and it may be the most important. Policy implementation demands attention to detail, relentless monitoring, and strong execution. But it also requires self-awareness. How do you work? What are you good at? Where do you struggle? When I was senior director for African affairs, I sent new directors an email entitled “How I Operate,” detailing what I saw as my strengths and weaknesses. I intentionally recruited people who complemented my shortcomings. When I realized I was drowning in implementation work, I recruited Aditi Vira to coordinate the process and work closely with the Department of State.

That lesson appears throughout the history of U.S.-Africa policy. Kennedy’s Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, G. Mennen “Soapy” Williams, for example, relied on Wayne Fredericks who had considerable Africa expertise from his time at the Ford Foundation. The best implementers understand what they need and build teams accordingly.

Post Strategy

Do I even need to say I am convinced that implementation is important? It is almost too obvious. My bigger takeaway is what it takes to do it well. You have to get the details right, but it is just as essential to communicate what you are trying to accomplish and recruit a team that truly believes in the effort and brings skills that complement your own. Implementation, after all, is a process, not a destination. It only succeeds if it continues after you are gone.

Through this newsletter, I’ve tried to grapple honestly with U.S. policy toward Africa. I am neither interested in reflexively criticizing the Trump Administration’s approach nor uncritically celebrating the Biden Administration’s record. If the goal is to understand what has worked, what has failed, and what we should do differently, then we have to ask a hard question: were we lecturing and if we were, was that a problem?

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Let’s start with some terminology: what do we mean when we say “lecturing”? It strikes me as subtly different than expressing policy differences or even being critical. There’s a power dynamic implied, with an individual (or government) reprimanding or scolding an unequal counterpart. Merriam-Webster’s definition is interesting: to lecture is to “reprove formally.” I think “formally” is doing the most important work here. It suggests an official rebuke. That’s perhaps why it has such power in current critiques of past administrations. Even though lecturing is not limited to values and norms, it is biting because it suggests a moral high ground, or at least a belief in one’s relative superiority. It is certainly not conducive to a foreign policy rooted in mutual respect.

What the Lecturing Critique Gets Right

It is impossible to deny that lecturing has been a regrettable part of the history of U.S. relations with the African continent. In his memoirs, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger opined that “many officers in the Africa bureau evolved a kind of siege mentality in which they transmuted their isolation into a claim to moral superiority, casting themselves as the defenders of American idealism.” When one reviews past speeches by U.S. presidents and senior officials on Africa, it does feel preachy and a bit cringe. Here are some examples:

• During Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2009 trip to the region, she pointedly said “look at Nigeria, another great country. Nigeria imports petroleum products even though it’s the fifth-largest producer of petroleum in the world. That is bad governance. That is a failure of rules that are enforced for the benefit of the people. And we have got to speak out about this.”

• Following his Vice President Dan Quayle’s engagement with Malawian President Hastings Banda in 1991, he told the press that “we will continue to urge, in the strongest terms, respect for democracy and the rule of law. No one doubts where the United States stands.”

• In President Jimmy Carter’s meeting with Tanzanian leader Julius Nyerere in 1977, national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski asked—twice—”Mr. President, are you aware that the number of Cubans in Angola compared to the total population of Angola is larger than the number of Americans who were in Vietnam at the height of our involvement?” It was so abrasive that Carter quickly ended the meeting.

In my experience, however, there is rarely an intent to lecture. Indeed, U.S. leaders have gone out of their way to say as much. As Vice President, Joe Biden prefaced a speech in Nairobi in 2010 with "I hope what I am saying doesn't come across as lecturing." During his presidency, we often stressed that our objective was to listen, not to lecture. It was earnest but, in retrospect, still tone-deaf. Unfortunately, good intentions do not necessarily change how these exchanges are perceived, especially given the power imbalance in the relationship.

What the Lecturing Critique Gets Wrong

The problem with the lecturing critique is what it omits. Most of what has been demagogued as lecturing was just policy—either required by our laws or necessitated by national security.

• Illegal Power Grabs. Criticisms that U.S. officials were merely lecturing about democratic values miss that U.S. law requires tough responses. For example, U.S. legislation necessitates the imposition of sanctions following coups d’état—only to be reinstated following democratic elections. Whether we wanted to or not, the Biden Administration restricted assistance to several Sahelian governments, as well as Gabon, for overthrowing civilian governments in accordance with Section 7008 of the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act.

• Geopolitical Rivalries. Accusations that U.S. diplomats failed to see Africa “as it is” papers over cases where African leaders worked hand-in-hand with our adversaries to undermine U.S. national security. In 2023, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned (now-deceased) Malian General Sadio Camara for facilitating the deployment and expansion of the Russian-linked Wagner Group activities in Mali—throwing out the UN and European security partners in the process. Similarly, in the following year, U.S. diplomats registered serious concern with the Nigerien junta’s budding ties to Russia and Iran.

• Human Rights Abuses. Complaints that previous administrations were disproportionately focused on human rights ignore the damage that many of the worst offenses have on U.S. interests, as well as their impact on regional instability. President Obama, for example, in 2011 confronted South Sudanese Salva Kiir over cross-border weapons shipments to rebel groups in Sudan. Several countries have lost trade privileges under the African Growth and Opportunity Act for activities that threatened peace, security, and stability or enabled the persecution of minority groups.

And, of course, the current administration is no stranger to lecturing either. U.S. officials, for example, have admonished South African President Cyril Ramaphosa over false claims of “white genocide” and accused the Zambian government of abdicating its responsibilities. Republican members of Congress, no less than Democratic ones, routinely issue statements on human rights and threaten to withhold assistance over flawed elections. In other words, lecturing is not a flaw of one administration or one political party. It is unfortunately embedded in how the United States often conducts foreign policy.

The Politics of Lecturing

I am not dismissing the lecturing charge, but it does seem to often function as a rhetorical tactic to discredit one’s opponents or policies. A senior White House official recently told journalists that the U.S. government is rebuilding relationships because the previous administration spent four years telling Africans that they needed to have transgender parades and Gay Pride flags hanging from their government buildings. That characterization is wholly inaccurate, but it is an effective way to avoid a more serious discussion about the merits of different counterterrorism approaches. The same framing frequently appears in debates about U.S. and Chinese engagement in Africa, exemplified by a 2024 Heritage Foundation report entitled “China Woos Africa While America Lectures.”

African governments are not above using the playbook. Zimbabwean officials in the 2000s bristled at what they alleged was “rank hypocrisy” while Nigerians in the 1970s condemned what they saw as “an insult to Black Dignity.” (Never mind that the historical record is replete with examples of African leaders lecturing U.S. officials.) The net effect is shifting the contours of the debate from policy to polemics. As my friend Ebenezer Obadare, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, recently argued: “it is never paternalistic to insist that countries treat their citizens well.”

Post Strategy

I am convinced that there is too much lecturing in U.S. policy toward Africa. But we are really talking about the tone of the message, not necessarily the message itself. It is natural that we will disagree over policies, whether they concern democratic values, geopolitical alignments, or specific government decisions. The relevant question is how do we communicate these concerns. When it is in public, sweeping in its criticism and lacking a concrete ask, it almost certainly will backfire. We should avoid remarks that appear haughty or self-satisfied, but we shouldn’t shrink from standing up for what we believe is right or in the interests of the United States. I agree with Assistant Secretary of State Johnnie Carson who wisely said in 2009:

I hope the United State is not lecturing anyone, but in effect, having diplomatic discussions and dialogues, respectful and those that are mutually beneficial and important for the United States and the countries that we deal with. I think it’s important to respect African governments and leaders, to work with them to resolve problems and challenges that they have, and to engage and be able to engage on these issues. We have and should encourage countries, wherever they are, to do the same thing.

I wanted to write this post because I broadly agree with the lecturing critique. At the same time, I find it too facile and unfair. It flattens hard choices and discounts good outcomes that come from difficult conversations. We don't need to lecture, but we do need to speak clearly—with respect, humility, and candor. The charge of lecturing is unlikely to go away. The real test is making sure it doesn't stop us from saying what needs to be said.

I’ve also enjoyed puzzling over which posts have worked and which haven’t. Some, including On Strategies, On Think Tanks, and On Intelligence, have attracted a lot of views, while others barely registered. Ironically, my favorite pieces, the ones grounded in history and personal introspection, like On Vice Presidents and On Defeatism, seemingly didn’t resonate.

As I reflect on my first year, I realize that’s exactly what this newsletter has been: a stocktaking exercise. And it turns out that in blog posts, as in U.S. policy, it’s harder than one might expect. It is rarely done and rarely done well. That’s a real problem.

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During the first half of my career in the U.S. intelligence community, I spent a lot of time conducting analytic reviews and stress-testing key judgments. It’s second nature for an analyst. Case in point: a former CIA colleague, Jerry Laurienti, and I just recently conducted a key assumptions check to evaluate how African governments might respond to the economic fallout from the Iran conflict. At the Agency, questioning what we were saying—and how we were saying it—was not just encouraged but expected. In fact, constantly scrutinizing one’s own work and seeking out alternative perspectives was seen as the mark of an expert analyst. But when I moved into policy, I found the opposite was often true. Inviting criticism was unusual and, more often than not, unwelcome.

A Fear of Stocktaking

Policymakers are often reluctant to take stock because the exercise can feel like, or be construed as, an admission of failure. Washington has a long history of inquiries and post-mortems after major foreign policy crises. There’s the 9/11 Commission and the WMD Commission, or the Army’s after-action report on its deployment to Somalia in the early 1990s. But midstream reviews are different. Still, when I tried to initiate stocktaking exercises as NSC senior director for African affairs—including on our engagement with African states over Russia’s war in Ukraine and on Sudan—it made colleagues deeply uncomfortable. I was surprised at first, but I also came to understand the resistance.

• Blame Game. Almost no one wants to hear that their approach is flawed, or worse, that they may be partly responsible for a failing policy. That is not the intent of stocktaking, but it is often the fear. I had to confront this type of angst myself when I tried to review our efforts in the wake of the outbreak of the Sudanese conflict. What I saw as a responsible step given what had transpired, several colleagues unfortunately viewed as an attack. (I stressed that my goal was to reflect on our policies to date, not assign blame for collective decisions.)

• Backdoor Process. Reviews can be seen as an attempt to reopen settled policy debates. Officials worry that internal opponents will use “stocktaking” to undo hard-fought interagency agreements or relitigate decisions they initially lost. Someone will inevitably argue that a review is premature and that diplomacy needs more time to play out. During the Obama years, U.S. officials rebuffed calls to revisit the administration’s strategy toward Somalia, noting that “it is still a relatively new project” and that the reconstituted Somali government was only a few years old.

• Media Leaks. Even when there is begrudging support for a review, officials worry that internal debates will spill into the press. That fear isn’t irrational; it happens. And, unfortunately, often just the possibility of leaks can chill the entire exercise, giving everyone another reason to avoid stocktaking altogether. In 1990, U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Smith Hempstone sparked a media firestorm when his comments during a private meeting with peers hit the press. Playing devil’s advocate, he argued that “a multiparty systems will not necessarily lead to Jeffersonian democracy and one-party systems do not necessarily lead to repression or lack of political freedom.”

To be clear, I am making a point about taking stock while a policy is already underway. This is a status check, not policy development from scratch. It is common for administrations to launch reviews at the beginning of a president’s term or when a policy has been absent. Those are more formal exercises, producing National Security Study Memoranda during the Nixon–Ford period, Presidential Review Memoranda under Carter, or Presidential Policy Directives during the Obama era. What is much rarer is the willingness to ask, midstream, whether a policy is working and decide whether some course-correction is needed.

A Failure of Stocktaking

Even when a stocktaking process is underway, it tends to go badly. There is usually too much focus on table-setting and not enough thought about how to actually run the exercise—who should lead it, who should be in the room, and what format makes sense. The opportunity to stand back can easily be undone by the way it is set up.

• Mismatched Conveners. The convener is often poorly chosen. There is a tendency to pick someone seen as neutral or removed from the policy debate, such as policy planning at the State Department or an adjacent institution like the U.S. Institute of Peace. But that can backfire. Participants often see them as outsiders or lacking relevant experience. The NSC can fall into this trap as well, viewed suspiciously as staff whose job is to second-guess the rest of the interagency.

• Overcrowded Rooms. The worst setting is a packed room, filled with principals, their deputies, and backbenchers. And if it’s video teleconference, it becomes a major impediment. What should be a candid discussion quickly turns into a performance. People measure their words carefully to avoid embarrassment or show signs of doubt. A simple rule of thumb applies: more people, less candor.

• Ill-Suited Formats. It is usually a mistake to try to fit stocktaking into the standard NSC policy coordination meeting. We tried this several times, asking senior officials to revisit assumptions about crises in the Horn of Africa. It never really worked. People show up prepared to present positions, not to question them. Their talking points certainly did not push them in a productive direction. We got more puzzled looks than useful insights.

Of course, there are other settings that often look like stocktaking—Chief of Mission conferences or the annual Africa Strategy Dialogue, for example. These can be useful, but they are closer to off-sites than true policy reviews. That’s not to say there haven’t been good outcomes from them. In 1965, Chiefs of Mission Conferences in Addis Ababa and Lagos produced a series of useful recommendations. In general, though, these types of gatherings lack the focus and mindset required for genuine stocktaking.

Ward Room Rules

With a lot of trial and error, we eventually found a formula for productive policy stocktaking toward the end of my tenure as senior director. It required a little informality and a lot of trust. My colleagues and I started using the Ward Room—a small alcove in the West Wing—for these candid discussions. It became a safe space to weigh what we were doing and consider new directions. No one ever framed it exactly this way, but we imposed a few constraints to foster a more conducive atmosphere.

• No Plus-Ones. We agreed these meetings would be small, prizing expertise and thoughtfulness over titles or seniority. What we didn’t want were minders and backbenchers. That helped strip away the performative aspect of the meeting and put everyone on a more equal footing.

• No Bad Ideas. We tried to live up to the brainstorming cliché of “no bad ideas.” It was harder than it sounds, but more achievable in this setting than in most policy meetings. Because the group was smaller, people were more willing to float a trial balloon or ask a probing—even unpopular—question about our assumptions or objectives. It was one of the few interagency settings where a true “aha” moment felt possible.

• No Paper. We resisted the instinct to develop an agenda, draft talking points, or issue a summary of conclusions. The priority was a free-flowing conversation, not a scripted exchange. While I often convened the meetings, I didn’t try to moderate them in the traditional sense. If something useful emerged, we would bring it back into the formal policy process for vetting and broader buy-in.

One more point. I don’t think these exercises need to occur solely within government. Brad Brooks-Rubin and I recently published a retrospective on U.S. sanctions policy toward Zimbabwe. Our ability to switch that sanctions regime benefited from honest discussions and open-ended consultations. In that case, we worked with outside experts we trusted and had longstanding relationships with. That may be the key. These conversations only work when there is mutual trust and a shared commitment to reflection and improvement. You can’t force that into a room.

Post Strategy

I am convinced that regular stocktaking is essential for effective policy. That may not be a novel insight, but it is remarkable how consistently these exercises are resisted. What is routine in the intelligence community remains rare in the policy world. Perhaps what is necessary is to develop your own “Ward Room” rules to facilitate a good dialogue between peers. Without a setting that encourages candor and trust, stocktaking won’t happen. And when it doesn’t, policy suffers.

As for this newsletter, it has become one of my favorite outlets to be creative and nerd out about U.S.-Africa history. A year in, I haven’t lost the drive to understand what has worked, what has failed, and what we should do differently. I hope you’ll stick with me.

Only seven sitting U.S. presidents have visited sub-Saharan Africa. Starting with Franklin Roosevelt’s short jaunt to Liberia in 1943, there has been significant variation in the quantity and quality of these trips. Some presidents have made single-country stops while others spent more than two weeks bouncing around the region. Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama took several trips during their administration, whereas Presidents Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Biden only went once. President Donald Trump did not visit sub-Saharan Africa in his first term, and it remains to be seen whether he will in his second.

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I have been thinking a lot lately about whether presidential travel is an essential part of an effective U.S. policy toward the region. And, if the president goes, what does it truly say about the relationship and what constitutes a meaningful trip? This isn’t academic for me. I had to deal with endless media stories about how the president had failed to live up to his promise to visit and why he had ignored the continent. The question of the trip was raised in almost every interaction I had with the media after the summit. In a White House background call in November 2023, I received no less than three queries about the president’s intent to travel, including pointed ones such as “What does it say that the President said he would go to Africa this year, but he hasn’t gone and it doesn’t appear that he will go? What should Africans, African leaders, African governments take away from that that he’s found the time to go to Ukraine; he’s found the time to go to Israel; he’s had other international engagements this year; but even though he said he would go to Africa, he hasn’t gone to Africa?” I did my best to answer the question, arguing that our investments, partnerships, and support for greater African representatives in multilateral institutions were more consequential. Was I wrong?

Trips as Theater

Let’s just call it what it is: there is a lot of symbolism in these visits. A president’s trip is important because the U.S. president is important. Yes, that’s circular, but that doesn’t make it less true. If the president is flying off to a foreign destination, it signals to the world that the countries and meetings on the itinerary carry strategic significance.

Some administrations have been explicit about this dynamic. Susan Rice, who served as assistant secretary of state for African affairs, explained one goal of Clinton’s 1998 trip was “to show Americans a picture of Africa that is different from the one-sided view that they often get of conflict and warfare and famine.” In other words, the act of traveling is point. It demonstrates the region’s significance, affirms U.S. engagement, and highlights U.S. investments.

• Stressing Renewed Importance. Some presidents have framed their visits as a sign that Africa now matters more to the United States. During Carter’s trip to Nigeria and Liberia in 1978, he talked of a “new spirit of involvement as opposed to the ‘run and hide’ attitudes of past Administrations toward Africa.” One of his advisers added that Carter intended to “re-emphasize a new and more productive relationship.”

• Signaling Personal Commitment. Most presidents have used their trips to affirm their personal interest in the region. During his 2003 trip, Bush reminded journalists that “as a matter of fact, from the very beginning of my administration, I have been very much involved with African affairs. I have met with over 22 African leaders. Africa has been a very important part of my administration’s foreign policy.”

• Showcasing U.S. Programs. Every president has dedicated considerable time to promote U.S. investments and programs across the region—a tangible example of U.S. largesse. Biden hinged his entire trip on a multibillion-dollar investment to refurbish and expand a railway connecting Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Zambia. Biden boasted “we’re engaged in a major joint project to close the infrastructure gap for the benefit of Angolans, Africans across the continent, Americans, and the world. We’ll all benefit, as you benefit.”

A curious feature of most trips is the one-upmanship. Various administrations bend over backwards to say their president was the first to visit certain countries, spent the most number of days on the ground, included the largest entourage, and made more trips than their predecessors. Carter even corrected his Liberian counterpart, insisting that his was the first “official state visit” to Africa, whereas Roosevelt’s had been little more than a brief airport stop.

Trips as Policy

There is some substance to these trips. Secretary of State Colin Powell argued forcefully that President Bush’s trip was “not a political exercise…it was designed to deal with real problems facing people in need in Africa.’‘ In the best cases, presidents take advantage of their time abroad to push policy forward.

• Leading Diplomacy. In several trips, presidents consulted with counterparts and engaged in peace negotiations. Bush met with West African presidents about Liberia, demanding that Liberian ruler Charles Taylor leave “so that his country can be spared further grief and bloodshed.” Obama huddled with East African leaders about South Sudan. At the request of former South African president Nelson Mandela, Clinton lent his support to the Burundi peace process.

• Lobbying Congress. A handful of presidents leveraged the media attention on Africa to press the U.S. Congress to pass key legislation. President Bush called for the extension of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and insisted that Congress refrain from reducing the budget for the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). In one speech, he emphasized that “the House of Representatives and the United States Senate must fully fund this initiative, for the good of the people on this continent of Africa.”

• Launching Initiatives. Almost all presidents unveiled new programs, initiatives, and funding while in the region. As I explained in my post on initiatives, it is easier to squeeze more funding and commitments from the system in anticipation of a trip. Biden, for example, paired his trip with a pledge of $1 billion in humanitarian assistance to 31 African countries and a broader slate of initiatives designed to deepen the U.S.–Africa partnership.

Trips as Normative

The challenge, it seems to me, is breaking from the exceptionalism of the Africa trip. Because these visits are comparatively rare, there is pressure to be more than “just business.” It has to be defended and imbued with symbolism and ceremony. When presidents land in London or Tokyo, there isn’t a need to justify or explain the expenditure. It is taken for granted that a president would travel to consult with allies and partners. That doesn’t mean there isn’t still some spectacle, but it is more incidental than integral to the visit.

• Obama tried to make this point when visiting Ghana in 2009, noting that “we wanted to make sure to come to an African country after the G–8 and after my visit to Moscow to emphasize that Africa is not separate from world affairs. There’s a tendency, I think, for U.S. Presidents to take a week sometime during their term and there’s a separate visit to Africa, and we wanted to send a message that we have a continuing interest in Africa’s security, in Africa’s economy, in Africa’s social and political development.” His first trips did not fully live up to that promise, but in the frequency of his travel—four visits in eight years—he made real progress toward normalizing the Africa trip.

• Bush was less explicit, but his second trip in 2008 was also an important step in this direction. His affection, for example, for Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf seemed to place her in the same personal circle as other world leaders he favored. Bush praised Johnson Sirleaf for having “the tough mind of a natural executive [and] the gentle instincts of a mother,” a sentiment that echoed his admiration for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whom he described as “a compassionate leader, a woman who is not afraid to lead.”

All You Can’t Leave Behind

In reviewing the press coverage of the 12 trips by the seven presidents, what struck me was how often these visits struggled to transcend the deficiencies of the underlying policy. With possibly the exception of President Bush’s trips, most U.S. outlets never missed a beat to tell their readers that there was a disconnect between the rhetoric and reality of the policies.

For instance, U.S. newspapers pointed out that Nigerians felt the United States under Carter hadn’t done enough to bring about racial change in southern Africa or how African leaders believed President Obama’s second trip in 2013 was “long overdue” following multiple visits to Asia and Latin America. During Clinton’s visit, the New York Times claimed that “Africa has presented the White House, which has been known to go to great lengths to divert reporters from the president’s woes, with plenty of potential diversions.” African media was just as biting, bemoaning that Liberia “never reaped any significant benefit of respectable magnitude” from U.S. corporations during Carter’s trip. And when the optics themselves were poor—a “four-hour lunch break” during Carter’s Liberian stop, or “a heavy exchange of mortar and gunfire” in Mogadishu while President George H. W. Bush visited U.S. troops over the New Year’s holiday in 1992—the press seized on that too. In other words, a trip to Africa isn’t an antidote for neglect in Washington.

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I am convinced that presidential trips to Africa are important. But, similar to my posts on vice-presidents or sanctions, they aren’t substitutes for good policy. Paradoxically, they often magnify what is lacking more than affirm what is happening

A good trip should be about something—an essential part of U.S. statecraft, not just stagecraft. During President Clinton’s first trip, the scholar Mahmood Mamdani (father of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani) penned a Washington Post op-ed entitled “What Was That Trip About?” That’s the right question.

Maybe I have come full circle on this one. My regret is not that I pushed for the trip, but that I briefly convinced myself the promise of a trip was as strategic as the policy beneath it. I don’t think I was wrong to push back on journalists’ questions about President Biden’s promise to visit the region. In the final analysis, the trip was never going to transform our policies or convince skeptics about our priorities. A presidential trip needs to be more than a symbol. It needs to move policy forward.

I’ve spent my career as an intelligence analyst, think tank expert, and policymaker dealing with sanctions programs. I’ve argued for them, objected to them, imposed them, and dismantled them. I’ve felt all the feelings too—vindication, righteousness, embarrassment, satisfaction, resignation, and relief. I guess that’s why I want to write about this subject. Sanctions are not a substitute for policy, and yet they loom over almost every U.S. decision regarding Africa. We need to take a deeper look at why sanctions are so appealing—and ask ourselves how to avoid reflexively using them in U.S.–Africa policy.

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Let’s start by sorting through the different types of sanctions. The most known are those imposed by U.S. presidents through Executive Orders (E.O.s). These country-level or issue-focused programs allow the U.S. Treasury (or in a few cases, the State Department) to block or freeze the assets of designated individuals and entities, as well as prohibit U.S. persons from engaging with them, including through transactions in U.S. dollars. In addition, Congress has established a number of sanctions authorities that either build on the Executive Branch’s actions (which has happened several times in Iran) or, notably, through the Global Magnitsky Act (“GloMag”) target individuals responsible for serious human rights abuses or corruption.

But these kinds of sanctions are only one way to impose costs. The United States can also suspend visas, issue business advisories, cut foreign assistance, terminate military training, prohibit arms sales, impose export controls, recall ambassadors, expel diplomats, lead global boycotts, support divestment campaigns, flag states as high-risk jurisdictions, add countries to human rights watchlists, designate governments as sponsors of terror, and block votes at international financial institutions. While the U.S. government employs many of these coercive tools, there is usually a preference for the Treasury sanctions. That’s a mistake.

Seduced by Sanctions

When I served as Senior Director for African Affairs in the Biden Administration, we leaned on sanctions to respond to conflicts, human rights abuses, corruption, terrorism, and other national security concerns in a host of countries and regions. Looking back, I am slightly shocked by the breadth of the sanctions we imposed: we sanctioned individuals and entities in the Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Eritrea, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. And that doesn’t include visas and other penalties.

So what was the rationale behind this dizzying number of sanctions? The intent, at least in theory, is to change a target’s behavior and to advance U.S. foreign policy goals. And that’s true in some cases, especially those where we believed punitive action might deter foreign actors from continuing to wage war or steal from state coffers. If we increase the pressure, so the argument goes, perhaps a government might repeal an egregious law or refrain from boosting a geopolitical adversary’s influence. I stand behind those decisions—even if the outcome didn’t always work out as planned.

Unfortunately, some of our sanctions weren’t really about advancing policy. Their main attraction was what they conveyed: a forceful response. They were about doing something because we didn’t have good options. They signaled action when, in truth, they reflected helplessness. They showed resolve when, in reality, there was indecisiveness. And they demonstrated engagement when, in fact, there was distraction. It is not surprising, then, that the U.S. Treasury in 2021 bemoaned that sanctions had become “a tool of first resort to address a range of threats to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.”

To be fair, I argued hard for many of these sanctions for the above reasons. With the civil war raging in Sudan, for example, we wanted to express our anger and disapproval at the senseless violence. We also needed a response to the (totally fair) domestic and international criticism that we weren’t doing enough. Our first tranche of sanctions, designating two companies associated with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and two companies linked to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), had the patina of strategy because these companies directly enabled the war effort. Did I think it would stop or even slow the war? Not really.

Stymied by Sanctions

Here’s my problem with most sanctions. Despite the satisfaction of taking action, many of these punitive measures are fairly empty, at least in the case of Africa. They are symbolic, not substantive. They seem almost designed to remain in place forever—or at least for a very long time. I can attest to how frustratingly hard they are to remove, even when they have lost their policy relevance. Most importantly, they can limit U.S. actions, undercut U.S. priorities, and lead to unforeseen consequences. In other words, many sanctions programs are more trouble than they are worth.

• Symbolic. Some sanctions on individuals, especially in Africa, are reputational only and fail to inflict penalties that spur behavior change. That’s because most sanctions only bite if an individual has a nexus to the United States, meaning they own a bank account or property. For instance, when we impose sanctions on rebels or terrorists in Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire, DRC, Mali, or Somalia, the material effect is often negligible. The same principle applies to visa sanctions because many of those designated aren’t likely to travel here.

• Sticky. Sanctions programs are notoriously difficult to reverse or dismantle, diminishing their strategic value. For example, Nelson Mandela remained on the U.S. terror watch list until 2008, despite winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, addressing a joint session of the U.S. Congress in 1994, and meeting with President Bill Clinton in the Oval Office. When I worked in the Obama White House, we started the long process to terminate the Liberian sanctions in 2015, even though warlord-turned-president Charles Taylor and his cronies had been out of power for a decade. I have a forthcoming article with Brad Brooks-Rubin on our painstaking efforts to sunset the two-decade-old Zimbabwe sanctions program during the Biden Administration.

• Stifling. The biggest problem with the majority of sanctions is that they limit policy options. Past U.S. officials have objected to sanctions and other restrictions that tied their hands. In 2005, for example, the U.S. Congress included an amendment to a supplemental appropriations bill to withhold or condition Foreign Military Financing (FMF) and other military aid to Nigeria because it provided asylum to Charles Taylor. This made it harder to find a resolution, while punishing one of our closest partners in the region. This happens a lot, actually. We suspend trading preferences or cut off cooperation because we object to their foreign or domestic policies, even though the collateral damage hurts U.S. interests as much as it pressures the target.

Success by Sanctions

I need to make myself clear: I’m not opposed to sanctions. There are and will continue to be good reasons to impose punitive measures, but they should be focused, flexible, and tied to an overall strategy. As many scholars and practitioners have argued, most sanctions do not work. I think that is especially true in U.S.–Africa policy. The few successful case studies are the exceptions that prove the rule. In most of these examples, the pressure extended beyond economic sanctions and applied leverage in more novel ways. They did more than punish; they created a pathway to resolve a pressing problem.

• Comprehensive. Sanctions aren’t one thing, and they can’t be separated from engagement. For example, the United States imposed a series of sanctions on the apartheid regime in South Africa. Overriding President Ronald Reagan’s veto in 1986, the U.S. Congress passed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act requiring various U.S. departments and agencies to restrict funds and assistance, as well as withdrew landing rights for South African Airways. These sanctions both followed and intensified a divestment campaign and boycott of South Africa in many international sporting events, including the Olympics. But even with sanctions, there was vigorous diplomatic engagement, including phone calls and meetings between Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton with prominent South African leaders.

• Conditional. The most effective sanctions create clear “if/then” dynamic: specific actions in exchange for specific relief. Sudan has faced decades of sanctions for human rights abuses, genocide, civil war, and support for terrorism. The United States withdrew its ambassador twice, in 1973 and 1997; paused assistance after the 1989 military takeover; designated Sudan a state sponsor of terrorism in 1993; suspended embassy operations in 1996; imposed broad economic sanctions in 1997; and added further sanctions in 2007. The escalating sanctions enabled President George W. Bush to compel the Sudanese government to allow African peacekeepers into the Darfur region and President Barack Obama to condition some sanctions relief on a reduction of hostilities in Darfur and the Two Areas; greater humanitarian access; an end to meddling in South Sudan; enhanced counterterrorism cooperation; and addressing the threat of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). In October 2020, President Donald Trump removed Sudan from state sponsors of terrorism list.

• Constructive. The strongest coercive tools do more than punish; they create a transparent framework for institutional reform and eventual normalization. For example, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) focuses on tackling money laundering and terrorist and proliferation financing. It “blacklists” or “grey-lists” countries with weak compliance regimes. This has proven to be a strong motivator, spurring governments to institute the necessary reforms to get off these lists. Another example is the U.S. State Department’s Trafficking in Persons (TIP) program, which evaluates a government’s efforts to eliminate human trafficking within a tier system. If a government is placed on Tier 3, it may be subject to certain restrictions on foreign assistance. This approach not only fosters a dialogue about necessary steps, but it often results in positive action. I’ve seen similar frameworks work exceedingly well; in January 2010, for example, U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) designated Nigeria as a “country of interest” following the failed Christmas Day 2009 bombing attempt. The Nigerian government made it a top priority to address U.S. concerns, getting itself off the list by April.

A few broader lessons emerge from these cases. First, diplomacy is integral to the process. Sanctions may deliver a “punch in the face,” as Brad Brooks-Rubin colorfully put it on the Africa Program podcast, but the real goal is to generate leverage and open space for diplomacy to work. Second, it showcases the importance of a diverse set of coercive tools. The aforementioned examples did not rest solely on Treasury sanctions against individuals and entities—or even on visa restrictions. There was a deliberate attempt to bring multiple pressure points to bear from the executive and legislative branches, as well as from public and international engagement. Unfortunately, we rarely use the full repertoire anymore. We have seldom recalled ambassadors, as we did in Sudan in 1998 and briefly in Nigeria in 1995, and we have largely eschewed more visible forms of public pressure, such as boycotting or banning countries from international sporting events.

Context Matters

What I’ve learned the hard way is that context matters as much as the sanction itself. Even when circumstances seem relatively similar, small or subtle shifts can derail the same policy play. During the Biden Administration, we faced two challenges that had also bedeviled the Obama team in the Great Lakes: the M23 rebellion in eastern Congo and Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act. We consequently reached for the same mix of individual sanctions and assistance cuts. We weren’t successful in part because the domestic and international context had changed. This also happened in our response to coups in the Sahel. As I discussed in my earlier post on military takeovers, we struggled to wrap our heads around the newfound support for military rule and the rise of external powers willing to back the juntas. It shredded the old playbook.

The same principle applies to multilateral cooperation on sanctions and other punitive measures. We often worked closely with G7 countries on these issues, ensuring we were aligned. It can be quite powerful, especially because other governments often provide direct budgetary support. However, keeping the coalition together was a 24-7 job. Certain countries wanted to change their votes at international financial institutions or ease pressure in order to pursue different objectives, such as migration.

Finally, I found that our African partners can be force multipliers. They can add diplomatic muscle to these efforts, as Angola did when it pressed DRC President Joseph Kabila to give up his attempt to remain in power in 2018, or as East African leaders did when they imposed sanctions on Burundi in 1996. Nelson Mandela led the effort to isolate Nigerian ruler Sani Abacha after the execution of writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995. But it can also backfire. ECOWAS, the West African regional body, went too far by cutting Niger off from regional banks, blocking medicine and food imports, and shutting off electricity as part of failed attempt to restore democracy there.

Post Strategy

I am convinced that sanctions are useful, but only when tied to specific policy goals and paired with active diplomacy. Despite the temptation, we need to resist treating the imposition or removal of sanctions as bold or decisive. They are not.

Sanctions are just one of many tools at our disposal, and in many cases there are more creative and more effective options within reach—ones less likely to impair other priorities or constrain future decision-making. It raises the question: if sanctions didn’t grab headlines, would we use them so often? I suspect the answer is no.

A few caveats upfront. I’ve never worked in Congress, and I’ve never been through a confirmation process. (As a State Department intern, though, I did sit in on an internal “murder board” for the ambassadorial nominees to Guinea, the Gambia, and Tanzania in 2001. I’m not sure that counts for much.) In other words, I come to this topic earnestly, with more questions than answers.

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There are several parts to the confirmation process. After the president submits a nomination to the Senate, the designee engages in informal consultations with key senators and staff, submits a written statement, appears at a committee hearing, and then faces committee and full-Senate votes. This fulfills the Constitution’s Appointments Clause by ensuring that ambassadors are appointed by the president only “by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate.” For the purposes of this post, I’m less interested in parsing what that means in a legal sense than in how the process is actually performed for Africa policy positions. To that end, I reviewed more than three dozen nominee statements, hearing transcripts, and oral histories from ambassadors and assistant secretaries of state for African affairs.1 My hot take: there is a lot of posturing, not enough policy.

Policy Discussions

At its best, the confirmation process facilitates a genuine examination of U.S. policy toward the region. Through written statements and responses at the hearing, a nominee can present a strategic vision for Africa’s importance and identify key priorities and challenges. It is more than congressional vetting; it is an opening to communicate the Administration’s goals to a wider audience.

• Several assistant secretary nominees used their statements to lay out overarching priorities, including Chester Crocker in 1981, Susan Rice in 1997, and Jendayi Frazer in 2005. Johnnie Carson, in 2009, affirmed that “If I am confirmed, I will focus on four key areas: strengthening Africa’s democratic institutions and adherence to the rule of law, working with African countries to prevent conflict and to build local peacekeeping capacity, fostering sustained economic development and growth, and finally partnering with Africa to combat threats like health pandemics, climate change and narcotrafficking.”

• A handful of nominees, especially those with deep expertise in African affairs, also used the hearings to demonstrate a substantive command of the issues. Assistant secretary nominee Joseph Palmer II in 1966, for example, held forth on the reasons for an uptick in coups, while assistant secretary Hank Cohen in 1989 delivered a detailed update on dynamics in southern Africa. Assistant secretary nominee Linda Thomas-Greenfield in 2013 addressed the balance between humanitarian and development assistance: “We need to do both. We cannot stop doing humanitarian assistance when people are dying…at the same time, we have to take a much more long-term view and again help African countries build the capacity so that they can deal with their health initiatives and then we can work with them on building their infrastructure so that they can encourage investments and push for opportunities for their people.”

• Some nominees also used the process to preview forthcoming policies and initiatives. Assistant secretary nominee Walter Kansteiner in 2001 noted that the Administration planned to host a U.S.-sub-Saharan Africa Trade and Economic Cooperation Forum to focus African leaders on the importance of good governance and economic reform. Assistant secretary nominee Tibor Nagy in 2018 pledged to address human rights abuses in South Sudan: “I promise you I will look for every pressure point possible, including the ones that have not yet been pushed, to make sure that those who are complicit in these tragedies have to pay.”

This is also true of some senators presiding over confirmation hearings. Their engagement isn’t perfunctory; it is laser-focused on major issues and concerns. In those moments, at least, the goal seems less about political point-scoring than probing a nominee on difficult or contentious policy choices.

• California Senator Alan Cranston in 1981 asked Crocker to describe “how we are going to follow balanced policy there, seeking to improve relations with South Africa, which I gather is part of the agenda, but recognizing the dangers of taking steps that would alienate us from black Africa. How are we going to walk that tightrope?”

• Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold in 2009 noted that “Ethiopia is an important partner of the United States. We do have shared interests, but I’m concerned by growing reports of repressiveness by the Ethiopian government.” He asked nominee Carson how the Obama Administration planned to strike a more balanced partnership with Ethiopia centered on genuine democratic progress.

• Idaho Senator Jim Risch in 2021 raised the conflict and suffering in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions. Noting that the international response had not matched the seriousness of the crisis, he asked assistant secretary nominee Molly Phee what role the United States should play.

In my view, the gold standard is when a nominee tries to elevate the debate rather than fall back on platitudes. In his testimony, Crocker argued that “while we are neither a dominant external power in Africa nor Africa’s key economic partner, we are, nevertheless, a critical, and often indispensable actor on a continent where our strategic, political, and economic interests are growing.” In 2005, Frazer walked the committee through the Bush Administration’s step-by-step effort to erase Africa’s massive debt burden, finally putting an end to the “unending cycle of lend and forgive, lend and forgive.” She did not settle for a simple answer; the issue was too important to paper over the details of a landmark policy decision.

Political Theater

Unfortunately, some of the hearings I reviewed lacked seriousness. They slipped into irrelevance or plain ignorance of the issues at hand. In perhaps the most unbelievable example, North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms asked Wesley William Egan, the U.S. ambassadorial nominee to Guinea-Bissau, about the NCAA tournament in 1983. Egan later recalled the exchange in an oral history interview:

Senator Helms’s first question to me was, “Mr. Egan, could you explain to the committee how it is possible that the North Carolina Tar Heels have dropped from number one to number 11 in the NCAA rankings?” You can imagine the odd expression that passed over the face of the Guinea-Bissau ambassador. He was having trouble following the discussion in English, but to have this first question be about a basketball team was confusing. I said, “Senator, I can’t explain why they’ve dropped from number one to number 11, but I will give you my personal guarantee that by the time of the NCAA finals, they’ll be in the top eight.” Helms sort of sat back and said, “Well, that’s fine with me, no further questions.”

Most of the interactions I reviewed aren’t this absurd, but confirmation hearings do routinely miss an opportunity to inform the broader public about U.S. objectives in the region. In certain cases, they reveal how shallow the nominee’s or senator’s grasp of the issues can be.

• Some nominees were remarkably candid about how little they knew. In 1961, assistant secretary nominee (and former Michigan governor) G. Mennen “Soapy” Williams said, “I certainly do not pretend to be an African expert.” Assistant secretary David Newsom in 1969 was similarly transparent, admitting that he had not “plunged into all the intricacies of our present programs and policies in Africa.” When asked about Rhodesia, he conceded that he had not “gotten into the details of this sufficiently to make a truly intelligent answer to that question,” and added that he had already made up in his mind “a little list of problems” he would have to examine quickly if confirmed.

• Senators were not always more probing. In 1966, Vermont Senator George Aiken asked Palmer about the number of assistant secretaries at the State Department, wondering how “we got so many assistant secretaries.” In 1977, Alabama Senator John Sparkman asked Cohen, then ambassadorial nominee to Senegal, “what do you think about the general situation in Africa? There has been a good bit of stirring around, guessing, prognosticating, and so forth.” Dennis Jett later recalled that senators asked only “generic questions, nothing in particular about me or about Mozambique” at his 1993 hearing.

The most problematic exchanges are openly political, designed to validate a partisan position or press a nominee to concede authority they do not actually possess. A senator may ask every nominee the same question, regardlessly of the relevance to their potential position, because it has partisan value.

• Several senators and members of Congress attacked Nathaniel Davis’s nomination for assistant secretary in 1975 because he had previously served as U.S. ambassador to Chile during the overthrow of Salvador Allende. Davis defended himself, asserting “I might say that in my career in the Foreign Service, whether this be in Chile or whether it be elsewhere, I have done my best to serve my country with such integrity, such truthfulness, and such honor as I have been able to uphold.”

• Illinois Senator Charles Percy used the confirmation hearing for assistant secretary nominee Richard M. Moose in 1977 to air his concerns about UN Ambassador Andrew Young’s independence. Moose tried to deflect, emphasizing the need to distinguish between Ambassador Young’s personal views and the Carter Administration’s official policy.

Or Just A Formality

But perhaps I’m being too harsh—or just very naive. The overriding goal of the hearing may simply be to fill the seat. After all, much of the vetting is happening behind the scenes, chiefly during consultations with senators and their staff. The point of the hearing, in contrast, is confirmation. As Senator Chris Coons recently said of the current assistant secretary nominee: “Africa is incredibly important, and this is a critical post. It’s been well over a year vacant, and I’m concerned about the urgency and the importance of sending someone capable to lead our Africa engagement in the State Department.”

In recent years, nominees have submitted relatively short statements, often just two to four pages. Their answers are serviceable, but they often seem designed to avoid taking a substantive position. They agree with the premise of nearly every question, layering on inoffensive clichés. Hearings also now tend to bundle multiple nominees together, ensuring that each receives only a handful of questions. Maybe that makes sense as an expedient way to move through a backlog of nominees waiting to begin their jobs. To be sure, it is already an awfully long process from nomination to confirmation. But too often, substance is sacrificed for speed.

A Side Note on QFRs

I’ve intentionally left out one final part of the confirmation process: Questions for the Record (QFRs). Following a hearing, senators often submit follow-up queries for the nominee. While they only become part of the official transcript after some time, QFRs are another venue for substantive policy discussion. Many of these questions address specific and important topics. For example, senators asked Phee about the political transition in Somalia, endemic corruption in Nigeria, Russian influence in the Central African Republic, and elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, among other subjects.

That’s not to say that QFRs can’t be ridiculous either. Crocker recalled receiving 108 questions from Helms’s staff, including: “do you believe that the South African government should ever have to negotiate its future with black opposition groups that are wedded to violence?” and “do you think that the Soviet Union is seeking to control the Cape sea route?” Crocker later said they were “very leading questions…some of them could only have been written in Pretoria. You knew that they were plants, in effect.”

But the importance of QFRs is twofold: they are eventually accessible to the public, and they are drafted by the bureaucracy, not just the candidate. Congress, consequently, receives an official response, not a nominee’s hedged answer to a difficult question about resources. In almost every assistant secretary hearing since the 1960s, senators have asked how a short-staffed Africa Bureau could implement such a broad agenda with limited resources. Nominees tend to promise aggressive advocacy for more resources or exhibit the kind of leadership that might “reinvigorate the sense of public service,” but it is almost impossible for them to deliver on those assurances. In contrast, when the same question is answered through the QFR process, the response carries more weight because it has presumably been cleared by senior levels of the State Department.

Post-Strategy

I am convinced that the confirmation hearing is an opportunity to seize, not just an obstacle to overcome. I recognize that what I am suggesting may not be possible given our partisan politics and the intricacies of moving nominations through Congress—a reflection of how both political parties and both branches of government approach this process. At the same time, I can’t escape the fact that it is rare for U.S.-Africa policymakers to have access to a public platform as important as the U.S. Congress. We should strive to use this moment to engage in a constructive policy discussion and educate the broader public about Africa’s importance to U.S. interests. We can also commit ourselves, in front of the American people, to doing more and doing better with our African partners. Or, as Susan Rice noted in her statement, if “we engage actively and, yes, even take a few risks, the American people stand to reap substantial and lasting benefits.” The confirmation hearing should be the starting point, not a detour, on the path to more effective policy.

Unlike many of my other posts, this isn’t about bureaucratic obstacles or personalities that blocked promising policy ideas. This is more personal. It is me admitting that I didn’t know how to get it done and sharing some of the missteps I made along the way. By conducting a post-mortem of where I went wrong, I hope to uncover what it will take to get it right next time.

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When candidate Joe Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations in August 2019 that he intended to start an urbanization initiative in Africa, I was elated. Even though I hadn’t started to volunteer for the campaign, I had been writing about the importance of urbanization for several years; in fact, I had launched an interview series at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) exploring different dimensions of Africa’s urban future. My interest stemmed in part from an exceptional World Bank report, Africa’s Cities: Opening Doors to the World, published in 2017. It also grew out of my time living on the continent—especially in Abidjan in the early 2000s. I wanted people to see what I saw: African cities that were entrepreneurial, tech-savvy, culturally vibrant, and globally connected.

Following Biden’s election, I teamed up with my friends Todd Moss and Gyude Moore to map out what a signature initiative on urbanization might look like. We called it the “Great Cities Partnership.” We made a strong case, arguing that “Africa’s urban hubs will become the nexus of every vital foreign policy objective.” Building on Todd’s collaboration with our friend Ben Leo—their work helped to shape the U.S. Development Finance Corporation—we sketched out a vision for an urbanization program.

• Goals: Create 2 million jobs by 2030; catalyze $20 billion in new urban investment by 2030; and reduce local air pollution by 20 percent by 2030.

• Pilot: Start with five cities that meet specific criteria, including a population projected to exceed 5 million people by 2050; an identifiable fast-growing middle class of consumers; a sufficient legal, regulatory, and political autonomy to take actions and to raise revenue; and demand and capacity to engage with the partnership.

• Activities and Structure: The partnership would work directly with municipal governments, conduct joint constraints analysis to identify barriers and a work plan; and establish five-year municipal compacts and joint progress indicators.

• Areas of Work: The partnership will cover governance barriers and catalyze hard and soft infrastructure investments across 10 critical areas that make cities work: digital connectivity, energy, transportation, legal, safety and security, housing, health, water and waste, higher education, and creative arts.

• Notional Budget: The initiative would include a commitment of $11.8 billion over five years, as well as FTEs to support these activities. These resources would enable the DFC, Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), U.S. Import-Export Bank, U.S. Trade and Development Agency, Department of Commerce, Department of Justice, Department of the Treasury, Department of State, Department of Transportation, and Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to play meaningful roles.

A Failed Pivot

Armed with this urbanization blueprint, I started my job as the primary drafter of President Biden’s Africa strategy in October 2021. The problem, however, was that I had come late to the party—10 months late, to be exact. I didn’t have a mandate to launch a new initiative, certainly not one that might cost more than $10 billion and require 11 agencies to take on new commitments. But, perhaps even more important, I didn’t really know how to do it.

Without a real inkling of how to make it happen, I convinced myself I could manifest it by writing the idea into the strategy. On the second to last page, I inserted that our approach would include “rebalancing toward urban hubs.” Specifically, I said:

Consistent with President Biden’s commitment to invest in urban renewal and infrastructure at home, the United States will help African cities plan for their growth in critical sectors like energy access, climate change, adaptation, transportation, and water and waste management. We will demonstrate a renewed commitment to subnational capacity building and harness existing interagency tools and capabilities to unlock the region’s urban potential and foster thriving, green, and resilient cities and infrastructure. Borrowing from the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) compact investment model, these partnerships will work directly with municipal governments; conduct joint analysis to identify constraints and a work plan to address their causes; and establish time-bound municipal compacts and joint progress indicators.

This was my little Easter egg. No one objected to the language, and my plan was to use the soon-to-be-unveiled MCC program with Nairobi as a launchpad for a real urbanization initiative. Surely, I thought, I could build some momentum from what was expected to be the largest threshold program ($60 million) in history and uniquely focused on transportation, land use, and climate-friendly transit in Kenya’s capital city. I miscalculated. The MCC program was delayed for more than a year. Meanwhile, coups in the Sahel and war in Sudan quickly absorbed what little bandwidth I had left.

Unfortunately, I only continued to miss opportunities. I shied away from proposing it as a deliverable for the U.S.–Africa Leaders Summit in December 2022. I also hesitated to pitch HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge when we traveled together to Nigeria for President Bola Tinubu’s inauguration in May 2023. I made a last-ditch effort to propose a mini-summit on urbanization as part of President William Ruto’s state visit in May 2024, but my State colleagues (understandably) balked at the idea. They were not going to sign up for my passion project after I had already announced my departure.

After Action Report

In hindsight, I think I was missing four essential elements to bring to life an initiative of such ambition and scale:

• Top Cover. It is crucial to have support at the highest levels to move the bureaucracy and secure the funding for a signature program—or at least the one we envisioned in the “Great Cities Partnership” white paper. But instead of directly asking my bosses to sign off on this idea, I tried to backdoor it through the Africa strategy and other existing efforts. In contrast, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice told President George W. Bush that she hoped he’d take an interest in Africa and asked experts to talk to him about the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In a 2017 interview, Bush recounted what inspired him to launch the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) “I decided to do something about it, based upon the principles I had articulated: that all life is precious and that we’re all God’s children.”

• Coordination Games. It is important to sell the interagency on the big idea. While no one opposed the language in the strategy, I was only really talking with MCC about my vision. Without more stakeholders, there was little movement on the urbanization initiative except what existed in my head. And it is not just inside government, there’s an outside game, too. It is also useful to have Congress interested and think tanks writing and talking about the concept. Todd and Ben might have penned the seminal piece on what would become the DFC, but they weren’t the only ones. There were congressional hearings and other experts helping to the shape the idea and generate political support.

• Prudent Planning. It takes time to develop a major initiative. It can’t be something you wish into existence or table-drop as a potential deliverable before a summit or senior official trip. I used that tactic for other smaller programs, such as the African Democratic and Political Transition (ADAPT) initiative or the 21st Century Partnership for African Security (21PAS), but urbanization was a totally different beast. You can’t announce it and work out the details later. During President Barack Obama’s Administration, I had a front row seat to the process leading up to the establishment of Power Africa. There were hundreds of meetings and conversations, designing different components of the program and conducting deep dives into specific countries.

• Good Timing. It is usually true that some of the biggest initiatives start at the beginning of a president’s first or second term. Or at least the kernel of the idea is planted on day one. That’s when there is an openness to blue sky thinking and a willingness to dedicate significant resources for an administration-defining program. Rightly or wrongly, I didn’t think I had the runway for something as big as urbanization, especially when it might have to compete with other big-ticket priorities. President John F. Kennedy, in contrast, established the Peace Corps in March 1961 and presented his vision for USAID in May 1961—only a few months after his inauguration.

If I’m being honest, the urbanization initiative failed because I didn’t take a big enough swing. I was slightly intimidated by the immensity of the task and didn’t fully know, at least in the beginning, how to make it happen. Yes, the timing wasn’t ideal, but everything else was possible. Bottom line: I missed my shot.

Back to the Future

There’s still an opportunity to launch an urbanization program. And it won’t be the first time the U.S. government focused on cities. In 1973, USAID elevated urbanization as a priority and established an Office of Urban Development. It focused on secondary land-use planning, growth management, and small, medium, and microenterprises, as well as municipal revenue systems. Unfortunately, this urban focus was relatively short-lived. Urban Development merged into a new “Multisectoral Development” office in 1982 and continued to bounce around the agency in different configurations. Despite occasional reports on urbanization, the U.S. government never returned to the topic in a meaningful way. We treated urbanization as a passing theme rather than a defining feature of U.S. policy toward Africa. That approach may have been excusable in the 1970s. It is untenable now.

Post Strategy

I am convinced that the next major initiative toward the region should be urbanization. Not only is urban life increasingly a reality for a majority of Africans, but it is where many U.S. priorities lie. It is where we access markets, confront many political and security risks, tackle climate and health challenges, and engage the next generation of African leaders. As we wrote in 2021, African cities are “engines of productivity, epicenters of creativity, and generators of wealth. But many are also poorly designed and governed while suffering from crime, traffic, pollution, and food insecurity.” The policy answer, therefore, is not to be meek and incremental. If we are serious about the U.S.-Africa partnership, we must invest where the region is headed—not where it used to be. We need to embrace Africa’s urban future.

For those of us committed to advancing U.S. policy toward sub-Saharan Africa, the idea of closer cooperation with Near East countries was tantalizing.1 It promised an influx of resources and a reservoir of credibility that our partnerships with former colonial powers plainly lacked. It began to feel like a cheat code—a way to unlock influence despite tight budgets and finite bandwidth. A decade later, the results of that shift have been more complicated than anticipated. Getting it right again will require a rebalancing.

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In the months and years following the Somali famine, a cottage industry sprang up to extoll the virtues of deeper engagement and reimagining the Red Sea as a new geopolitical arena. Foreign policy specialists, myself included, started to publish papers and podcasts on the topic. It reflected a changing international landscape as the Gulf States and Turkey increased their diplomatic presence, enlarged their security footprint, and funneled significant capital into agriculture, infrastructure projects, and health systems, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

We weren’t naive. We recognized that geopolitics, domestic agendas, and regional rivalries were problems to be managed. A U.S. Institute of Peace report, for example, acknowledged that “the external actors responsible for instability in the Red Sea are not primarily U.S. rivals—that is, China and Russia—but namely Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the UAE.” In 2018, I warned that “if this new dynamic is poorly managed, it could derail the region’s progress and entangle it in international disputes,” noting how the split between the UAE and Saudi Arabia on one side and Qatar and Turkey on the other threatened to unravel some of Somalia’s hard-earned progress. Upon reflection, however, I think our enthusiasm for cooperation outweighed our reservations, and our confidence in U.S. influence outstripped our capabilities.

The Best-Laid Plans

This diplomatic realignment went astray fairly quickly, especially in the Horn of Africa. During my time in the Biden Administration, we established quints and quads with Near East countries to press for transitions and ceasefires. We encouraged investments in strategic sectors, including data centers and ports. We partnered to resolve diplomatic disputes. Although we had some successes, it became increasingly difficult to deny that these budding relationships also were undercutting U.S. influence and straining U.S.-Africa ties.

• Denied Leverage. Our close partnerships with certain Gulf states paradoxically made it harder to engage in frank conversations about destabilizing actions in the region. Amid reports of UAE support for the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan, most U.S. private engagements and public statements treaded lightly on the matter. And when U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan Tom Perriello addressed the issue on a podcast, it ignited a diplomatic firestorm. The UK also experienced blowback following a UN Security Council meeting. The result has been less U.S. leverage, not more.

• Unequal Tradeoffs. As the two regions became more intertwined, the pressure to make deals at the expense of U.S.-Africa priorities intensified. During the Trump and Biden Administrations, there was pressure to sign up more countries to the Abraham Accords with Israel, even when that required circumventing or complicating our existing bilateral policies toward those African actors. At one point, I was asked to reallocate funding from Africa to support a Near East priority. (For the record, I wasn’t opposed to the idea—just bewildered by the suggestion that it be taken out of our minuscule Africa budget rather than drawn from the far more resourced Near East account.)

• Jilted Partners. Most alarming, our diplomacy with Arab states alienated several African governments. At least one African leader pointedly asked several senior U.S. officials why Africans were being excluded from the U.S.-Saudi-led Jeddah process on Sudan. The president was frustrated, questioning whether the United States even trusted its African partners to handle the portfolio. The later inclusion of the African Union and East Africa’s Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) felt like a meager concession.

An Asymmetry

The main problem has been asymmetry. U.S. national security interests have historically ranked higher in the Near East than in Africa. Accordingly, as a U.S.-Africa policymaker, it becomes harder to put your issues on the table, press U.S. counterparts to engage, and persuade senior officials to accept your arguments when it could potentially derail Near East policy priorities.

• Lower Priority. When I was in the Biden Administration, we routinely lobbied to include African issues in senior-level meetings and calls with Arab, Israeli, and Turkish leaders. To be fair, we were never turned down or told that our policy goals weren’t valid. What happened, however, was that our talking points were fourth, fifth, or sixth on the call sheet. In practice, it meant that there was rarely enough time to get to our issues and certainly insufficient space to address them in full. That made it nearly impossible to build policy momentum.

• Limited Interest. This asymmetry also played out at lower levels. It required a serious amount of pestering to get my counterparts who focused on the Near East to engage on African priorities. To be fair, I often needed them to say uncomfortable things to their foreign counterparts or at least spend time on my issues at the expense of theirs. But it often felt like they saw what we were doing in their backyard as a distraction.

• Less Leeway. Finally, when we had a disagreement over the direction of a policy that affected Africa and Near East interests, we were arguing from a position of weakness. That’s not to say that I didn’t win some of the debates over proposed meetings or certain initiatives, but the burden of proof most certainly fell on the Africa team. Given the considerable U.S. national security interests in the Near East, the default was to approve policies that advanced objectives there—even if it risked undercutting U.S. goals in Africa.

And if U.S.–Near East initiatives in Africa weren’t paying dividends, there was hesitation to turn them off for fear of upsetting partners in the Gulf or elsewhere. On several occasions, we decided to pause the Jeddah process for tactical and strategic reasons. But it often took convincing, since no one wanted to inadvertently insult our Saudi hosts. It was another example of the asymmetry: an effective approach in Africa was weighed against preserving important relationships with Near East partners.

But Also a Misreading of History

What was also striking about this regional balancing act was its ahistoricism. Many U.S.-Africa policymakers and commentators marveled at what they deemed to be unprecedented engagement by Turkey and Gulf states in Africa. The scale and pace of these interactions may have been new, but the interconnectedness between the two regions is centuries old. The fascination with the “newness” blinded some to the risks.

The Ottoman Empire, for example, in the late 19th century participated in the “Scramble for Africa,” eyeing the Lake Chad Basin, eastern Sahara, and Red Sea. In more recent decades, Near East leaders traveled to the continent to court partners and advance their own agendas. These engagements were documented in declassified CIA reports.

• In 1958, CIA analysts assessed that Israeli Foreign Minister Golda Meir had traveled to Ghana, Liberia, and pre-independent Nigeria to “win allies who will give it support, particularly in the United Nations, and to limit the influence of UAR President Nasir.”

• In 1972, CIA analysts judged that Saudi King Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud’s multi-nation tour, where he stopped in Chad, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, and Uganda, aimed to “promote African support for the Palestinian and other Arab causes.”

In the 1970s and 1980s, Near East countries became even more involved, presenting significant challenges for the United States. The Safari Club, an alliance of Saudis, French, Moroccans, Iranians, and Egyptians, pooled their resources to bolster their allies in Africa, including Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire. In the New York Times, a former Carter Administration official explained: “it takes King Fahd about 10 seconds to sign a check, it takes Congress weeks to debate the smallest issue of this sort. If you can get somebody else to pay for it, it’s nice and convenient.” Saudi funding in the late 1970s helped shift Somalia’s alignment from the Soviet Union to the West. It also financed training for Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA forces in Angola and helped stave off threats to Sudanese ruler Jaafar Nimeiri. In 1973, the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research cautioned that “increasing Arab influence in Black Africa” could be used to bring pressure on the United States in areas of prime concern to both Arabs and Africans.

This misremembering of history cuts both ways. For example, many U.S. officials seemed to discount African peacemaking capacity. (This was often due to a lack of familiarity; there were several ambassadors and special envoys with more experience in Arab affairs than in African ones.) When I expressed opposition to what felt like diplomatic outsourcing to non-Africans, I was told that only the Gulf states had the resources, venues, and track record to lead these initiatives. My response was immediate: what about the Lusaka Protocol (1994), the Lomé Peace Agreement (1999), the Arta Agreement (2000), the Accra Agreement (2003), the Sun City Agreement (2003), the Arusha Accords (2005), the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (2005), the Djibouti Agreement (2008), and the Pretoria Agreement (2022)?

An Inclusive, African-led Approach

If we overlearned the lesson of the Muslim and Arab response to the Somali famine in 2011-12 by seeing virtue in everything these countries do in Africa, we also underlearned a different lesson from the same period of strife in the Horn of Africa. In February 2012, UK Prime Minister David Cameron convened the London Conference on Somalia. It was an inclusive gathering to coordinate efforts against piracy, poverty, and famine and to address the country’s civil war. Forty countries participated, including African, Arab, European, and U.S. representatives. It neither privileged nor excluded the Near East. It set the stage for future cooperation, including the “S6” group of security donors (Britain, the EU, Turkey, the UAE, the UN, and the United States). I was serving as NSC Director for Somalia at the time, and it remains a formative experience for me. It underscored what inclusivity looks like—and how tangible progress can be made when all participants are treated as equals.

A related lesson, of course, is that African leadership and ownership are crucial. When engaging Near East partners, it is imperative that Africans are part of the process. They cannot be bystanders or assigned token roles on matters of grave consequence to their own region. I continue to return to one of the principles underpinning the Bush Administration’s approach to conflict resolution in Africa: “facilitate peace by working with and within the region, including the region’s leaders (rather than imposing peace arrangements from outside).” This principle applies to U.S. cooperation with the Near East on Africa just as much as it does for Western Europe. (I will have more to say about this in a future post.)

Post Strategy

I am convinced that U.S. engagement with the Near East is important and worthwhile. After all, the Gulf states, Israel, and Turkey will continue to shape the African landscape whether the United States is involved or not. (Just look at the past two months, where the Saudi-UAE rivalry and Israel’s recognition of Somaliland have sent shockwaves through the Horn). What we must guard against, though, is reflexively subordinating our Africa priorities to our Near East objectives. There are better approaches, including initiating U.S. bilateral dialogues with Near East countries on Africa (which we did with Turkey during the Obama administration) or establishing trilaterals between the United States, an African country, and a Near East government to work through economic, security, and other priorities. We shouldn’t be shy to disagree when it is in our interest. After all, if we are going to work with the Near East, these partnerships should amplify U.S.-Africa policy—not eclipse it.

This post has been a long time coming. It is an issue I struggled with myself when I served in government, and one that feels especially relevant in the current moment. The question, then, is what defeatism looks like in practice, why it harms U.S. policy toward Africa, and how one combats this negative attitude.

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Defeatism is a tricky word. It usually refers to an attitude of accepting or resigning oneself to defeat, but I think of it differently. To me, defeatism is watering down objectives and rationalizing bad decisions. It is settling for less because it just feels easier—not because it is strategically sound. Despite how it’s often justified, defeatism is not about hard tradeoffs or smart concessions; it is about going along to get along at the expense of your agenda. Unfortunately, it happens too often in U.S.-Africa policy.

• Asking for Less. This is essentially self-censorship, refraining from asking for more because you assume you will fail and lose credibility in the process. I made this mistake several times. As I recently told Santi Ruiz on his podcast, Statecraft, I was overly cautious about requesting meetings between President Biden and his African counterparts, especially following the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in December 2022, because I expected my proposals would be rejected. This kind of hesitancy has a long history. In 1955, State Department officials meekly suggested a need for an independent strategy toward the region, insisting it wouldn’t introduce “revolutionary” new programs because our interests are “real but limited.”

• Accepting Less. This is the most common form of defeatism in policy. To be sure, it is part and parcel of working in a government bureaucracy: you are sometimes expected to craft and support policies even when you disagree with them. However, it can be more pernicious when it’s internalized. Former U.S. Ambassador to Kenya, Smith Hempstone, in his memoirs Rogue Ambassador, recalled how many smart young diplomats soon realize the “best guarantee of promotion, as in the military, is not excellence of performance” but rather “sucking up and keeping one’s head down.” Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, for example, removed three assistant secretaries of state for African affairs before he found one who would accede to his policy demands and replace the Bureau’s entire leadership team.

• Embracing Less. It is one thing to compromise or cave, but it is entirely another thing to cheer an inferior outcome. Recently, there has been public acclaim surrounding the potential extension of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), even though H.R. 6500 does not exempt AGOA beneficiary countries from President Trump’s reciprocal tariffs. In the late 1960s, U.S. diplomats hailed President Johnson’s speech on the third anniversary of the Organization of African Unity as a major landmark, despite the absence of new policies and a lackluster reception. White House Press Secretary Bill Moyers characterized it as a “cheap way” to keep people at home quiet on civil rights issues and outflank Robert F. Kennedy.

Sources of Defeatism

Defeatism is a learned behavior, reinforced over time by rejection—and sometimes ridicule. U.S. diplomats, who are told to keep Africa off the Secretary of State’s desk or overruled when objecting to U.S. embassy and consulate closures, start to lower their expectations. This sense of helplessness compounds when commentators, as they did in the 1990s, suggest that Africa’s strategic importance to the West had declined or conclude that the United States has few, concrete material interests in Africa. It becomes difficult to keep one’s head up, especially when life-saving assistance is cut, staffing is reduced, and engagement is curtailed.

In the past, there has been belittling and bullying of U.S. officials working on Africa, which eventually quieted advocacy for better policies. Kennedy’s Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, G. Mennen “Soapy” Williams, who was initially teased for his forward-leaning proposals, found himself sidelined when President Johnson appointed Averell Harriman as ambassador-at-large for Africa. David Newsom, who served as top diplomat for Africa from 1969 to 1974, recounted that a member of President Nixon’s team looked askance at the suggestion that the president make a speech on Africa. The staffer replied, “Why should he? We only got 8 percent of the Black vote.” In his memoirs, Kissinger disparaged Africa Bureau officials as having a “siege mentality in which they transmuted their isolation into a claim to moral superiority, casting themselves as the defenders of American idealism.”

And finally, there are the true believers who promote defeatism because they genuinely support a diminution of U.S. engagement in Africa. U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia Ed Korry, for example, returned to Washington in the 1960s to lead a new task force on U.S. assistance. He argued that Africa was “for the most part outside the main areas of U.S. attention,” proposing that President Johnson drastically cut most aid programs to focus on a few strategic countries. The Korry Report “ruined” assistance in Africa, according to one former ambassador. This same sentiment appears to be back in vogue, as U.S. officials applaud budget cuts, press for embassy closures, and reject the idea of Africa as a strategic region.

Regrets, I’ve Had a Few

The problem with defeatism is that it doesn’t serve U.S. interests in the long term. Doing the least is not a strategy for success. In almost every case, the pullback of U.S. engagement and assistance was deemed a mistake and reversed. For example, a major drought in the Sahel in the 1970s spurred Congress to pass the Sahel Development Program and reestablish bilateral aid missions, marking the end of the Korry Report. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, U.S. policymakers reopened embassies, USAID missions, and CIA stations that had been closed during the budget cuts of the 1990s; the Biden Administration in 2023 announced a return to a full-time diplomatic presence in Seychelles after a 27-year absence. Even Kissinger, who said Africa resided in the “backwaters of policy,” eventually changed his mind, engaging directly on crises in Angola and Rhodesia. While at a luncheon in Zambia, he remarked “there is nothing to be gained in a debate about whether in the past America has neglected Africa or been insufficiently committed to African goals…in active collaboration there is much we can do; in contention or apart we will miss great opportunities.”

The Courage of One’s Convictions

The antidote for defeatism is to stand up for what is necessary to implement an effective policy toward the region. I am not saying this is easy; I wasn’t always consistent about when I went for broke and when I pulled my punches. (I had to psych myself up to insist on more time and attention—an approach that doesn’t come naturally to me.) But, if you are determined to effect positive change, you can’t accept the status quo and certainly can’t countenance less. It requires strategic clarity, prioritization, and a compelling theory of the case. Above all, you have to show some fortitude and demand more, even if that means a face-off with powerful people.

• Asking for More. The first step is to state your intentions and make the case to do more. This usually happens through strategies or congressional testimony. In his 1981 confirmation hearing, then–assistant secretary nominee Chester Crocker argued that “Africa is becoming increasingly important to the United States in pursuit of our global objectives.” He then waited six months for confirmation because he wouldn’t compromise his policies or fire any of his deputies. Johnnie Carson, President Obama’s first assistant secretary for African affairs, repeatedly argued for more diplomatic outposts in the region, especially in Nigeria, an idea he has continued to champion even after leaving his position.

• Defending More. It is not enough to ask for more—you have to defend why it’s necessary. In his 1969 confirmation hearing, Newsom refused to concede when the committee chairman menacingly asked if “it might even be more to our interest if we have no programs at all, don’t you think?” In 1994, National Security Council Senior Director for African Affairs Donald Steinberg penned a memo to President Clinton arguing for a more robust policy toward the region, which helped set the stage for training an estimated 6,000 African peacekeepers and increasing U.S. staffing.

• Enacting More. Most importantly, you have to ensure that you will do what you say. President George W. Bush’s National Security Strategy in 2006 indicated that “Africa holds growing geo-strategic importance and is a high priority of this Administration.” Bush’s record was unrivaled, passing landmark legislation such as the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR); securing international agreement on multilateral debt relief; expanding training for African militaries; and helping to resolve conflicts in Angola, Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Sudan’s Darfur region.

Let’s be clear: defeatism starts at the top. When a U.S. president has little interest in or time for African issues, policy inevitably suffers. Conversely, a president who sees the region’s strategic importance will overrule his bureaucracy to strengthen U.S.-African relations. In October 1963, President Kennedy met with Mauritanian leader Mokhtar Ould Daddah. The meeting went long, frustrating his staff who asked with exasperation: “how many votes are there in Mauritania?” Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama also dismissed bureaucratic reservations to deploy warships off the coast of Liberia during the civil war in the 2000s and dispatch troops to fight Ebola in the 2010s, respectively. Even in retirement, both presidents continue to involve themselves in African issues; in 2017, 2023, and 2025, Bush—either personally or through his Institute—intervened to protect PEPFAR funding.

Post Strategy

Let’s end where we started. I am convinced the region’s strategic importance will only continue to grow. It is not realism to relegate U.S. policy toward Africa to the periphery; it is a lack of foresight. This month, I joined my friends Eric Olander and Cobus Van Staden on the China-Africa podcast. We agreed on the perilous state of U.S.-Africa relations, but we argued about what to do next and whether it was possible to recover from this nadir. My position is that this moment of disruption and disillusionment is an opportunity to rethink our approach and truly interrogate what has gone wrong and what has gone right in some eight decades of U.S.-Africa relations. We have to reject defeatism and start mapping out what it would take to build a new future partnership with the continent. It has happened before and it can happen again—but only if we ask for more, not less.

I have spent a lot of time reflecting on this historical moment in the wake of the recent wave of military strongmen seizing power in sub-Saharan Africa. From August 2020 to November 2025, there have been at least 10 coups in eight countries, alongside several coup attempts and a fraught presidential succession in Chad. This has resurfaced a debate long assumed to be resolved about the legitimacy, effectiveness, and U.S. responses to coups d’état.

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My Years in Coups

I felt thoroughly defeated. In August 2023, I woke up to the news of another coup in another African country. This time it was in Gabon, marking the end of the Bongo family dynasty which had ruled the country since 1967. And while I was certainly not an admirer of the ousted autocratic regime—even though I had just traveled there a few weeks earlier—I was surprised that others did not share my disappointment about the military takeover. Indeed, some of them even counseled the U.S. government to refrain from taking action.

Africa has experienced more coups than any other region. U.S. researchers Jonathan Powell and Clayton Thyne’s most recent data shows 221 military takeovers, of which 111 have been successful. Over the course of my career as a CIA analyst, think tank expert, and U.S. policymaker, I have had to warn about coup threats, evaluate potential responses, and confront their consequences. Based on my studies and personal experiences—my first coups were Guinea-Bissau in 2003 and Mauritania in 2005—I’ve come to three conclusions about coups:

• Generally Popular. While solid majorities of Africans express a preference for democracy over any other kind of government, Afrobarometer polling indicates that 51 percent agree that it is “legitimate for the armed forces to take control of government when elected leaders abuse power for their own ends.” One is hard-pressed to point to coups that were initially opposed by the population, save for Sani Abacha’s coup in Nigeria in 1993, Johnny Paul Koroma’s takeover in Sierra Leone in 1997, and the Sudanese military’s consolidation of power in 2021.

• Relatively Easy. I always think about the story of Lieutenant Arthur who in 1967 almost single-handedly overthrew the ruling military junta in Ghana. As Naunihal Singh explains in his extraordinary book, Seizing Power: The Strategic Logic of Military Coups, the central dynamics of a coup attempt are those that occur within a military. Soldiers don't want to engage in fratricidal bloodshed, a sentiment that enables junior officers or even disliked senior officers to swiftly consolidate control.

• Remarkably Diverse. There are significant variations in military coups from the rank of the plotters, popularity of the ousted leader, and timing of the power grab. In some cases, a coup fails but it still results in the end of the government. Contrary to former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan’s reference to a ‘ceremonial coup’ in Guinea-Bissau, there have been cases where dethroned leaders comment on coups—or even speak out publicly from detention or exile; Niger’s President Bazoum, for example, penned a Washington Post opinion piece from captivity.

What Has Changed

There used to be a consensus about the illegality of coups. As I wrote in Foreign Affairs in 2024, every coup between 2005 and 2009 was denounced by a Western power. Even Russia observed this norm for a spell, calling for the restoration of democratic rule following a 2003 coup in Guinea-Bissau and a 2008 coup in Mauritania. This consensus, however, has broken down. It is partly the result of fatigue with the quality of democracy and partly a reflection of the existential security challenges facing many countries, especially those in the Sahel. It has heralded the return of what Samuel Fury Childs Daly has termed “militarism”—a belief that soldiers can bring order and discipline, as well as restore dignity and sovereignty to the nation. Geopolitical competition is also contributing to this dynamic, creating an atmosphere where coup leaders need not fear external isolation. Indeed, they may even be feted in Moscow or courted in Beijing.

In other words, there is a new legitimacy to military rule. I found myself in arguments with friends and colleagues about the juntas—about their popularity, effectiveness, and the righteousness of the coup leaders’ agendas. Many of my debate partners saw my position on coups as naive and too rigid. They implored the U.S. government to be more sympathetic to what they believed to be genuine efforts to ‘reform’ the state. Paradoxically, some argued that Washington should go easy on the juntas lest Russia or China gain influence, while others insisted that U.S. opposition itself was driven by Moscow’s growing role in the Sahel.

After I left my perch at the White House, I was asked whether the United States had learned any lessons from the Cold War. It’s a fair question, but it is one that should be directed at both the U.S. government and African publics. In my opinion, the enthusiasm about the transformative power of coups is misplaced. The current crop of coup leaders outwardly admire their 20th century predecessors, meeting with former Ghanaian president Jerry Rawlings and honoring former Malian ruler Moussa Traore. But the record of these coups of yesteryear is almost uniformly bad; many of the military leaders stayed in power for decades, bankrupted their countries, and repressed their people. There is no such thing as a good coup; as Nic Cheeseman explains, coups have generated as many problems as they have solved. It is telling that two of the most fondly remembered coup leaders—Nigeria’s Murtala Mohammed and Burkina Faso’s Thomas Sankara—served for only months or a few years before falling to an assassin’s bullet.

How Not To Respond

Maybe some of this is not worth debating at this moment. The pressing question is what to do. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States had a playbook that it followed fairly diligently. U.S. administrations imposed sanctions, resulting in a short transition and return to civilian rule. Much of this was dictated by law; U.S. coup restrictions, known as Section 7008, prohibit funding to “the government of any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup d’état or decree” and is only restored when the Secretary of State certifies that “a democratically elected government has taken office.” The U.S. response was often mirrored by European partners and African governments, especially in West Africa, which expelled juntas from regional organizations and sometimes imposed very stringent penalties.

It worked—somewhat. Most governments transitioned within two years, and in most cases, a civilian (as opposed to the coup leader) won in free and fair elections. The reality, however, was that most of these governments didn’t last long. The democratic transitions in Burkina Faso, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, and Niger in the 2010s each lasted about a decade. In retrospect, there wasn’t enough investment to ensure democratic consolidation. We declared victory, cheering one transition as a “great leap” on the path to democracy and hailing another a “historic moment.” We pledged to help these countries to strengthen their democratic institutions and pursue reconciliation. The truth, unfortunately, was that we didn’t. We returned to business as usual, and the seeds for another coup eventually took root.

If our approach was imperfect at best in the 2010s, it became obsolete by the time I rejoined government in 2021. New junta leaders initially promised 18-month transition timelines and constitutional revisions to placate the international community, but they quickly abandoned those plans. Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger have notional transitions scheduled by the end of the decade, but it is hard to take them seriously. These leaders claim that elections cannot take place until they have restored stability and vanquished the extremist groups operating in their territories, essentially enabling them to hold onto power for the foreseeable future.

Sitting in Washington, D.C., it became painfully clear that we couldn’t persist in our old ways. We applied coup restrictions consistent with our laws, but it left us on the sidelines without much leverage. If the juntas weren’t planning to affect expeditious transitions, we had little to offer. The resumption of our assistance was tied to democratic elections, which seemed to be distant prospects. Moreover, these countries did have exigent security concerns that threatened their countries and the broader region, and we were constrained by our own laws—coup and human rights restrictions—to provide significant assistance, even when it was in the U.S. national interest. In the case of Burkina Faso, for example, we had little legal latitude to assist the junta in its fight against violent extremism. Once coup sanctions were imposed, we managed to preserve some programming (under notwithstanding authorities) at the outset, but there was little more we could do in subsequent years.

Making matters worse, our West African partners imposed extraordinarily tough sanctions—cutting these countries off from regional banks, blocking medicine and food imports, and shutting off electricity. The juntas, aided by foreign and domestic disinformation campaigns, heaped blame on external actors to win them popular sympathy. The old playbook, in hindsight, had helped to entrench the soldiers and further opened the door to Russia and other countries who were willingness to work with them.

The Beginning of a New Approach

Despite my disappointment about the uptick in military takeovers, I saw it as an opportunity to rethink our approach. We pressed for more flexibility in our responses to coups, allowing us to structure our programs to reward intermediate steps and increase our investments to strengthen democratic transitions. With congressional support, we also could avail ourselves of new coup waivers.

• Reciprocal Steps. In summer 2023, then-Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee outlined a reciprocal approach to coup restrictions. Instead of withholding all our assistances until a democratic election, we agreed to gradually resume some programming. As she explained to The Africa Report, “as the coup-led governments move toward a democratic transition, and take positive steps, we’ll be in a position to resume or initiate positive engagement.” This introduced a more tailored response, facilitating a dialogue with the junta to construct a mutually agreed-upon program. Our experience was that some coup leaders, such as Gabon’s Brice Oligui Nguema, welcomed this approach while others, specifically in Niger, rejected it.

• Political Transitions. At the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, President Biden announced a $75 million program known as the African Democratic and Political Transitions (ADAPT) initiative. I wanted more flexible funding to support durable political transitions and hopefully end the cycle of recurring coups. I also planned to use ADAPT to signal U.S. confidence in progress toward the resumption of civilian rule. We awarded ADAPT resources to help Guinea draft a new constitution and strengthen Gabon’s election administration and voter education. (Note: these are the only two coup-affected countries so far that have held elections.)

• 7008 Waiver. In addition, my colleagues decided to invoke a 7008 waiver to enable the State Department to provide maritime security assistance to Gabon. This was possible because Congress made a change to Section 7008 in December 2022, authorizing the Secretary of State to waive funding restrictions on a program-by-program basis if he certifies the waiver is in the national security interest of the United States.

To be clear, I don’t think these policy changes are sufficient to address the resurgence of coups in the region, but they are important steps in the right direction. It is evident that we need to reimagine our approach to military takeovers. It goes without saying that the onus is not only on the United States. Our West African partners should take a closer look at their actions as well. Instead of inflicting maximum penalties that comes with a high risk of backfiring, it is probably smarter to impose targeted sanctions on individuals and certain entities to affect change.

The Golden Hour

One final observation. My friend Todd Moss wrote a fictional novel about a U.S. diplomat trying to reverse a coup in Mali. He called it The Golden Hour, borrowing an idea from the medical world where rapid diagnosis and treatment offer the best chance of preventing death or severe disability after a severe or sudden illness. I think he was onto something; there is a small window to restore civilian rule or prevent a coup from succeeding. It recently happened in Benin, and there are other historical examples as well. (Another early experience for me as an analyst was São Tomé in 2003, where a coup was reversed after then-Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo intervened.) This underscores the importance of an immediate response: don’t wait for the dust to settle or agonize over inadvertently bestowing legitimacy. Get on a plane. Meet the key players. Negotiate a quick resolution. If you dither, it is probably too late

Post-Strategy

I am convinced that we should continue to oppose military takeovers, but we need to understand why they continue to have salience and accept that our responses have become outdated and dogmatic. We need to have the flexibility to tailor our response depending on the country and the context. Like everything in foreign policy, it will require nuance and a repertoire of different tools to realize a positive outcome.

To be clear, we shouldn’t turn a blind eye to coups because of geopolitical considerations or because some have deprioritized democracy. (It is worth noting that the Trump Administration has not commented on or imposed coup restrictions on Madagascar or Guinea-Bissau.) When soldiers take over, it doesn’t solve the underlying governance or security problems, and it almost always introduces greater instability and uncertainty. Even the U.S. diplomats in the 1960s appreciated this reality. After seemingly welcoming the coups in his memo to Secretary Rusk, the senior bureau official made the following observation:

We should not, however, be misled into thinking that this new atmosphere will necessarily produce long-term improvement. The new leadership in itself cannot solve the problems facing these new nations. They will remain. Budgets cannot be balanced overnight; economic development is not the automatic consequence of good intentions; external subversion will not cease because communist missions leave a few countries.

Six decades later, it is crucial to relearn old lessons and teach ourselves new tricks. We have to rewrite the playbook, including how we talk about U.S. policy regarding military takeovers. Let’s not forget that coups may feel corrective or even normalized in the moment, but they rarely deliver what they promise.

I soon discovered that while think tanks do many things well, they also miss the mark on core functions. Or, as my friend Todd Moss posted in August, they don’t know how to “get-sh*t-done.” Think tanks too often privilege what is popular over what is policy relevant. They cater to what people want, not what policymakers need. It was a mindset that I often fell into — patting myself on the back for earning clicks rather than driving change. That mismatch helps explain why think tanks often misread their influence with policymakers, and why policymakers, in turn, misunderstand how best to work with think tanks.

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Giving the People What They Want

Have you ever read a think tank’s mission statement? It is pretty heady stuff. The Council on Foreign Relations is dedicated to “have impact on the most consequential issues facing the United States and the world,” the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is committed to “help countries and institutions take on the most difficult global problems and advance peace,” and the Atlantic Council is determined to “shape a peaceful and prosperous future.” When I was at CSIS—and I’m still a (non-resident) senior advisor to the Africa Program—these lofty goals were not hyperbole or empty sloganeering. Our genuine ambition was to inform the policy conversation and contribute to more positive foreign policy outcomes.

And yet, I often found myself pulled by a different set of incentives—chief among them the lure of virality and elite validation, especially within the Washington beltway. Think tanks, like individuals, crave attention. Viral posts and videos are celebrated internally and upheld as models to emulate—recognition that I wanted for my own work. In hindsight, however, I think chasing public acclamation can hurt the output of think tanks.

• Stating the Obvious. Much of what think tanks produce consists of explainers. They might be useful to the general public and generate a lot of views, such as our 2019 video on Ethiopia, but they rarely create new knowledge. Not all explainers are without merit. I have benefited from pieces that unpack President Trump’s tariffs or demystify the critical minerals sector. Still, most explainers tend to be dull and basic. They often are long, descriptive, and brimming with background information— as if written by an undergrad desperate to hit a minimum page requirement.

• Giving Hot Takes. Think tank experts quickly learn that a biting quip will land them in the New York Times or earn them thousands of new followers on social media. It becomes intoxicating, spending your time crafting put-downs and acting as if you know better than everyone else. It also flipped my incentive structure, prioritizing hot takes over sound analysis. I became slightly obsessed with saying something clever, critical, and, sometimes, a little mean. The reality, however, is that snarky comments never produce better policies.

• Lacking Substance. Even think tank events have their limitations. Like explainers and sarcastic tweets, these engagements tend to be popular with the Washington, D.C. crowd. People want to say they were “there” and snap a selfie with a visiting dignitary. Most panels are hardly edifying: too many speakers read from overly sanitized talking points and the Q&A section is painfully predictable. I quickly soured on these gatherings, although I admit my dislike might just reflect a personal preference: I don’t learn by passively listening to speakers at a podium. My experiences mirrored what Mort Abramowitz told a young Samantha Power: “these people speak so much and yet they manage to say so little.”

Giving Policymakers What They Need

For all their shortcomings, I have seen think tanks steer debates and generate the momentum needed to change policy for the better. It may be rare, but it is extraordinary when it happens. It is what think tanks are built for. It took me some time to understand the difference between publicity and policy impact — and even more time to figure out how to do it well.

• Creating Safe Spaces. There is a special type of private event that isn’t about the visiting dignitary or celebrated thinker, but rather it is focused on working through a vexing policy problem or issue. The participants are usually peers, bringing different experiences and viewpoints to the table. And it is one of the few times where politics and institutional preferences are put aside — at least for a moment — and new ideas are introduced without fear or judgment. In these settings, it is not uncommon to witness the birth of a new policy consensus.

• Delivering New Insights. The best think tank papers introduce new insights, not just present expert opinion. The Center for Global Development (CGD), for example, consistently produces important findings backed by data and research. It is why CGD tends to be one of my go-to sources for analysis on, say, the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) or the consequences of USAID’s dismantling. Much of my own work at CSIS leaned toward analysis and informed perspective, but we also sought to contribute new knowledge, including our report on Chinese port investments in Africa and our interactive on connections between U.S. cities and the continent.

• Developing New Policies. The most important contribution from a think tank is a new policy idea. That’s what I craved most as a policymaker, and why I often urged think tank colleagues to move beyond criticizing U.S. policy—on Sudan, for example—and offer actionable alternatives. Zainab Usman, who built an exceptional Africa program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace before her recent departure, was quite accomplished at this. Her team published thoughtful ideas to advance U.S. policy; my government colleagues and I pored over her paper on how African countries could participate in U.S. clean energy supply chains.

A Productive Think Tank - Policy Relationship

U.S. officials generally view think tanks as an important part of the policy ecosystem. Too often, however, they approach them primarily as platforms to shape narratives, court opinion-makers, or sell existing policies. I did this myself. I participated in panels and connected with experts to explain what we were doing and hopefully win over some skeptics. I was seeking fanfare, not more friction.

There’s a better way. Policymakers should prioritize think tanks as sources for ideas and rigorous debate. When I was at CSIS, U.S. diplomats asked me to tackle the shortcomings of the Algiers Accords in Mali and embarked on a project evaluating the merits on focusing on counterterrorism in coastal West Africa over the Sahel. I was even asked if I could help raise awareness of retaliatory measures against Cabo Verde for arresting Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro’s bagman Alex Saab in 2020.

Policymakers also can avail themselves of think tanks for track II diplomacy. This is a service many think tanks offer and do quite well, including the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) before its operations were disrupted by President Trump’s Executive Order. There are opportunities to tap think tanks to support strategic planning and anticipate emerging threats. My colleagues at CSIS’s International Security Program run wargaming and scenarios exercises to assist policymakers. They also offer courses in using tools such as AI, red teaming, and games for mid-to senior-level professionals. I am especially proud of our Africa Policy Accelerator, a professional network of more than 175 young U.S.-Africa policy, business, philanthropic, and thought leaders.

To be fair, I often did practice what I am preaching in this post. When I returned to government in 2021 to draft President Biden’s strategy toward Africa, I participated in private events at six different think tanks to share some of our initial ideas for the strategy and solicit feedback. In several cases, I modified language, adjusted tone, elevated certain ideas, and even rewrote one of the objectives. I also engaged a small group of think tank experts about our Zimbabwe sanctions program, which contributed to our decision to end the 20-year old sanctions program and replace it with a more targeted effort under the Global Magnitsky (GloMag) sanctions program.

Post-Strategy

I am convinced that think tanks are essential to the policy process. The U.S. government often is too insular, risk-averse, and bureaucratic to think big and implement new approaches. It needs fresh thinking—a service that think tanks can provide as long as they break themselves of their worst habits. The objective shouldn’t be clicks, it should be change. The measure of success is whether think tanks give policymakers what they need, not simply what audiences want.

As special assistant to President Biden and senior director for African affairs at the National Security Council, I became acutely aware that we had become trapped in a dilemma of our own making. The China echo chamber had become loud, insistent, and indiscriminate—blaming every current and future problem on Beijing. It was not effective.

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I recognize that this post may seem slightly past its prime. After all, the Trump Administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS) has further confused U.S. priorities regarding strategic competition with China, and U.S. policies toward sub-Saharan Africa appear to have narrowed to migration and critical minerals. With ad hominem attacks on South Africa and Nigeria, coupled with a devastating retrenchment of U.S. humanitarian and development programs, it may seem naïve to talk about the future of U.S. partnerships in this moment. But, as always, I see merit in thinking out loud about what has and hasn’t worked in U.S. policy—and identifying what, perhaps at some point in the distant future, we can do differently. That entails challenging conventional assumptions and returning to the basics: what does China want, what do Africans want, and what should the United States want?

What China Wants

I’ll start with China. To be sure, there are already reams of scholarship and long-running debates on this topic. My goal here is not to adjudicate but to simply add my perspective as a former analyst, researcher, and policymaker. In my opinion, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is seeking to reorder the world to its benefit. Sub-Saharan Africa is not only an integral part of this pursuit, but it has also been a testing ground for many of the PRC’s most important initiatives. In March 1972, the U.S. intelligence community published the following assessment:

The Chinese are again offering aid, bidding for diplomatic recognition, and throwing lavish receptions for visiting African delegations. The current initiative suggests that China’s leaders attach considerable importance to their relations with Sub-Saharan Africa — if not for its intrinsic worth (if you “win” Black Africa, what have you won?), then as a place where easy points can be made in pursuit of larger objectives lying outside Africa.

Putting aside an offensive non-sequitur, the IC’s judgment more than four decades ago continues to have resonance today. The PRC views Africa as a source for allies and votes (“Even so unpromising a state as Equatorial Guinea has a vote in the UN General Assembly and can take a position favorable to Peking,” the IC sniffed in 1972.) This matters for securing support regarding Taiwan and the South China Sea, as well as constructing an alternative architecture of global institutions at the expense of U.S. leadership.

Even though Africa is China’s second smallest regional trade partner, ahead of only Oceania, Beijing has found value in the region’s commercial markets and essential resources, in part to power the Chinese economy.

• African imports of Chinese goods this year have surged by 25 percent to $122 billion, a growth rate faster than any other major market, according to a recent analysis by Bloomberg. This includes construction machinery, passenger cars, and steel, as well as a sharp increase in orders for solar panels.

• African exports to China overwhelmingly consist of critical minerals and oil. Two-thirds of Africa-China exports were concentrated in just four commodities: petroleum crude oil (41 percent), refined copper (15 percent), iron ore and concentrates (5 percent), and aluminum ores and concentrates (5 percent) by trade value.

Beijing also has realized that Africa offers a playing field for its soldiers to gain experience and real estate for its military to preposition itself along major sea lines of communication and trade. From 2013 to 2023, China dispatched peacekeepers to Mali in part to test their mettle in a hostile environment, as well as try out new military weapons and equipment. In 2017, the PRC established its first overseas military presence in Djibouti, and it has tried to curry favor with Gabon and Equatorial Guinea to obtain permission to build naval bases on the Atlantic Ocean.

The hard part, at least in Washington, has been acknowledging that China’s role in Africa is not uniformly negative. What China wants and does can benefit the region, even as many aspects of its engagement challenge U.S. interests. Back in December 2018, I testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, noting that Chinese activities consist of security, commercial, diplomatic, and strategic dimensions. And, “this blend of objectives, consequently, makes it difficult to separate malign activities from benign behavior.”

Moreover, the PRC often adjusts its approach to Africa. It has substantially reduced its lending in recent years from a high mark in the 2013-2018 period; shifted to more clean energy investments, including electric vehicles; and tapped its provinces (e.g., Hunan, Shandong, Guangdong) to play a much larger role in China‑Africa engagement. And while the PRC’s constant evolution is largely a response to African pressure (and domestic Chinese demands), its multifaceted and adaptive approach has repeatedly rendered Washington flatfooted and out-of-touch. U.S. criticism of Africa’s ties to China tends to come off as deaf to the lived experience of many Africans—and it is often dead wrong about some of its accusations. I had to twice correct a senior U.S. official that Beijing no longer imports significant numbers of Chinese labor. (Don’t get me started on the tenacity of the so-called “debt trap diplomacy” narrative.) To borrow a Chinese talking point, it has become a win-win situation: Beijing advances its goals while Washington keeps getting in its own way.

What Africans Want

Opining on what Africans want is even more problematic than interpreting Chinese motives in Africa. Of course, I can’t possibly speak for the region’s diverse governments, elites, and publics. My only recourse, therefore, is to share what I’ve learned from African friends and colleagues. What has consistently come through is that Africans want to be accorded with respect and dignity, and they welcome investment from all foreign partners, including from China. These are the top priorities, but many Africans also are wary of becoming overly dependent on one external power, especially China.

A majority of Africans view Chinese influence in their country as positive. This has been the case for more than a decade, according to polling by Afrobarometer and surveys conducted by Gallup and other reputable firms. It is obvious why: African countries require significant investment to achieve their socioeconomic and security goals, and China has been largely ready to help. The African Development Bank in 2024 indicated that the region’s infrastructure needs amount to $181-$221 billion per year, while Bloomberg analysis has concluded that another one billion Africans will enter the job market between now and the end of the century. With such massive needs, China’s largesse makes it a very attractive partner.

African leaders, in particular, value China’s persistent and high-level courtship. Beijing stages the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) every three years, its foreign minister travels to the continent at the beginning of every year, and President Xi Jinping regularly telephones or hosts African counterparts with the kind of pomp and circumstance that is often lacking in Washington, London, or Paris. Africa’s ruling elite believe they can rely on the PRC for grants, loans, weaponry, surveillance equipment, and other offerings. As Djiboutian President Ismail Omar Guelleh explained in a 2017 interview: “The reality is that no one other than the Chinese is offering Djibouti a long-term partnership.”

But scratch beneath the surface and it is more nuanced than it appears. Africans have long held a balanced view of Chinese engagement, being as critical as they are welcoming. There have been protests over treatment of Africans in China during the COVID-19 outbreak, and recurring anger over Chinese racism toward its African employees and customers—many of these stories and videos inevitably become viral internet memes. Chinese businesses also have found themselves in trouble for causing severe environmental damage, such as recent acid spills in Zambia and Democratic Republic of the Congo. China’s role consequently has been contested by African opposition politicians seeking to challenge incumbents’ cozy ties with Beijing, as well as by African scholars presenting serious critiques.

My experience has been that Africans want to continue to engage with and benefit from Chinese ties. Despite what some U.S. officials claim, I don’t believe many Africans prefer the United States over China (or vice versa). What they don’t want is to become too dependent on one external partner because it limits their leverage, options, and opportunities. When Angola, for example, became more open to U.S. engagement, as it did during the Biden Administration, it was not because the Angolans wanted to sever or downgrade ties to China. Angola, like many of its neighbors, wanted to diversify its relationships. (Side note: this is why the U.S. refrain about being “partner of choice” completely misses the point. Africans want a “choice of partners.”)

What the U.S. Should Want

Where does this leave the United States? When I worked in the Biden Administration, we repeatedly underscored that our interests in Africa were broader and deeper than a narrow focus on checkmating China. It was a genuine and serious reflection of our intent. And while we insisted that our policy shouldn’t be defined by our rivalry with Beijing, we argued that it couldn’t be divorced from strategic competition either. That’s why I made a conscious decision to include our concerns about Chinese activities in Africa in the U.S. Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa.

One of the many problems we faced, however, was the disconnect between what we said and what others said on our behalf. Media outlets wrongly framed our approach as about targeting China, while Congress and think tank commentators repeatedly pointed to PRC activities as the top priority in Africa. It engendered a negative feedback loop in which the U.S. bureaucracy hyped every engagement or investment as part of great power competition—a ploy, in my opinion, to extract as much time, attention, and resources as possible. Some of our African partners made a similar calculation, reviving the old Cold War game of playing rivals off one another to win concessions.

And yet, these maneuvers failed to attract a significant influx of U.S. resources. In fact, I often struggled to prevent personnel and funding from being moved from Africa to the Indo-Pacific region. China may have been characterized as the pacing threat to the United States, but it was clearly not important enough in Africa. This was true in the Biden Administration, and it is even more true in the Trump White House which has shrugged at “previous arguments for maintaining aid, such as humanitarian responsibilities or the threat of a Chinese imprint.” The NSS doubles-down on this instinct, refashioning China primarily as an economic competitor and relegating Africa to the bottom of its to-do list.

Even still, I suspect that the policy whiplash on China in Africa will continue. While the Administration softens its language on Beijing, the draft National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), for example, includes directives to map PRC investments in strategic ports and counter PRC malign influence, including Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects. President Trump may claim that “we treat Africa far better than China or anybody else,” but the White House has dismantled USAID and blacklisted more than two dozen African countries from traveling to the United States. He made this assertion, by the way, in the same meeting where he instructed his African counterparts to cut their remarks short and praised Liberian President Boakai for speaking good English.

Reinvention By Necessity

I continue to believe that the United States is at our best when we pursue an affirmative policy vision, defined by who we are and not by who we oppose. When the United States does seek to counter discrete PRC activities, it should be focused and clear about what poses the greatest potential threat to U.S. interests. In my congressional testimony, I recommended that we closely monitor and mitigate Chinese engagements that undercut U.S. military access and operations, U.S. information and communication platforms, and U.S. relations with current and emerging African leaders. Seven years later, I continue to view these as the priority areas, as well as the critical minerals sector.

So, my advice is simple. To effectively meet the challenge posed by China, we need to first redefine our relationships with our African partners and repair some of the recent damage, especially from the last couple of months. It may seem like an impossible task, but that’s what happened in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In response to the end of the Cold War and resulting wave of instability across the region, the United States reinvented itself. It ushered in new policies that benefited Americans and Africans. President George W. Bush was a driving force in this effort, overseeing an unprecedented expansion of our contributions to the continent from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) to major efforts to reduce conflict through training of African troops, supporting African-led peacemaking, and establishing Africa Command. It’s no coincidence that U.S. popularity across the continent peaked by the end of his administration.

Post Strategy

I am convinced that our approach toward China in Africa needs more honesty about U.S. intentions and more understanding about what Africans want from their external partners. It will certainly require some candid self-appraisal about how the United States is perceived across the continent, especially in the aftermath of recent U.S. policies. The only way forward is to reprioritize our relationships with Africans first and pursue our rivalry with China second.

Of course, U.S. diplomats have continued to pay lip service. But behind closed doors, they increasingly express a preference for bilateral arrangements, ad hoc coalitions, or Gulf-led initiatives. This is shortsighted, and it sidesteps the central role Africa’s multilateral organizations play in conflict resolution and economic integration. We cannot advance our shared goals without Africa’s most important regional bodies.

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Starting with Skepticism

In fairness, U.S. officials were nonplussed about Africa’s regional bodies from the beginning. In December 1962, the intelligence community questioned the prospects for an effective grouping of African states. One assessment, for instance, pointed to “seemingly insurmountable obstacles,” blaming the hypersensitivity of leaders to any move that threatened their prestige. The analysts also discounted the Africans’ ability to handle economic concepts or administration problems without outside help.

And, while the Department of State issued press guidance to laud the formation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) as a “remarkable achievement,” its diplomats privately admitted that they “didn’t know what the new organization was, what it would do, what attitudes it would take on, whether it was beast or beauty, and whether it was friend or foe.” Even Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who glowed with optimism about U.S.-African relations, conceded to President Lyndon Johnson that “Africa’s organizations are mostly new, under-financed, poorly staffed and little understood.”

This cynicism continued in the 1970s. The CIA caustically assessed that “apart from displaying a remarkable capacity for survival, the performance of regional groupings in Africa has not been spectacular. The African countries have made some headway in the direction of closer ties, but the gains have been small and uneven.” Major policy disputes, especially over southern Africa, also fed U.S. misgivings. Ahead of an OAU summit in 1976, the Ford Administration sent a letter to African leaders insisting that the MPLA in Angola “should not be allowed to assume total power by force of Soviet and Cuban arms.” Nigerian leader Murtala Mohammed was incensed; he trashed the letter as a “gross insult” and denounced the United States at the summit. This incident was the latest in a series of clashes; the year prior the OAU issued a resolution attacking Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s choice for assistant secretary of state for African affairs.

Shifting to Support

U.S. attitudes toward African regional bodies started to evolve around the turn of the decade. It is difficult to pinpoint the exact moment, but it coincided with more robust African responses to conflicts and growing U.S. interest in resolving crises in West and southern Africa. For instance, Nigeria initiated a peacekeeping operation in Chad in 1979. It retroactively received regional support and was eventually replaced by the OAU’s only large-scale multinational operation in its history. While academics have pointed to the mission’s “feebleness,” the OAU received more than $12 million in U.S. military assistance, as well as funding from France and the UK.

During this period, U.S. negative attitudes toward regional organizations softened. The United States still objected to the OAU’s public critiques of U.S. policies, but there was a growing appreciation for the importance of regional bodies. In 1983, for example, President Ronald Reagan lauded ECOWAS in his speech to the UN General Assembly. And U.S. presidents increasingly hosted African leaders representing the Frontline States—a predecessor to the Southern African Development Community (SADC)—to coordinate efforts to end apartheid in South Africa and facilitate Namibian independence.

By the late 1990s, U.S. policy had shifted decisively toward African regional bodies. It stemmed from a realization that African peacekeeping and peacemaking were essential to advancing mutual objectives. In a speech in Nigeria in 1999, Secretary of State Madeline Albright exclaimed that “for much of this decade, ECOWAS has been on the front line of the struggle for peace in Africa.” Despite dismissive comments by some diplomats and observers, the Clinton Administration provided more than $90 million to support ECOWAS peacekeeping missions in Liberia and Sierra Leone. U.S. officials also backed African-led peace talks, including the OAU’s appointment of former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere and later South African President Nelson Mandela as facilitators of the Burundi peace process. President Clinton even joined Mandela in Arusha in 2000 to urge an end to the bloody civil war.

During the Bush Administration, the U.S. pursuit of a strong partnership with Africa’s regional bodies reached its full expression. In his NSC transition memo, senior director for African affairs Bobby Pittman reflected that the Administration’s approach had been guided by three overarching principles: “facilitate peace by working with and within the region, including region’s leaders (rather than imposing peace arrangements from outside.); building regional capacities to make and sustain peace; and work through multilateral channels, such as the U.N. and World Bank.” President Bush showed his commitment to African regional organizations by naming the first U.S. Ambassador to the AU in 2006, as well as significantly expanding security training for 55,000 African peacekeepers. These vital partnerships helped enable African-led peace processes, bringing an end to wars in Angola, Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Liberia, Sierra Leone, and parts of Sudan.

Stepping Away

Ironically, as President Obama made his historic visit to the AU in 2015, U.S. pessimism had started to return. Despite acknowledging that African regional organizations were “taking a lead role in addressing the security and political challenges,” Washington’s instinct to work through them was waning. It was more of a welcomed surprise than a purposeful strategy when the U.S. government backed the deployment of the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) and its AU successor to the Central African Republic in 2014 and supported ECOWAS’s removal of The Gambia’s Yahya Jammeh in 2017.

The factors responsible for this U.S. retrenchment were threefold, and they became more acute in the transition from Obama to the Trump and Biden administrations.

• Missions Faltering. There was a growing perception that African regional bodies had lost their mojo. The African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM)’s counter-insurgency efforts had slowed, failing to initiate offensives or serve as a holding force for the Somali army. SADC countries, which comprised the UN’s Force Intervention Brigade (FIB) in the DRC, started to waver, declining to conduct more robust operations. And, aside from small deployments in The Gambia and Guinea-Bissau, ECOWAS was struggling to do more to address security challenges in West Africa.

• Multilateralism Flagging. The first Trump Administration was allergic to multilateralism, which compounded U.S. mission fatigue. Trump’s team opposed an effort to use UN assessed contributions to co-finance AU peace support operations. They threatened to cut funds, questioning the utility of peacekeeping. Even as senior U.S. officials expressed an openness to regional missions, such as the G-5 Sahel, there was an explicit preference for “bilateral mechanisms.” Finally, adding insult to injury, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson flaked on his meeting with AU Commission Chair Moussa Faki in Washington in 2017.

• Memories Fading. During the Biden Administration, it was striking how few policymakers and even some analysts appreciated the record of the AU or other regional bodies in peace operations. There was a dismissiveness over the role they could play in various crises and conflicts, resulting in belated or halfhearted consultations. Many underestimated their capacity to contribute to challenges in the DRC or Mozambique. Without an informed understanding of their potential, it prompted many policymakers to fumble around for alternatives.

When I drafted President Joe Biden’s strategy toward Sub-Saharan Africa, I sought to restore the centrality of regional bodies to our policies, pledging that we would “deepen our engagement with multilateral institutions, including the AU and Regional Economic Communities.” That is why we framed the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit as in support of AU’s Agenda 2063, including one of the sessions that President Biden chaired. We also surmounted significant opposition to finally pass UN Security Council Resolution 2719, enabling UN funding for African-led peace missions.

In hindsight, however, we failed to support and back African regional bodies as we should have. There’s lots of blame to go around. U.S. officials expressed frustration with overzealous (and ultimately counterproductive) African reactions to coups in West Africa or diplomatic missteps in Sudan. But, in general, there was a lack of U.S. confidence in these groupings—too often borne out of an unwillingness to invest in these relationships or simply an ignorance of past achievements.

• U.S. Ambassadors and military planners argued for bilateral arrangements because they were more straightforward and didn’t require coordination across several governments.

• Some policymakers seized on nascent subregional arrangements, such as the Accra Initiative or International Academy for Counterterrorism (AILCT) because they were new and shiny.

• Others lobbied for Gulf partnerships because Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states had access to resources and because many senior U.S. officials were unaware of or underwhelmed by the decades of successful African-led negotiations.

And yet, these alternatives to the AU and RECs didn’t resolve the conflicts or crises we faced. They only alienated our partners and distracted us from investing in capacity-building and dialogue with the most important regional groupings. Just to belabor the point: our most significant diplomatic accomplishment, the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement (CoHA) in northern Ethiopia, was negotiated in partnership with the AU.

Back to the Future

The answer isn’t to reinvent the wheel. To be sure, the AU and African regional economic communities can be difficult, and their effectiveness may vary depending on the circumstance. I would argue, however, that all regional organizations, including those in Europe or the Asia-Pacific, suffer from unevenness and are only as capable as their member-states.

And unlike parts of the UN, which many have dismissed as no longer fit for purpose in this moment of geopolitical strife, Africa’s regional bodies still have legitimacy and institutional depth. Especially compared to alternative arrangements, Africa’s regional bodies offer speed, flexibility, and interoperability with the United States.

• Speed. Despite what one may think about multilateral action, African regional bodies can move very fast when there is an urgent challenge. For instance, it took SADC just over three weeks from formal summit approval to deploy troops to Mozambique in 2021. Similarly, the EAC Regional Force sent its first troops to eastern DRC within a month of its authorization. That stands in stark contrast to what has happened with newer groupings such as the G5-Sahel and the Accra Initiative, which have struggled with start-up challenges, such as securing resources, agreeing on institutional protocols, and establishing headquarters.

• Flexibility. Africa’s regional bodies have more agility than they receive credit for. If you put aside the internal acrimony over issuing joint statements or opining on elections and coups, there is a long history of neighboring governments teaming up to respond to a crisis or discrete challenge. In 1998, for example, Senegal and Guinea deployed troops under the ECOWAS banner to serve as an interposition force in Guinea Bissau. These regional bodies also permit members to operate in subgroupings such as the Mano River Union (Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone), which consult each other on strategy and coordinated action––perhaps a future model for the return of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) to ECOWAS.

• Interoperability. It is equally important that the AU and RECs have established institutional ties to each other and to external partners. If ECOWAS or ECCAS require funding or support from the United States, it is straightforward, at least as a bureaucratic matter, to fulfill these requests. By working directly with the regional body, there is less risk of duplication, and it can obviate the need to negotiate with multiple governments on a bilateral basis. That was a problem with supporting the Accra Initiative; we didn’t have the legal authority to fund or support it, only its member-states. I implored African counterparts to submit a joint request for assistance instead of bilateral wish lists for equipment and training. (Cote d’Ivoire’s then Prime Minister Patrick Achi was a tremendous partner during this exercise.)

Let me make a final (and obvious) point: Africa’s regional bodies aren’t static organizations. Their priorities and capabilities are constantly in flux—a reflection of changes in leadership and the security landscape. The current pessimism expressed by U.S. officials is the product of a recency bias, wrongly assuming that African regional groupings’ limitations are permanent features. Worse, it has prompted parts of the U.S. government to give up. Instead of opting to lean in, too many have decided to lean back. That’s a recipe for long-term failure. When there are challenges, it is incumbent on us to engage seriously and redouble our investments. That may seem basic, but it is the reason why these partnerships have benefited the United States and African nations for more than two decades.

Post-Strategy

I am convinced that our future is tied to strong partnerships with Africa’s regional bodies. We need to curb our frustrations and discard our fantasies about alternatives. Together, we have made major strides in the name of peace and security, as well as economic integration. It can happen again as long as we recommit to these relationships. We all need to be ride-or-die.

Most of our country’s vice presidents have participated in Africa policy, in one form or another, since the late 1950s. In fact, nine out of 14 VPs have traveled to the continent—some of them multiple times. Many vice presidents agree to meetings or join Oval Office discussions with African leaders. Only a few, however, make a lasting impact.

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Proceed with Caution

“This is great news! Wait — hold on.” That was usually my reaction when told the vice president wanted to become more involved in U.S.-Africa policy. It’s always a big deal when the country’s second most powerful leader takes an interest in your issues. Her seniority and star power were formidable—points of leverage I wanted to push our policies forward.

Still, I knew it came with complications. Hence the hesitation. When a vice president engages, you stand to lose as much as you gain. It requires a thoughtfulness about what exactly the VP would be doing, and what might be the potential long-term implications of including the nation’s no. 2. What I didn’t want to do was lose control and be saddled with policies and programs that distracted us from our primary agenda. (Spoiler alert: I didn’t always succeed.)

A Good Addition

There is one overriding consideration when it comes to a vice president’s engagement: does it advance the president’s policy objectives? During the past seven decades, vice presidents have been most effective when their activities are additive, working in service of the administration’s agenda. Vice presidents, at their best, can sharpen, showcase, and shepherd U.S. efforts in the region.

• Presidential Advisor. A few vice presidents have had a direct hand in the shaping of U.S. policy. In 1957, Vice President Richard Nixon traveled to Ghana, Liberia, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Sudan (in addition to Morocco, Tunisia, and Libya). Upon return, he drafted a report to President Dwight Eisenhower with his reflections and recommendations, including to establish a separate bureau of African affairs in the State Department. Nixon also advocated for more resources, writing to the Pentagon on the need for more military assistance to Ethiopia, for example. Vice President Hubert Humphrey pledged he would institute more “youth-oriented” policy changes and Vice President Walter Mondale pressed for bureaucratic action on a range of issues—from intelligence sharing with Niger to maritime security with Senegal—following trips to the region.

• Publicity Magnet. A vice president’s engagement helps elevate Africa issues in the U.S. media and attracts attention from a broader audience, largely because they travel with a press pool that doesn’t typically report on the region. Vice President Harris focused attention on China’s efforts across Africa; Vice President Joe Biden used his visit to discuss peace and security in Somalia and Sudan, as well as political reconciliation in Kenya; and Vice President George H.W. Bush centered his trip on drought-affected countries in the Sahel. Several VPs have opted for big speeches to broadcast their messages such as Humphrey at the Africa Hall in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and Harris at Black Star Gate in Accra, Ghana.

• Special Envoy. A vice president is often tapped to convey difficult messages on behalf of the White House. Vice President Dan Quayle met with Nigerian military leader Ibrahim Babangida in 1991 to discuss sensitive issues regarding democracy, human rights, and debt. On the same trip, he lectured Malawi’s longtime president Hastings Banda on democracy, noting that a “basic tenet of democracy would be to have an opposition, a protected opposition, and we don’t see any of that.” Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton asked their VPs to help manage relations with the South Africans, with Mondale engaging the apartheid leadership and Al Gore traveling to South Africa four times as the cochair of the Binational Commission.

A Poor Substitute

The problems start, in my opinion, when the vice president is involved because the president does not want to spend his own time on the region. If the vice president is a consolation prize, it makes it plain that Africa is a low priority. Nixon couldn’t have been more clear about Africa’s low ranking, reminding his chief of staff that “great pressures will build up to see this and that minor or major officials from the low priority countries. All of this is to be farmed out to [Vice President Spiro] Agnew.”

When a vice president is the second choice, it aggravates foreign counterparts and can hurt bilateral relations.

• A former diplomat recalled that Guinean President Sekou Toure and his delegation “were not impressed by the fact that Vice President Nixon had cut short a Miami vacation to greet Toure. Nor did they wish to accept the explanation that President Eisenhower’s bronchitis kept him from attending the ceremony on the chilly autumn day” in Washington in October 1959.

• Liberian leader Samuel Doe was apoplectic when informed he was scheduled to meet Vice President Bush, not President Ronald Reagan, during his trip to Washington. A retired diplomat explained that “it started to become something which honestly threatened relations, you know, if the president couldn’t find time to meet with him, why should Doe keep taking our advice on policy issues.”

Moreover, if an administration isn’t engaging enough, there’s nothing that a vice president can do to shift perceptions or reset relations. No one is fooled, and it feeds critical headlines such as the Los Angeles Times on Quayle’s trip in 1991 (“All Too Easy to Forget, All Too Important Now: Oft-ignored Africa gets some needed attention from Washington”) or biting op-eds like Karen Attiah’s on Harris’s visit in the Washington Post (“Vice President Harris goes to Africa. Color me unimpressed”). When the president is largely missing in action on Africa, it is hard to attach much significance to the vice president’s participation. A former diplomat acknowledged that Humphrey’s mission was to “make certain that African countries recognized that the United States, in spite of its preoccupation with Vietnam, was also continuing to reflect interest in the developing world. I don’t think there was anything more profound than that.”

The other challenge, which is what sometimes concerned me, was whether the vice president’s engagement would limit our options and lead to programs and initiatives that work at cross purposes with existing efforts. For a period of time, Vice President Harris was on deck to introduce the U.S. Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa. I was anxious about the implications, worried that it would suggest that Africa had been delegated to the office of the vice presidency. It could have been a problematic signal—conveying that the president was not interested in the region and had outsourced his policy to the vice president. (I thought the Secretary of State, who ultimately did present the strategy, didn’t come with the same complications.)

And then there’s the issue of deliverables. As one retired diplomat noted “presidents and vice presidents do not like to make public appearances in foreign countries and not say something of news notice.” In most cases, a vice president will announce an increase in funding for some program. But sometimes, there is pressure for something grander. In 1968, for example, U.S diplomats scrambled to find something for Humphrey to say during the Zambia leg of his trip; he ended up announcing that the U.S. government would finance parts of the Tanzam Highway, connecting Lusaka, Zambia and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Vice President Harris was keen on making her own mark, enthusiastically backing a public-private partnership for digital inclusion. And while the intent was good, the problem was that we already had a presidential initiative, Digital Transformation with Africa (DTA), and a Trump-era program called Prosper Africa with similar goals. In my opinion, it was confusing, redundant, and risked undercutting our work. I worried that no tech company or philanthropy would turn to DTA or Prosper Africa when there was an opportunity to curry favor with the vice president through her initiative. We tried to make the best of it, arguing that all three programs were mutually reinforcing. Unfortunately, they weren’t, and we ended up spending more time than we needed to trying to make sense of her signature initiative.

A Serious Undertaking

One final point: a vice president’s engagement is consequential if and when the vice president and the bureaucracy view it as important to advance U.S. interests. It also helps if the VP enjoys themselves.

• Vice President Lyndon Johnson, whose presidential record on Africa was unremarkable, certainly made waves as VP. In 1961, he attended Senegal’s second Independence Day. Time Magazine boasted that “tens of thousands of delighted Senegalese seemed ready to go all the way” with LBJ. According to his biographer Robert Dallek, Johnson ignored the advice of the ambassador, who urged the vice president to avoid contact with “dirty and diseased” villagers. (The ambassador was subsequently recalled by Washington.) Johnson met the local Senegalese with gusto — “exactly what Kennedy wanted from his vice president.” The U.S. Embassy later reported that “this is perhaps the first time the Senegalese public has been exposed to the outgoing and informal approach of the veteran American political campaigner…who smiling, shaking hands and greeting pleased and astonished bystanders who most certainly have not been accustomed to such informality on the part of their former French mentors.”

• George H.W. Bush was similarly dynamic as vice president. The legendary diplomat Frank G. Wisner II reflected on Bush’s maganity and interest in Africa: “he made clear that his door was open to African leaders, even if others were not available to back-up our Africa diplomacy…The Vice President was warm and generous with his time. He charmed visitors with his knowledge of their countries and of our relations with them. I remember a delegation from Zaire (Congo) when each Minister was given one of Bush’s golf shirts. They were elated. No Africa duty was too onerous.” He also advanced policy in concrete ways; during his trip to Sudan in March 1985, Bush secured Sudanese leader Gaafar Nimieri’s support for a secret operation to airlift all the remaining Falasha (Ethiopian Jews) from the border area to Israel.

In contrast, when vice presidents see their engagement as a throw-away or waste of time, it can spoil the entire endeavor. During Spiro Agnew’s trip to Ethiopia and Kenya in 1971, Time Magazine said that Agnew’s approach approximated a “VIP who feels it beneath his dignity to display any warmth for or interest in ordinary people.” A few years later, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller found himself in hot water when he participated in a disparaging sidebar with a U.S. senator about Liberians while President William Tubman addressed the U.S. Congress in 1976. This month, Vice President J.D. Vance cancelled his trip to South Africa and Kenya. It was major setback to his nascent involvement in Africa, following a seemingly positive meeting with Mozambican President Daniel Chapo in October. Martin Kimani, a former Kenyan Ambassador to the UN, called Vance’s cancelled trip a “missed opportunity.” It bodes poorly for vice presidential engagement during the Trump Administration. It also could continue a pattern set by his predecessor, Mike Pence, who only had two meetings with African leaders in Washington, D.C. and never traveled to the region.

Post Strategy

I’m convinced the vice president’s involvement can be catalytic for advancing U.S. policy in sub-Saharan Africa. How catalytic? It’s almost binary: is the vice president amplifying the president’s agenda—or not? When a vice president works in concert with the president—driving an issue forward, elevating emerging challenges, or managing sensitive missions—the impact is invaluable. But when they’re assigned Africa because the president is disengaged or working for their own political gain, it’s problematic at best. A vice president can’t operate independently of the president’s commitment; they certainly can’t fill a leadership vacuum from the top.

One more thing: I’ve often written that President George W. Bush’s record on Africa ranks among the best—at minimum, tied with Kennedy’s. Yet Vice President Dick Cheney had a limited, at least public-facing, role in Africa policy. That only underscores my broader point: the president’s actions are paramount; the vice president’s, complementary.

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It was an utter failure. It turns out that there is little correlation between a president’s words at the UN and his deeds on the continent. It left me with the distinct impression that UN speeches aren’t particularly useful barometers of presidential interest, especially in Africa. And, if that’s true, what is their utility and function in foreign affairs? Most importantly, how much time (and political capital) we should expend to fight over words?

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The Eisenhower Example

In September 1960, President Dwight Eisenhower started his speech at the UN General Assembly with a warm welcome to its new African members. He remarked that “the people of the United States join me in saluting those countries which, at this session of the General Assembly, are represented here for the first time.” He talked about a region “rich in human and natural resources and bright with human promise.” He also specifically addressed the UN effort in the Congo, warning against interference by other nations and pressing his counterparts to pledge substantial resources to meet the country’s emergency needs.

Eisenhower’s speech, in many ways, was a high-water mark for U.S. presidential speeches at the UN General Assembly. Despite not having a particularly impressive record on Africa, Eisenhower used his time at the podium to advance U.S. policy toward the region. Remarkably, he talked about Africa more than any other U.S. president at the UN; Eisenhower dedicated about fifteen percent of his speech to Africa whereas his successors mentioned Africa or African countries only a few times — about 1 to 5 percent on average. (Note: I used ChatGPT and Claude for the calculations. The results were frustratingly inconsistent, and I suspect not entirely accurate, but Eisenhower was always at the top of the rankings by a large margin.)

Wasteful Moments

In reviewing every speech by every U.S. president at the UN General Assembly from 1960 to 2024, I was struck by how the number of Africa references often had no bearing on how much or how little time and resources a president devoted to Africa policy. For example, President John F. Kennedy—who met with an African leader, on average, once a month during his 1,000 days in office—dedicated only a short paragraph about Congo in his 1963 address. He was even more brief in 1961, commending the UN for its contributions “in the Middle East, in Asia, in Africa this year in the Congo—a means of holding man's violence within bounds.”

In general, most U.S. speeches referenced Africa to support a larger policy point or because it had some rhetorical resonance. While I am a firm believer of not treating Africa as a region apart, many of these brief mentions seem like throw-aways and missed opportunities. By treating African triumphs and tribulations as oratory flourishes, we papered over the substance and squandered a chance to advance our policy goals.

• Global Examples. In almost every U.S. speech, an African conflict is lumped together with other global conflicts to substantiate a bigger message. In his 1992 address, President George H.W. Bush decried that “as we see daily in Bosnia and Somalia and Cambodia, everywhere conflicts claim innocent lives.”

• Rhetorical Devices. U.S. presidents often avail themselves of Africa’s alliterative possibilities, stringing together ideas into powerful soundbites. In 2011, President Barack Obama intoned that “we saw in those protesters the moral force of non-violence that has lit the world from Delhi to Warsaw, from Selma to South Africa —and we knew that change had come to Egypt and to the Arab world.”

• Box-Checking Exercises. To cover as many topics as possible, U.S. presidents will pepper their speeches with brief references to specific African issues. In his 1993 speech to the General Assembly Hall, President Bill Clinton name-dropped Angola, Eritrea, Namibia, Somalia, and South Africa.

Purposeful Moments

Some U.S. presidents, however, used the UN’s bully pulpit to great effect. Instead of delivering one-liners about Africa, they seized the moment to address a pressing topic or concern. In these cases, U.S. speeches at the UN were a call-to-arms, an attempt to rally world opinion around a U.S. program or policy toward the region. The emphasis was on future opportunities, not past events.

• Demanding UN Action. A few U.S. presidents used their time at the podium to propose new UN initiatives or reiterate their support to implement specific UN resolutions. In 1960, Eisenhower expounded on his vision for “an-all out United Nations effort to help African countries launch such educational activities as they may wish to undertake.” He enumerated five principles and programs that should undergird UN efforts toward the region.

• Showcasing U.S. Programs. U.S. speeches at the UN occasionally served as platforms to promote U.S. programs. In 2005, President George W. Bush talked about his commitment to address the scourge of infectious diseases, sharing that the United States is “ahead of schedule to meet an important objective, providing HIV/AIDS treatment for nearly 2 million adults and children in Africa” and has “set a goal of cutting the malaria death rate in half in at least 15 highly endemic African countries.”

• Explaining U.S. Policies. Some U.S. presidents directly engaged their foreign and domestic audiences on U.S. positions regarding the Cold War or apartheid South Africa. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan stressed “how difficult it is for the United States to accept Soviet assurances of peaceful intent when …1,700 Soviet advisers and 2,500 Cuban combat troops are involved in military planning and operations in Ethiopia; when 1,300 Soviet military advisers and 36,000 Cuban troops direct and participate in combat operations to prop up an unpopular, repressive regime in Angola.”

The Biden Experience

I admit that when I served as President Biden’s Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council, I usually kept my powder dry on UN speeches. To be sure, I wanted Africa mentions, but I wasn’t sure how much room I had to press for new language and whether it was worth the political cost.

The truth is that the 2022 and 2023 UN speeches came pre-loaded with Africa references, including nods to the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit and the African Union’s admission as a permanent member of the G20. There were brief mentions on the conflict in Ethiopia, and a few paragraphs on restoring constitutional rule in West Africa. My Western Hemisphere counterpart inserted language about the Kenyan police mission to Haiti. And, of course, there was a nice chunk about the Lobito Corridor. Rightly or wrongly, I focused more on ensuring the speech’s accuracy than generating new content.

The Next Fight Over Words

Is there a better approach? It depends on what one deems important. Within the U.S. policy process, you gain significant leverage within your own bureaucracy or the interagency if the president publicly comments on specific policies or programs related to your region. Save for new resources, it is the best way to demonstrate to your colleagues that what you are pushing is a presidential priority. Within the international community, there also are advantages to singling out certain hotspots or issues. The world takes notice; in Ben Rhodes’s book, The World As It Is, he recounts how Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recited parts of President Obama’s UN speech back to Obama.

A UN speech is different than the State of Union (which I plan to tackle in a post at some point) or a foreign policy speech on an official trip. It is one of the few venues where a president talks almost exclusively about world affairs without having to hold (too much) space for domestic politics. The U.S. president can deliver a global message, distilling his foreign policy philosophy into a few thousand words. This is especially relevant for Global South countries whose leaders tend to receive fewer invitations to the Oval Office. It is a rare and powerful opportunity to speak directly to them.

But just because it is a foreign policy speech, we shouldn’t try to jam it with as many Africa mentions as possible. The goal is to advance policy, not tally up word counts. Indeed, U.S. presidents used to routinely skip the speech in the 1960s and 1970s; President Lyndon Johnson never went to the General Assembly’s annual September session during his time in office. It underscores the point that what is most important is what a president does, not what he says. In the next fight over UN speeches, we should prioritize quality over quantity.

Post Strategy

There’s a reason why my attempt to rank U.S. speeches at the UN was such a failure (besides the AI glitches). When U.S. presidents talk about Africa, it is too often in phrases, not paragraphs. There may be more volume, but that’s not an indicator of substance. And it certainly doesn’t lend itself as a proxy for presidential record.

I am convinced that UN speeches have an important role in policy stagecraft, but it is easily overstated. It might be ok to say less about Africa—as long as the words the president does say truly matter.

This approach became increasingly unsustainable in the subsequent decade and a half, and yet U.S. policy struggled to evolve. During my time as President Biden’s Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council, I was determined to move beyond the anchor states model to something more flexible and fit for purpose. It was almost impossible in practice.

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The Fading Logic of the Anchor States

By the 2010s, it had become painfully obvious that the anchor states model was breaking down. With the departure of Obasanjo and Mbeki, there was an inward turn by both countries under the leadership of new presidents who had less personal interest in regional affairs. A disastrous South African deployment to the Central African Republic in 2013 and the outbreak of the devastating Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria resulted in less peacekeeping and peacemaking. In fact, Nigerian UN deployments plummeted from 3,000 troops, police, and experts in the mid-2000s to only 200 or so today. Ethiopia’s prominent role in the Horn of Africa managed to persist until the country became enmeshed in civil conflict in November 2020. It subsequently pulled all its troops from United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA) while political tensions with Somalia have cast a shadow over troop contributions to the AU mission there. Kenya remains active, exemplified by recent deployments to Haiti and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), but it faces major internal political turmoil.

Our anchor states srategy, in other words, had fallen on hard times. It was still critical to engage with Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa, but it was no longer possible or sensible to expect these four countries to act as force multipliers for U.S. security and economic goals in the region. It was blindingly clear that we needed to diversify and expand our partnerships. There was an imperative to think differently if we wanted to have a viable U.S. strategy toward Africa in an increasingly complex, contested, and chaotic world.

The Rising Rationale for More States

When I was tapped to write the Africa strategy in 2021, this dilemma was top of mind. To be sure, it wasn’t a new insight. Several experts had pointed to the changed landscape. Martin Kindl, then-director of analysis at U.S. Africa Command, indicated that “an internal African multipolarism has emerged, with power and influence increasingly dispersed away from a handful of key ‘anchor states’ and toward a collection of smaller regional influencers.” Moreover, the U.S. government was already adjusting to this new reality—albeit in an ad hoc manner. For example, we turned to Chad and Senegal to help with regional security challenges in West Africa while we welcomed Rwanda’s peacekeeping missions to the Central African Republic and Mozambique.

At the same time, U.S. priorities were rapidly evolving. It wasn’t simply about keeping the peace, but how and which African governments would lead the response to the climate crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and authoritarianism. During the Biden Administration, there also was a premium on working with allies and partners who shared our interests in an era of geopolitical competition. What struck me, even before I was hired, was how many of the states that fit the bill were smaller states. Indeed, I had published a paper at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in 2020, observing that Africa’s smallest democracies, especially its island nations, routinely punch above their weight.

In the strategy, we combined these insights and reflections into a new approach. It was not an outright rejection of anchor states, but a realization that we needed a more expansive vision of how we work with our African partners. What I wanted was a more versatile strategy where we could pivot and adjust to build the right coalition to meet whatever near-term or long-term challenge we faced.

In a section titled “A 21st Century U.S.-African Partnership,” we said that the United States must “must reset its relations with African counterparts, listen to diverse local voices, and widen the circle of engagement.” Specifically, we must engage more states.

We will broaden our engagements, continuing to invest in the largest states while also deepening our relations with small and medium African states to advance our shared priorities, including the AU’s Agenda 2063. Safeguarding U.S. national security interests requires as much engagement with the small countries as it does with the larger ones. We will engage with emerging African democracies, surging assistance and seizing opportunities to support promising democratic openings. We will develop a deeper bench of partners by increasing our interactions and deploying higher level U.S. interlocutors to promote greater policy alignment based on shared values, including at multinational forums and international courts.

Why We Faced Opposition

Even from the outset, it was clear that our intended shift was going to face some headwinds. It stemmed from a structural challenge, as well as the specific idiosyncrasies of working with smaller states. I won’t say it doomed the exercise, but it did make our task harder.

• Planning Problems. It is one thing to say you want a dynamic approach to partnerships, but it is another thing to budget for it. In 1999, Secretary of State Madeline Albright told the Senate Appropriations Committee on Foreign Operation that the Clinton Administration wanted to continue its strong support for anchor states Nigeria and South Africa where “we can have the greatest impact.” My Defense Department colleagues made a similar point, explaining how they can’t just shift resources on a dime. They wanted guidance to allow for consistent funding for specific challenges and in priority theaters.

• Veto Players. There is a big difference between large states, on the one hand, and medium and small states, on the other. While one may receive flak for engaging with a large state, our relationships tend to be complex and multidimensional — robust enough to avoid being hijacked by a single issue. In contrast, it is relatively easy to nix a budding partnership with the small state. A diverse range of stakeholders, from ambassadors and congressional staffers to NGO activists, can throw down a flag because of a flawed election, human rights allegation, or even a perceived personal slight. Essentially, there are too many people who have the power of the veto, and it tends to require a disproportionate amount of political capital to overrule them.

• Risk Factors. Although not a challenge exclusively for small and medium states, there is the looming risk that political upheaval may suddenly imperil U.S. engagement. This underlying volatility becomes a deterrent from broadening U.S. partnerships beyond the anchor states. For example, when Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano and Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete left power in 2005 and 2015, respectively, their immediate successors proved less capable as regional peacemakers. A coup or civil unrest can limit a government’s willingness or ability to work with the United States – exemplified by Niger’s eviction of U.S. forces in 2024.

Where We Made Progress

Although breaking free from the anchor state model was difficult, we had some successes. First, we convinced the powers-that-be that senior level engagement should be more inclusive. Instead of a paint-by-the-numbers meeting of anchor states in the Oval Office in December 2022, we secured spots for large states (DRC, Nigeria) and medium and small states (Gabon, Madagascar, Liberia, and Sierra Leone); in fact, it was the first time a Malagasy leader had entered the West Wing since 1964. We also used the president’s directive to the cabinet to ensure U.S. engagement covered the entire region – including the first high-level trips in decades to Cabo Verde, Benin, Guinea-Bissau, Lesotho, Mauritania, Namibia, and Seychelles, among others. Second, we expanded our partnerships with different African groupings, including those situated on the Atlantic Basin as part of a new Atlantic Cooperation initiative and with Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, and Zambia as part of the Lobito Trans-Africa Corridor. Third, we pressed our non-African partners to reinforce our effort through their own outreach, whether through the European Union, NATO, or bilaterally.

While I wanted a more deliberate approach to broadening security ties, it was happening by necessity. As the security situation deteriorated in the Sahel, Horn of Africa, and Great Lakes, there wasn’t much more we could ask of Nigeria and Ethiopia. We worked with or received requests by other countries to support more diverse coalitions – such as the East African Community and later the Southern African Development Community in the DRC or the Accra Initiative in West Africa. We had constructive dialogues with Angola, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sao Tome and Principe, Togo, and Zambia on how to team up to resolve crises in the region. The anchor states, of course, were often part of the conversation, but they couldn’t consistently take the lead.

How to Proceed

Reflecting on these setbacks and advances, I realize that we needed to meet somewhere in the middle. While I remain emphatic that we need to be nimbler, I recognize that the U.S. government can’t be everywhere, and we can’t redirect the entire bureaucracy on the fly. At the same time, it is a mistake to make a big bet on a few countries. We need options and must retain some strategic depth, managing risk by investing in partners big and small.

One compromise probably is to identify a broader set of countries to elevate in a “more states” approach. The Obama Administration internally tried to effect such an arrangement, but it mapped certain priorities to certain countries, and it became difficult to keep track — let alone remain faithful to the construct.

This should happen in tandem with investments across the board. During the Clinton and Bush administration, we trained over 60,000 peacekeepers and developed personal relationships to ensure the United States and its African partners were willing and able to respond to whatever challenge we face. This may seem naive in our current moment of transactional foreign policy, but it is clear that our failure to do so has and will continue to be to our detriment.

Post Strategy

When I look back at my time in government, there are several initiatives that we started, but we struggled to fully make a reality. The task to transcend the anchor state model was a big one. Nonetheless, I remain convinced that we have to keep working at it. The region has become more diverse than ever before, and it is not feasible or sensible to rely only on a handful of large states to drive positive change and tackle difficult challenges. Moreover, the international community has more priorities than ever before, requiring stronger relationships with medium and small states in Africa. Yes, it will continue to be a bureaucratic headache — regardless of who is in the White House — but it is worth our time, attention, and creativity to institute a more agile and expansive vision of U.S. partnerships with African counterparts.