While Trump’s meeting with five African leaders in early July was meant to replace aid with trade, the event served little more than optics. Still, beneath the diplomatic smiles lies a deeper concern: a renewed scramble for Africa’s vast mineral wealth, raising the specter of modern-day colonialism in a new economic guise.
The Summit of Contradictions
Therefore, when Donald Trump met with African leaders at the White House, the optics told a story far different from the one officially presented. Unlike President Joe Biden’s 2022 U.S.–Africa Leaders Summit—which extended invitations to 49 African nations with diplomatic relations and saw full attendance—Trump’s meeting featured just five heads of state. This selective engagement inevitably forced the Trump to use his speech to (inaccurately) portray those five countries representing the entire continent, a diplomatic oversimplification that raises more questions than it answers. In reality, these five countries represent only 2 per cent of the continent’s population.
Even more puzzling was the inclusion of Guinea-Bissau’s President Umaro Sissoco Embaló. The US does not even maintain an embassy in Bissau, and bilateral trade remains negligible. His presence at the summit suggests that the event may have served less as a forum for comprehensive African engagement and more as a carefully choreographed spspectacle designed to signal—or obscure—Washington’s accelerating interest in Africa’s strategic mineral resources.
Take Gabon, for example, whose president was among the attendees. The country holds roughly a quarter of the world’s known reserves of manganese, a key component in stainless steel and battery production. Currently, Gabon supplies about 22 percent of China’s manganese imports—a figure that underscores the mineral’s geopolitical significance. Trump’s engagement appears driven by a desire to reposition the US as a competitive force not only in African diplomacy but also in the global race for critical raw materials essential to emerging technologies.
Similarly, the Trump administration’s “success” in getting Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo to sign a peace accord in late June was also part of the same strategy to access minerals. DRC, for instance, is the world’s largest producer of cobalt, accounting for about 70 percent of global production for the metal in 2024. It also holds an estimated 60 percent of the world’s reserves of coltan, a mineral essential for manufacturing capacitors used in smartphones, electric vehicles, and other electronics. Trump was reported to have said that “I was able to get them together and sell it … and not only that, we’re getting for the United States a lot of the mineral rights from Congo”.
Minerals for Domination
While it is not inherently bad for any state in the world to compete for access to markets, what is more important for African states when it comes to the US is the type of relationship they will have with Washington. The summit made it quite clear that the Trump administration’s perspective is deeply colonial, with its terms of engagement reflecting neo-colonial entanglements.
For instance, Trump’s four-minute speech to his guests was more about what the US can do “for” these countries, implying thereby that these countries have no independent agency in pursuing their own interests and deciding what works best for them. Trump praised the president of Liberia for his fluent English, not knowing at all that English has been Liberia’s official language since 1822. His remarks show a) his poor level of understanding of the continent and 2) his perspective that Africans are not supposed to speak good English! Ultimately, these considerations do not matter for Washington’s long-term interest (in the continent’s resources). Africans, therefore, must tread carefully.
Challenge for African states
The key challenge for African states, therefore, is to carefully negotiate their trade ties with the US. So, while Trump’s invitation to Africans might be a step in the right direction of doing trade, there is no information available on what the terms of trade are going to be. Most importantly, when it comes to negotiations, Trump can be very aggressive. This was pretty much evident when Trump publicly clashed with the President of South Africa in May 2025, accusing South Africa of committing a genocide of White people in the country. No trade deal happened when it became apparent that Trump’s negotiating strategy was to use doubtful videos to snub his counterpart and submit him into making concessions to the US. Therefore, while the Africa summit may have looked great when it happened, what it can and will ultimately produce on the negotiating table is an altogether different issue. Africa is still far from entering into a respectable relationship with America, one that does not see the continent as a land open for exploitation.
Salman Rafi Sheikh, research analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs
