The Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on 4 June 2025 titled "China's Malign Influence in Africa." The senior Africa Bureau official in the State Department, Troy Fitrell, provided the testimony.
Responding to the title of the hearing, Fitrell denounced Beijing's assertive, government-backed strategies to capture African market share. He said China's strategy for economic dominance in Africa relies on a centralized, state-directed, and nationally resourced approach to dominating global markets and strategic supply chains.
Fitrell devoted most of his prepared testimony to the Trump administration's strategy for Africa, which will focus on investment-led and trade-driven growth. It will prioritize robust commercial engagement, recognizing and treating African nations as equal partners in trade and investment. He then identified six targeted actions:
1. Making commercial diplomacy a core priority across US embassies;
2. Promoting private-sector-identified market reforms with African governments;
3. Implementing high-quality infrastructure projects;
4. Sending commercial diplomacy missions with private sector representatives;
5. Connecting export-ready US companies with African opportunities; and
6. Reforming US trade and financing tools to better compete with China's swift and risk-tolerant financing model.
Fitrell rightly concludes that "the strategy's success relies on U.S. companies expanding into new markets and African partners enabling environments for transparent and lasting commerce."
Comment: As someone who has been following African affairs since the early 1960s, including 37 years in the State Department and most of it in the Africa Bureau, there is nothing new about this strategy except perhaps the emphasis being put on it by the Trump administration. But other administrations, especially the Reagan administration, also gave commercial diplomacy a high priority. All of them were disappointed with the results in Africa. In the final analysis, the strategy is highly dependent on the willingness of the American private sector to engage in Africa. Private sector enthusiasm will be determined not only by the priority given to it by the Trump administration, but the tangible incentives offered by the US government. This is where China has a big advantage.
Is the US government prepared to provide sufficient on the ground staffing at all embassies in Africa? Will it increase resources for the US Export-Import Bank, US International Development Finance Corporation, and Millennium Challege Corporation? Will high level Trump administration officials lead trade and investment missions to Africa? If the response to all of these questions is affirmative, the strategy might make a difference.
But it does not help when the announcement of the Africa commercial strategy is immediately followed by a full or partial ban on travel to the United States by 10 African countries. Even if they are not among the most important trade and investment prospects, it sends the wrong message to all of Africa that America is not really open for business.
