Chinese construction workers carry reinforcing rods on a building site in Algiers, Algeria.
Pascal Parrot/Getty Images
Last week President Trump reportedly singled out Haiti, El Salvador and African nations as "shithole countries" whose people were not the kind of immigrants the United States wanted. At the time, I happened to be in Serekunda, Gambia's largest urban area, as Trump's slur shocked people across Africa. The anger was palpable.
Trump denied saying it, but the reports led to a cascade of swift condemnation, including a United Nations spokesman describing the president's comments as "racist." The African Union, an organization of 55 nations, expressed "outrage" and said it "strongly believes that there is a huge misunderstanding of the African continent and its people by the current [U.S.] administration."
But as the fallout continues, there is something missing from the conversation: Trump's alleged vulgar insult comes at a time of strategic shift in Africa — toward China. In the past few weeks I have been on the ground in West Africa, and everywhere I have gone I have seen the presence of China.
As America has become an increasingly unwelcoming place for young Africans, they look elsewhere in search of a better life. Last week I visited the Confucius Institute in Dakar, a huge building located on the grounds of Senegal's University of Dakar. I spent time with students from across Africa coming to learn Mandarin as a way to land a dream job in China or take a slice from the growing Chinese presence in every corner of the continent.
Senegalese can study Mandarin at the Confucius Institute in Dakar, at Senegal's University of Dakar.
Ismail Einashe for NPR
In the past, they might have sought to study in Europe or the United States. But those places have put up barriers that make it tough to get student visas. Mamadou Fall, the director of the Dakar Confucius Institute, says that the roughly 500 students it teaches find it nearly impossible to get student visas to the U.S. or Europe. But China is happy to oblige them — it now offers Senegalese students free visas and offers 60 of the brightest students from the institute full scholarships to China each year.
China's mammoth investment in infrastructure is a key part of its arsenal. As part of the One Belt, One Road strategy, the Chinese are building roads, ports, dams, railways and other infrastructure across Africa. These include a metro system in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and a vital railway connecting landlocked Ethiopia's 100 million people to Djibouti's Red Sea port, where the Chinese plan to open their first military base outside China. In Kenya, they financed the biggest post-colonial infrastructure project in the country: a nearly $4 billion railway linking Nairobi with the country's main Indian Ocean port in Mombasa. China is also building a major train network in Nigeria.
Attitudes toward the U.S. have changed in Africa since Trump took office, according to a Pew poll in June. Although Trump's strongman act remained popular in Nigeria, the pollster said, "the intensity of positive opinion has waned" in other sub-Saharan countries surveyed, compared with 2015. What's more, Trump's popularity is nowhere near that of previous Republican President George W. Bush.
Trump's comments disparaging Africans, along with his administration's travel ban and the threat to cut aid to African nations that voted in the U.N. against Trump's Jerusalem decision, send a clear message: The United States is retreating from the post-1945 international system it created, taking an "America First" position on global issues. China is stepping into the vacuum created by Trump in Africa — and almost everywhere else.
The danger for the U.S. is that Trump's insulting words make China an even more enticing partner for African nations. This is a moment of opportunity for the Asian giant. Trump's apparent disrespect may push African nations — and the young Africans who represent their future — further into China's arms.
The one area in Africa where America has shown growing interest is the military and counterterrorism front. Trump might be uninterested in Africa's potential, but he has ramped up America's military engagement on the continent. Trump is playing by the usual Africa playbook, which frames the continent as a place of wars, famines and disease rather than a tapestry of nations and cultures. We Africans have long faced the idea of being from an undesirable continent — a place caricatured for centuries for its nightmares and beauty. The Chinese, however, seem to recognize the potential of the fastest-growing continent on the planet.
I felt the sting of the president's words last week. I am from Somalia — one of the "shithole countries." But being on the ground in Africa the past few days, I also felt something else, something that may one day be understood as a turning point. Years from now, when you ask Africans when they lost faith in America, don't be surprised if they tell you it was the day a U.S. president labeled their country a "shithole."
Ismail Einashe (@IsmailEinashe) is a British-Somali freelance journalist.
Editor's note: NPR has decided in this case to spell out the vulgar word that the president reportedly used because it meets our standard for use of offensive language: It is "absolutely integral to the meaning and spirit of the story being told."
As Trump Insults African Countries, China Actively Embraces Them
China’s foreign minister visited four African countries ahead of the upcoming Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC).
South African Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Maite Nkoana-Mashabane at a bliateral meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, February 19, 2017. (Photos DIRCO)
Last week U.S. President Donald Trump reportedly insulted Haiti, El Salvador, and African nations by asking “Why do we want all these people from ‘shithole countries’ coming here?” at a meeting on the U.S. immigration policy. Although Trump later denied having used such vulgar terms — tweeting “The language used by me at the DACA meeting was tough, but this was not the language used” — the incident deeply irritated African nations.
So far, Botswana, Senegal, South Africa, and Ghana have reportedly summoned U.S. diplomats to express their concerns. South Africa even issued a rare diplomatic protest to the United States.
Trump’s remarks, like a godsend from Beijing’s perspective, will effectively push African countries closer to China’s side. Beijing has been actively embracing Africa and trying to include the continent in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) — Chinese President Xi Jinping’s flagship foreign policy.
From January 12 to 16 — just as Trump’s insulting incident hit headlines — Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited four African countries: Rwanda, Angola, Gabon, and São Tomé and Príncipe.*
During his visit, Wang urged all African countries to join China’s BRI, claiming that “the African continent was part of the ancient maritime silk road.”
“China has already started to explore cooperation opportunities with a number of African countries, especially those on the eastern coast of Africa and has achieved positive progress in this regard,” said Wang during his visit in Madagascar.
During a joint interview with Chinese media, Wang explained China’s vision for the African continent, as well as the whole community of developing countries, using much more pleasant language than Trump’s remarks.
“Many African countries appreciate and support the Belt and Road Initiative proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping, and China hopes to inject new impetus into cooperation with Africa through jointly building the initiative,” Wang said.
“As a natural and historical extension of the Belt and Road, Africa should not be absent in the co-building process, nor should it be left behind in the mutual development of China and the world,” he added.
While Trump’s administration was hurriedly mending relations after Trump’s remarks, Wang further said that “Africa is always a priority in China’s diplomacy” during his visit in Rwanda on January 13. As proof, Wang noted that it is a tradition for China’s foreign minister to make the first trip of the new year to African countries. “The tradition has been kept for 28 years till now,” he pointed out.
This year will be an especially important one for China’s relationships with African countries, as Beijing is set to host FOCAC, a set of ministerial conferences between China and the African countries held every three years. The first one was held in 2000 in Beijing, and the latest in 2015 in Johannesburg, South Africa. In 2015, China announced a $60 billion package plan for the China-Africa cooperation.
This year, to demonstrate that China highly values the relationship with Africa, Beijing decided to upgrade the 2018 FOCAC to a summit, according to China’s Foreign Ministry.
*A previous version of this article mistakenly included additional countries on Wang Yi’s itinerary.