US-Africa relations: Policy and governance priorities from Kenya's perspective

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JULY 2025

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by Dr Robert Kabage

Abstract

From the periods of colonialism, the slave trade, the Cold War until now, United States (US) engagements with Africa have been, as any other nation would do, steered by its national and strategic interests. The inauguration of Donald Trump as US President on 20 January 2025 marked a significant shift in the US’s foreign policy. The administration’s “America First” policy, which emphasises US national interests, economic protectionalism, and reduced foreign intervention, is disrupting America’s foreign policy in a significant way. Many countries, including Kenya and others in Africa, are forced to realign their bilateral relations with those of the US, in order to maximise mutual benefits. Apart from planning to cut or restructure US civilian foreign aid and development assistance under the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which has disrupted various humanitarian and development programmes in Kenya, Africa, and indeed globally, the new policy seeks to reduce or completely withdraw US budgets from many multilateral engagements such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and Paris Agreement, among others. On the military front, many members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Europe, who have traditionally relied on the US for their security guarantees, have been compelled to rethink their military strategy, with a reduced role of the US in mind. By reviewing existing literature and policy documents such as the new Executive Orders by President Trump, this paper concludes that, indeed, the US seeks to prioritise its national interests over multilateral engagements seen as not directly benefitting the country. It recommends that Kenya and Africa should realign their priorities in relation to the US, even as they seek to explore alternative financing and relations with other states.

Keywords: America First, USAID, Trump2, Kenya, Africa

Introduction

From the periods of colonialism, the slave trade, the Cold War until now, United States (US) engagements with Africa have been, as any other nation would do, steered by its national and strategic interests (Schraeder, 1994). The inauguration of Donald Trump as US President on 20 January 2025 marked a significant shift in the country’s foreign policy, and Africa will have to adjust its bilateral relations so as to strategically realign its interests with those of the US. There is no doubt that the Trump administration’s “America First” policy, which emphasises US national interests, economic protectionalism, and reduced foreign intervention, is disrupting America’s foreign policy in a significant way. The “America First” policy, which prioritises the US’s interests in peace and security, trade and international development (Trachenberg, 2024), adopted by the Trump II (Trump’s second term) administration has compelled many allies in Europe, Asia, the Americas, and Africa to reassess their bilateral and multilateral relations so as to realign them to those of the US for mutual benefits. Globally, multilateralism suffered a setback as the US withdrew from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Paris Agreement. In Europe, the future of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the continuity of its policies and practices is now in doubt, after the US took a relatively different position from many of its NATO allies in Europe, especially in relation to the Russia-Ukraine war. The US trade rivalry with China is also likely to be resurgent, as was the case with the first Trump administration, when the US sought to tame China’s increasing influence in the tech space.

For the rest of the Third World, where Africa and Kenya fall, the US’s reduction or complete stopping of development and humanitarian assistance means that many will struggle with budget deficits and must seek alternatives. For Kenya and Africa, where many programmes funded by USAID have been disrupted, African countries may have to restructure their budgets and seek alternative sources of funding, if the freeze takes longer or assistance is completely cut. While the US has been a strong partner in development and humanitarian assistance, this is likely to reduce drastically during the Trump II administration, as the US seeks to cut government spending locally and internationally.

While multipolarity has been gaining ground, as the US sought to focus more on domestic policy and reducing its multilateral engagements, multilateralism is even more strained under the Trump II administration. The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) are increasingly projecting their self-interest onto the UNSC, significantly weakening the ability of the Council to effectively deliver on its mandate. The withdrawal of the US from the Paris Agreement and the WHO also demonstrates the increased weakening of multilateralism under Trump II. Consequently, the profile of other global actors like Russia and China are on the rise, even as Europe and others in Asia and Africa continue to reassess and realign their interests with the US. The Trump II administration, which is right-leaning, aligns with the rise of far-right political parties in Europe, who seek to limit immigration and keep their societies in their traditional and conservative state, hence undermining the much-touted globalisation and universality of the western hegemony.

Methodological and Theoretical Note

This is a desktop research paper aimed at unpacking the preliminary scenarios that could shape the Trump II administration’s policies by systematically reviewing available literature and providing foresight into possible ways that Kenya could realign its bilateral relations with the US, so as to strategically benefit from this sudden shift of the US’s policy under Trump II. It is based on realist theory. It best explains the competitive nature of states while they seek to protect their own interests and project their power (Morgenthau, 2014: 53). It argues that states are self-interested, that the world is anarchical and therefore self-help is imminent in pursuit of self-preservation.

Although Fukuyama (2020: 298) in his End of History had predicted that history was converging at the time, and that universal political economy was imminent, his prediction failed to materialise as universality failed to take root and as states challenged western hegemony. While the end of the Cold War put realism on the defensive when the tides moved in favour of globalisation and universality of politics and economics (Williams et al, 2005), realism has powerfully bounced back after the western liberal model failed to be accepted universally, putting into question the ability of states to act together multilaterally. Consequently, the 21st century has seen a resurgence of realism, where power is slowly but steadily being concentrated at the state level, and where the liberal euphoria of universality of norms is being greatly challenged.

Key Issues

International Peace and Security

The “America First” policy, which prioritises the US’s interests in peace and security is disrupting the conventional belief within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) membership that the US will defend NATO members in the case of military attacks, especially from the dreaded Russia. The US under Trump II is demanding that NATO members should increase their military budgets and build the individual capacities of their militaries, and that they should not rely solely on the US for security guarantees and protection. The Trump II administration is threatening to upend the conventional position that the US’s military power was meant to protect and project the western liberal international order founded on Bretton Woods (Dombrowski, 2025: 27). A recent meeting in France of major military powers in Europe — France, the UK, Germany, Italy, and Poland — are crafting a plan for security guarantees for Ukraine, even as they seek to assert their military cooperation and capabilities without the US (Vincent, 2025: para 1 and 2).

In the case of Kenya, a Major Non-Nato Ally (MNNA) of the US designated by President Joe Biden in 2024, the country could harness its military capacities by strengthening historical military collaboration with the US especially in areas of mutual interest, like the fight against terrorism, that have led to military cooperation such as the Manda Bay and Mombasa military bases (Negash & Salih, 2023: 110). The Trump II administration has, however, demonstrated that it intends to scale down the US’s funding and involvement in military missions abroad, as demonstrated by the recent freezing of funding for Kenyan-led security missions in Haiti (Reuters, 2025: para 1). It is also not yet clear whether the Trump II administration considers the designation of Kenya as an MNNA by the Biden administration as a priority and aligning to its interests. While Kenya’s designation as an MNNA of the US may remain unchanged, the Trump II administration has a history of reversing the policies and initiatives of its predecessors, and this should not come as a surprise with regards Kenya’s MNNA status, especially in the event that it does not align with US military priorities. While Trump II may not be very enthusiastic about military multilateralism, this could provide an opportunity to pursue bilateral relations that are custom-made for Kenya-US mutual relations. Kenya could thus use its MNNA status as leverage to seek bilateral military/security cooperation with the US outside the multilateral security arrangement. It may also be strategic to seek other security cooperation arrangements with other countries, by invoking the strategic ambiguity posture of non-alignment, so as not to jeopardise the existing Kenya-US agreements.

Most importantly, Kenya ought to rethink its financing of security operations, to enhance domestic funding from its budget, which ultimately gives it more autonomy to exercise the country’s sovereignty in promoting peace and security within Kenya and in other friendly countries. At approximately 1% of the total government budget (SIPRI, 2023), Kenya’s military budget may need enhanced financial support.

Gender and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

The Trump II administration has taken a more conservative view of gender and sexuality, with President Trump arguing that one can only either be male or female. According to Trump:

“It is the policy of the United States to only recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality. Under my direction, the Executive Branch will enforce all sex-protective laws to promote this reality, and the following definitions shall govern all Executive interpretation of and application of Federal law and administration policy.” (Executive Order 14168, Section 2, Para 1)

Trump’s position on sexuality has emphasised the binary nature of sexuality as man and woman, reversing the Biden administration’s policy on sexuality, which sought to protect the fluidity and grey nature of sexuality, emphasising the protection of sexual minorities such as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) individuals. While the Trump II administration’s position on gender and sexuality aligns with Africa’s predominant conservative view on sexuality, it exposes sexual minorities to further marginalisation and discrimination. While Botswana, Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde, and South Africa have decriminalised same-sex relations, LGBTQ persons remain criminalised in other countries including Kenya. This shift in the US’s policy on gender and DEI means that programmes initially funded by USAID under gender and diversity could face budget cuts and freeze. This could also significantly entrench this policy shift beyond the US, and could see other countries adopting the same view, by limiting community support and tolerance for LGBTQ persons.

While LGBTQ and same sex marriage is prohibited by Kenyan law, such minority groups exist in our communities, and the Supreme Court of Kenya has ruled that queer persons have a right to associate, just like any other Kenyan, and have a right to register their support group association (Daily Nation, 2023).

Aid, Global Health and International Development

The freezing of USAID’s programmes, especially those deemed as not aligning with Trump’s policy of “America First”, is a wakeup call for Kenya and Africa, to reduce dependency and step up domestic financing especially of critical sectors like public health. In Kenya, former USAID programmes meant to combat HIV, TB, and Malaria have been negatively impacted, with effects expected to manifest in the next few months. Among other issues, President Trump has also signed an Executive Order withdrawing the US from the World Health Organization (WHO) (The White House, 2025a), signalling the US’s desire to cut back on its involvement in multilateral global health architecture led by the WHO.

The USAID’s freezing of funding for Kenya’s programmes especially in the public health sector requires urgent attention from the government of Kenya, to not only enhance its domestic budget for public health, but also to seek alternative donors as a matter of urgency in the short term. To avoid progress made in combating HIV, TB, and Malaria from being rolled back, Kenya should indeed consider this one of its top priorities. Most importantly, Kenya should in future consider funding critical sectors such as public health entirely from its consolidated fund, to avoid shocks occasioned by the unpredictability of external funding. It is also important to note that domestic funding of public health will ensure that it is Kenya’s priority areas in public health that are upheld, and not external donors’ own interests in any project they fund.

While donor countries like the US should prioritise the humanitarian needs of beneficiaries and not their own interests, as the US has done with its “America First” policy, the reality is that international development assistance has never actually sought to empower the communities they support but have instead entrenched their interests in the development projects they finance. This has led some scholars, like Dambisa Moyo in her Dead Aid, to argue that development assistance is not in fact empowering African countries and others in the South, but rather, it is making them more subservient to the countries of the North, further worsening existing inequalities that favour the West (Moyo, 2010: 1-5).

As an illustration, the Trump II administration has suspended aid to South Africa, protesting against the enactment of the Expropriation Act 13 of 2024 in South Africa, which allows the South African government to acquire land, in special instances, for public interest. According to the Trump II administration, the sanction on South Africa is meant to protect white farmers, who are supposedly in danger of their land being compulsorily acquired without compensation (The White House, 2025b). This US policy does not however address the realities of inequalities in South Africa, where black South African land was forcefully acquired during apartheid, leaving many black South Africans in abject poverty, a legacy that has continued to bedevil the rainbow nation. Aid in this case is seen as a tool for external control and manipulation for selfish interest.

Climate Action

While climate action has attracted international attention over global warming, the Trump II administration is not enthusiastic about climate action and has through an Executive Order indicated the US’s desire to be exempted from the Paris Agreement (The White House, 2025c). According to the administration, the Paris Agreement in its current form does not prioritise the interests of the US, which he claims burdens the US taxpayers to channel money into countries that do not need it, while undermining US interests in the process.

While Kenya had positioned itself as the champion of climate action in Africa, this strategic position is likely to be adversely impacted by the US’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, considering that the US was a major financier of the climate action. While the extent of the implication of US’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement is yet to be fully felt, it is likely to significantly roll back progress made in the implementation of the agreement. Although the climate change debate is essential for the survival of humanity, Trump’s scepticism mirrors that of many ordinary people, the hustlers in the Kenyan sense, who are often left behind in the climate change debate and action plans. To the ordinary Mwananchi, who is not able to attend the elitist global climate summits locally and internationally to get facts and statistics, the climate change agenda may simply pass as non-existent, or having to do with the elites in society, yet the climate change ramifications mostly affect the poor and vulnerable, mostly in Africa.

In Kenya, the climate change agenda should thus continue, with a focus on making climate mitigation people-centred and grassroots-driven, without necessarily depending on the global climate financing architecture. Consequently, there is a need to model the climate change agenda from the grassroots level – the bottom-up approach as opposed to the present top-down approach. This way, the ordinary person will understand the implications of climate change and, hence, make individual behavioural changes that will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help preserve biodiversity.

One way for Kenya to champion the climate debate is by involving its youthful populations in the climate agenda, especially because climate change will mostly impact on future and younger generations. It is for this reason that in Europe the climate action debate has gained traction by involving young and youthful environmental activists, leading to influential environmental student campaigns like the “Fridays for Future” movement, which has mobilised millions of students into climate action by pushing for political action to remedy climate change.

Through its actions, the “Fridays for Future” campaign was recognised by the United Nations Environmental Program in 2019 as a champion of the earth (UNEP, 2019). In this regard, Kenya and Africa need to consider incorporating climate change courses into the education system from the primary through to the tertiary level. Governments too must incentivise green initiatives and businesses, to ensure that they favourably compete with others as they innovatively devise climate-friendly technologies

US Immigration Policy and Africa’s Labour Export

As the world’s largest economy worth approximately US$30 trillion, followed by China with approximately US$20 trillion, the US hegemony remains a powerful force to reckon with even in an increasingly multipolar world. Trump campaigned on the slogan of “America First”, which is a nationalist view that prioritises American interests by especially cutting down on the US’s budget on multilateral institution and aid spending. Trump’s campaign, and now his administration, is also laced with strong anti-immigrant sentiments, who are often projected as “illegal immigrants and dangerous criminals”. While legal immigrants in the US have nothing to worry about, these sentiments generally project immigrants— whether legal or illegal— as unwanted and unwelcome to the US.

What has hit closer to home is the Trump administration ordering a temporary freeze on USAID activities, which could potentially upend health systems in Kenya and many other countries in Africa and beyond. Trump’s populist views in the US are not unique, as far-right political parties in Europe are also gaining ground, with seven European Union (EU) member states— Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, and Slovakia now having far-right parties within government. Many other far-right parties in other EU countries have also had a strong showing in recent elections, including in Austria, France, and Germany. These parties are generally considered conservative, and they seek to promote and protect traditional institutions, customs, and values. Consequently, immigrants are perceived as interfering with these customs and values, leading to their “othering” as outsiders. In some extreme cases, far-right parties could entertain and even promote fascist and Nazist views— characterised by authoritarianism, ultra-nationalism, and dictatorship, as was the case in Nazi Germany and fascist Italy under Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini—both blamed for the ravages of the Second World War. But why should the rise of these far-right political parties and conservatism in the US and Europe call for our rethink of immigration and labour export as promoted by the current Kenyan government?

First, conservative parties are generally anti-immigration, and labour migrants are likely to face more stringent conditions before being allowed to migrate. Those who have migrated are also more likely to face legal and policy hurdles that will tend to prioritise nationals over migrants in terms of job opportunities, hence affecting their labour mobility. Secondly, entrenched conservative views and ideologies are likely to strengthen racist views, especially against Africans in the diaspora. This will make it difficult for migrant Kenyans (Africans) to be accepted and to integrate into communities where they settle. As is already the case, many will have to navigate and contend with racist-motivated hate and, sometimes, crime—remember here, the extreme case of 20 May 2020 when George Floyd, a Black-American man, was murdered in cold blood by white policeman Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis. Thirdly, labour migration will only benefit a tiny and almost negligible fraction of unemployed youths, and there is an increased need to focus on the more than 99% who will never get an opportunity to migrate. More economic stimulus packages and a more investor-friendly business and entrepreneurial environment will need to be created to encourage business start-ups to grow. Kenya’s MPESA brand is clear testament that Kenya is indeed a Silicon Savannah, and the country should focus on generating more such opportunities and beyond. Fourthly, while labour migration may appear like it is easing unemployment in the short term, it is likely to actually exacerbate unemployment and poverty levels in the long term. This is because taxpayers have spent millions of shillings to educate and train such young and promising human resources, only for them to work abroad in a clear case of brain drain and further strengthen the capacities of countries in the north, which are already benefitting from unequal trade that favours them and disadvantages Africa and Kenya. Kenya especially needs more skilled labour than the developed north does, and the current labour migration is prompted more by push and not pull factors—the lack of opportunities at home.

There is a need for the Kenyan government to think more strategically about labour migration and go beyond the normal rhetoric and politics of labour export, which gloss over the real youth bulge that is about to explode for lack of job opportunities. This is because although the average unemployment rate in Kenya stands at about 12.7%, the youths (15-34 years), comprising 35% of the Kenyan population, have the highest unemployment rate, at 67% (Federation of Kenyan Employers, 2024).

Conclusion

The Trump II administration has indeed prioritised US interests in global affairs, and multilateralism is likely to suffer the most during his reign. While the full scale of his policies is yet to fully manifest, it is clear that Africa is not his top priority, a clear divergence of US-Africa relations, and even that of US-EU relations, which have almost always aligned and remained mutual. The disruption is therefore not just limited to Kenya and Africa, but indeed the whole world.

Policy Recommendations

As Kenya and indeed Africa continues to navigate the possible implications of the Trump II administration, there are a number of recommendations for the Kenyan government and other governments in Africa:

• There is a need to prioritise financing of public health from the consolidated fund, to avoid disruption caused by unpredictable external financing like the USAID freeze.

• There is a need for governments in Africa to diversify sources of funding and development finance, beyond the traditional US and European Union. Lessons may be drawn from looking at the East policy of the NARC administration from 2003 and the China Belt and Road Initiative, which have massively improved Africa’s infrastructure, its neo-colonial pitfalls notwithstanding.

• Global issues like climate mitigation action plans must be driven from the grassroots level and in a de-colonial approach, to ensure it is Afro-centric, not Eurocentric and elitist as is presently the case.

• Kenyan and African governments should look into ways of spurring local industries and entrepreneurship, to limit the effects of international shocks like those caused by radical shifts in US foreign policy that may negatively affect livelihoods. There is a need to create jobs locally, with export of labour only being in strategic areas to avoid brain drain and unfavourable working conditions for Africans abroad. Incentives such as tax breaks for new businesses, and regional frameworks such as the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) that seek to liberalise intra-African trade may spur trade and industry in Africa.

• Kenyan and indeed African governments must strategically realign in a multipolar world and must pragmatically explore their available options to navigate international trade and finance, including working closely with Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS), now BRICS+, who seek to offer an alternative to the declining and now unpredictable western-liberal hegemony.

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