Washington, DC — Thank you, Kendra. And it’s a pleasure to be here with Ambassador Giordano, Chairman Jovanovic, and other distinguished guests and colleagues.
The Trump Administration remains engaged in Africa.
Since this is my first time speaking publicly on our broad Africa policy, let me just say at the top that it’s the honor of a lifetime to be here at the Department of State leading a team of committed Americans and local Africans at our Embassies to work on advancing the U.S.-Africa relationship on behalf of President Trump and Secretary Rubio.
I would like to use this opportunity today to provide insight and clarity into the Trump Administration’s strategy towards Africa. And how our approach aims to make America safer, stronger, and more prosperous.
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Let me start with the big picture: The United States’ is resetting its relationship with Africa based on mutually beneficial partnerships rather than aid, dependency, and spreading divisive ideology.
Rather than walking away, we’ve been heavily engaged on the continent. In fact, President Trump met with 13 African Heads of State in his first year in office… a record as far as the Africa Bureau can remember and a concrete sign of not just continued, but strengthened, engagement with the continent.
Everything we do is guided by the Trump Administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy, which in the clearest terms in the post-Cold War era lays out our singular global prioritization and focus on protecting and advancing our “core national interests.” It is a radical, but necessary corrective to the reckless pursuit of liberal hegemony over the last 30 years.
This is an approach of strategic economy that is: “modest in aims, clear in interests, disciplined about limits.”
As Secretary Rubio has said, national interest governs our engagement with other states. Diplomacy has been defined by sober, pragmatic dialogue and guided by the axiom that rational global actors will act for the benefit of their people and their states, in other words, America First is wholly compatible with Africa First.
To be successful in diplomacy as a result means meeting countries on their own terms, and respecting differences in culture, history, and governance in order to advance shared priorities.
This reality means we must engage governments as they are, and not as Washington wishes them to be.
We have no fond illusions about the end of history.
Engagement is not approval but is accepting political realities and the futility of attempting to impose domestic legitimacy. Instead, we must engage in diplomacy that respects sovereignty, uses quiet leverage on values-based issues, avoids public moralizing and virtue signaling, and prioritizes partner countries that want to work with us on issues that matter most from curbing mass destabilizing migration to unleashing the power of American free enterprise.
With these principles in mind, I would like to talk about three focus areas in Africa – commercial diplomacy, rethinking foreign assistance, and conflict resolution and management.
As we are here at the Powering Africa Summit I will start with commercial diplomacy, the United States has shifted from aid to trade in Africa. While, previous administrations focused on aid and lectures, the Trump administration promotes trade and private investment as the foundation for sustainable growth and partnership.
We are engaging African nations not as aid recipients, but as capable commercial partners.
Our objective put simply—increase U.S. exports and investment in Africa to drive mutual prosperity and harness Africa’s abundant natural resources and latent economic potential to secure our supply chains.
ZOOMING OUT: Africa is the world’s next great commercial opportunity. Nine of the 20 fastest growing economies are in Africa, and by 2050, one out of every four people on the planet will be in Africa—2.5 billion consumers with projected purchasing power exceeding $16 trillion.
Meeting that demand will require massive investment in generation, infrastructure, and supply chains.
It is true that Africa accounts for just one percent of U.S. exports. However, with the economic and demographic changes that in motion, we have tremendous room for growth that will benefit The United States and Africa.
That is why “Trade-not-Aid” isn’t just something we are saying, it is something we are doing.
We’ve launched a commercial diplomacy strategy to realize this. Our strategy –
- Makes commercial diplomacy a top priority and retools our embassy personnel to make deal teams a reality
- Pushes for priority market reforms (open tenders, transparency, level planning field, fair and transparent terms)
- Advances infrastructure projects that drive investment (like the Lobito Corridor in Angola)
- Lead more commercial diplomacy missions
- Brings more U.S. companies into Africa.
- Help deploy U.S. financing tools, including EXIM, DFC, and ensure that strategic priorities in Africa are driving financing decisions.
Since the beginning of this administration, our embassies in the field and Washington team have worked directly to support over 60 different deals worth more than 25 billion dollars.
We exceeded annual export totals to sub-Saharan Africa for 2022, 2023, and 2024 by mid-October of 2025. Final numbers are on track to see a 23 percent increase for the year.
Africa sits at the center of the global race for critical minerals—from cobalt and copper to graphite and rare earth elements.
The Trump administration’s critical minerals strategy in Africa is driven by a clear and consistently stated demand from African partner governments: they want increased U.S. investment in their mining sectors.
For too long, these sectors have been dominated by opaque, predatory investments from our adversaries that prey on corruption and create unsustainable markets.
African governments increasingly recognize that they are being exploited by these practices and see the United States as a more transparent, sustainable partner that brings job opportunities, skill transfer, and long-term economic value.
Our goal is to ensure that critical minerals from Africa begin flowing west to the United States. Again, initiatives such as the Lobito Corridor exemplify this model.
One of the most important steps we’ve taken in this area came last year when the United States and the Democratic Republic of the Congo signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement on critical minerals as part of the Washington Accords.
That agreement reflects a new model for how we engage on minerals. Rather than simply extracting resources, we are working with partners to build secure, transparent, and commercially viable supply chains that benefit both our economies.
In practical terms, that means supporting investments in infrastructure, logistics, and processing capacity so countries like the DRC can capture more value from their own resources.
There are three projects that we view as foundational to the successful implementation of the U.S.-DRC Strategic Partnership Agreement. The Virtus-led consortium acquiring Chemaf’s cobalt and copper mines, the concession for the DRC side of the Lobito Corridor being granted to Mota-Engil, and the Orion Critical Mineral Consortium and Glencore finalizing their proposed transaction for Glencore’s mining assets in the DRC.
These projects are testament to the private sector interest in the DRC created by the U.S.-DRC Strategic Partnership Agreement and with President Tshisekedi’s steadfast commitment and leadership we are optimistic these initial projects will be completed quickly. This will provide both supply chain benefits for the United States and a clear positive signal to the rest of the private sector that the DRC is open for business.
Overall, this approach ensures African countries have a meaningful seat at the table as global supply-chain decisions are shaped. Last month, Secretary Rubio hosted a global critical mineral ministerial, with strong African representation, reflecting the Africa Bureau’s essential role in advancing global critical mineral supply-chain security as a win-win value position.
Just to round out the commercial diplomacy piece, I can say firsthand, that every African leader I’ve met with loves this new approach because American companies strengthen economic sovereignty rather than undermines it.
Turning to foreign assistance, there’s been a lot out there in the media. Let me tell you how it really is. The United States is the most generous nation in the world, especially in Africa. Under the Trump Administration, we have changed our assistance paradigm.
U.S. foreign assistance is not charity—rather it is strategic capital to be wisely invested to advance U.S. interests—and we expect all of our allies and recipient nations to take seriously American strategic and commercial priorities.
We hold recipient nations accountable with a zero-tolerance policy for waste, fraud, and abuse and have deployed new, innovative ways we are engaging in this space to break the cycle of dependency. We now have a common set of principles when we talk about U.S. assistance – it is conditional, it is targeted, it privileges our partners, and it includes a clear exit strategy.
So yes, countries that haven’t acted in ways that support U.S. interests are looking at reductions in assistance. We also do not want emergency assistance to a be substitute for governance and exploited by predatory rent seeking, like in South Sudan and, more generally, we should not throw good money at places where aid will not reach the intended recipients given finite resources and competing demands. We’re not responsible for carrying this burden alone.
Fundamentally, we want African countries to be more self-reliant, and our new paradigm is a sure way to make this happen.
For instance, under the American First Global Health Strategy we’ve promoted Bilateral Health MoUs with dozens of countries to the tune of billions of dollars to move these countries to self-reliance.
Here again, African governments love these agreements because they actually offer ownership and empower them to manage health systems. This approach moves from an infantilizing NGO industrial complex modal to an approach that treats Africans as capable partners.
Many of you have no doubt seen the fake news regarding Zambia. I can say unequivocally, we are not seeking anything at Zambia’s expense or against Zambia’s laws or interests; quite the opposite.
We consistently encourage reforms to ensure assistance is used effectively and benefits U.S. interests and Zambia’s needs. The American people are proposing a massive investment in Zambia’s future and success.
But, how we negotiate this and what we expect from them will be fundamentally different from approaches of the past that failed to deliver for either Zambia’s sustainable future or for the American people.
The United States has been clear that, to attract reliable external investment and build a more durable economy that benefits the Zambian people, the Government of Zambia must make accountability reforms and take steps to modernize its key industries, including mining. Otherwise, private sector investment in Zambia will not happen.
Unlike others who have prioritized their own interests, the United States stands for genuine partnership and accountability.
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Finally on conflict resolution and management, you’ve heard him say it – President Trump is the president of peace. We are open to opportunities to negotiate settlements to ongoing conflicts. At his core, President Trump is a deal-maker with an agenda defined by realism. Some of President Trump’s biggest foreign policy wins came from throwing aside elite consensus wisdom and prior norms.
You’ve seen a clear example of this with the signing of the Washington Accords between DRC and Rwanda in December.
You’ve also seen Senior Advisor Boulos concerted effort to end the devastating war in Sudan and resolve issues around the GERD.
We also remain wary of resurgent Jihadist terrorist activity while avoiding any long-term American presence or commitments. Our engagements with Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso toward resetting relations is a burden-shifting efforts to promote regional ownership and cooperation against the enduing challenge of transnational terrorist groups in the Sahel.
But this effort to reset relations recognized that lecturing on democratic norms amid complex local realities is ineffective; our focus reflects pragmatic cooperation based on shared interests and preserving the space for a credible transition over time. This is the only option to address insecurity in that region.
As the Senior Bureau Official for Africa, my team in Washington and our teams across the African continent are working every day to put everything I have said into action.
Overall, these three pillars showcase that Trump Administration’s approach to Africa is an exciting invitation for new and creative thinking, to break dead dogmas, and to fully leverage the Department’s diplomatic expertise to advance our national priorities.
With that overarching policy frame, let me quickly pivot to what brings us here today.
The deals the Administration has facilitated demonstrates that when U.S. diplomacy aligns with private sector opportunity, we can unlock significant investment. Energy has been central to that effort.
As Secretary Wright emphasized at this Summit last year, energy is the foundation of economic growth and human progress. The administration’s position is clear: Africa needs more energy—and more energy of every kind.
Our role is not to dictate those choices. Our role is to help enable them—through investment, technology, and partnership.
Having laid out the big picture of the State Department’s America First approach to Africa. Now Ambassador Giordano will provide a concrete example from Namibia of how this strategy is being implemented with a focus on the energy sector.
Thank you.
READ: Powering the Future of the U.S.-Africa Energy Partnership – Remarks at the Powering Africa Summit
Ambassador John Giordano
