Partly because they have less to lose. Europe still harbors hope it can influence Trump, soften him and avoid an irreparable breach in the transatlantic alliance, especially when it comes to Greenland, suggested Tighisti Amare of Britain\u2019s Chatham House.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith dramatic cuts in U.S. development funds to Africa already implemented by Trump, Washington\u2019s leverage is not as strong as it once was. And the U.S. doesn\u2019t really give much importance to Africa, unless it\u2019s the [Democratic Republic of the Congo], where there are clear U.S. interests on critical minerals,\u201d Amare told POLITICO.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn terms of trade volume, the EU remains the most important region for Africa, followed by China, and with the Gulf States increasingly becoming more important,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Certainly, Trump hasn\u2019t gone out of his way to make friends in Africa. Quite the reverse \u2014 he\u2019s used the continent as a punching bag, delivering controversial remarks stretching back to his first term, when he described African nations as \u201cshithole countries.\u201d And there have since been rifts galore over travel bans, steep tariffs and the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which is credited with saving millions of African lives over decades.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/GettyImages-2216313099-1024x683.jpg\")
U.S. President Donald Trump holds up a printed article from \u201cAmerican Thinker\u201d while accusing South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa of state-sanctioned violence against white farmers in South Africa. | Chip Somodevilla\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
In May, Trump also lectured South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office<\/a> over what he claimed amounted to genocide against white South Africans, at one point ordering the lights be dimmed to show clips of leaders from a South African minority party encouraging attacks on the country\u2019s white population. Washington then boycotted the G20 summit<\/a> hosted by South Africa in November, and disinvited the country<\/a> from this year\u2019s gathering, which will be hosted by the U.S.<\/p>\n According to Amare, Africa\u2019s denunciation of Maduro\u2019s abduction doesn\u2019t just display concern about Venezuela; in some part, it\u2019s also fed by the memory of colonialism. \u201cIt\u2019s not just about solidarity, but it\u2019s also about safeguarding the rules that limit how powerful states can use force against more vulnerable states,\u201d she said. African countries see Trump\u2019s move against Maduro \u201cas a genuine threat to international law and norms that protect the survival of the sovereignty of small states.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Partly because they have less to lose. Europe still harbors hope it can influence Trump, soften him and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14441,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[63,9622,9623,235,4479,6227,2334,4079,750,5986,1561,2397,1975,9624,9625,3991,741,584,131,263,846,153,2679,9626,742,5988,5992],"class_list":{"0":"post-14440","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-africa","8":"tag-africa","9":"tag-aid-and-development","10":"tag-americas","11":"tag-china","12":"tag-colombia","13":"tag-cuba","14":"tag-cyril-ramaphosa","15":"tag-diplomacy","16":"tag-donald-trump","17":"tag-friedrich-merz","18":"tag-g20","19":"tag-genocide","20":"tag-history","21":"tag-keir-starmer","22":"tag-kyriakos-mitsotakis","23":"tag-mexico","24":"tag-nicolas-maduro","25":"tag-russia","26":"tag-south-africa","27":"tag-trade","28":"tag-u-s-foreign-policy","29":"tag-uganda","30":"tag-united-states","31":"tag-unpacked","32":"tag-venezuela","33":"tag-vladimir-putin","34":"tag-xi-jinping"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}