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Trump’s second coming: A new era for America and its complex impact on Africa

28 Jan 2025

It is helpful to ask what this second missionary journey means for Africa. It does seem that God saved Donald Trump not only to save America from itself, but also to save America from Africa.

It’s hard to argue when US President Donald Trump says that God saved him to save America. Not only is rational argument often suspended or lost when God enters the matter, but Trump’s return as the 47th president defies logic.

A leader’s job is never done. But how do you rationally explain Kamala Harris’s defeat in the presidential election and, along with it, the routing of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party in the Congress? If the election were a boxing match, it would have beaten the record of Vitali Klitschko vs Shannon Briggs’s 2010 fight as one of the most one-sided in boxing history.

Biden’s sins

And it’s not a laughing matter. Trump was a joke, but God, they say, uses jokers to teach serious people some lessons. I don’t mean his sordid personal record just yet. I mean where Biden had taken America compared with where Trump left it in 2021.

Recovery from Covid-19 was largely exemplary, thanks to Biden letting data and science lead. The management of inflation on his watch (average 5.2%) has been the envy of most of the world, especially Europe.

The negotiations with Big Pharma to review the prices of prescription drugs saved taxpayers billions of dollars, not to mention the benefits of peace of mind.

He added 16.6 million jobs, achieved the lowest unemployment in five decades, and invested more than $300-billion to rebuild roads and bridges. In contrast to climate change denier Trump, who pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement, even though experts have described climate change as one of the world’s biggest threats in the next two to 10 years, Biden returned America to the agreement and aggressively pursued investment in clean energy.

Forget the record!

But it turned out that whatever logic or facts might offer, God had other plans, according to Trump. It could only have been divine because how come voters didn’t remember Biden’s record, or, if they did, we are now told the record doesn’t matter any more. What matters is how they felt at election time – a concept obviously outside the realm of logic.

Trump’s sordid record didn’t matter in this solemn divination, this act of God. At the peak of his trials, Trump faced 91 criminal counts and multiple indictments. He was convicted on 34 counts for falsifying business records during his hush money trial, and impeached twice. Just at the door to the White House, he was sentenced for a felony but received an “unconditional discharge”.

Voters knew his record up until 5 November 2024; nothing was secret. Yet, in a divination that spared him to redeem America — one of the few countries, apart from South Africa, Sweden and Finland, where a candidate can be elected even with a convict’s millstone around his neck — Trump won resoundingly.

It’s pointless trying to figure it out. Trump is here to finish what he couldn’t in his first coming. At his inauguration, he announced a glorious new American dawn, the very purpose for which 1) the hand of fate made voters turn a blind eye to his chaotic record; and 2) God saved him from being killed twice. Who can argue against that?

While we’re getting used to the political science of feelings and divinations over facts and logic, it might be helpful to ask what this second missionary journey means for Africa. It does seem that God saved Trump not only to save America from itself, but also to save America from Africa.

Relief, at last

His victory is a relief for several countries with strict LGBT laws. Nigeria has an anti-LGBT law that criminalises same-sex marriage and public display of affection by persons of the same sex, with a fine of up to 14 years’ imprisonment.

It battled to hold its ground against US pressure for more than a decade. When Biden was going out the door, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu signed a law banning homosexuality in the military — something that may have played out differently if Harris of the Democratic Party had won.

But Nigeria’s anti-LGBT laws are not even close to those of Uganda, which imposed the death penalty, a move that Biden described as “a tragic violation of universal human rights” and on whose watch Uganda was removed from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), among other reprisals.

Tanzania and Ghana were not too far behind a backlash under Biden for their stringent anti-LGBT laws, a misery from which they have now been delivered. In his second missionary journey, Trump has condemned all forms of “social engineering” and declared from day one that there are only two sexes in the US — male and female.

This second coming is not only about the sexes or gender. Money — well, not precisely real money — is involved, too, for Africans. Crypto is getting popular on the continent. Data from Creditcoin’s blog suggests that African youths, particularly in Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa, are playing big. One source says that 35% of those aged between 18 and 60 in Nigeria owned or traded crypto assets in 2022.

The year before was a nightmare for crypto traders in Nigeria after the Central Bank banned trading in crypto assets, and it has been a long winter since. Well, the new crypto godfather has just arrived on the scene. In what signalled a brave new dawn for the token and its youthful lovers on the continent, Trump and his wife, Melania, launched personalised cryptos and became crypto billionaires hours before the president’s inauguration.

Flipside

Yet, the flipside of this balance sheet is concerning for Africa. Agoa, which provides duty-free access to more than 6,000 products from the continent, is due for renewal this year.

Some African countries have benefited significantly from it. For example, Ghana’s exports to the US grew from $206-million in 2000 to $2.76-billion in 2022. Kenya’s Agoa-related apparel exports grew from $55-million in 2001 to $603-million in 2022, while South Africa’s automotive exports also increased. Angola and Nigeria have also gained.

These gains are at risk from Trump, who described “tariff” as the most beautiful word in the dictionary.

Trump’s America First policy means the continent may have to look out for itself, which it does poorly even at the best of times. This is hardly good news for subregional institutions like the Economic Community of West African States, whose fragile multinational security arrangement was recently further weakened by the exit of four West African countries.

Nor are swathes of African migrants still trying to find a footing in the US going to see Trump’s second missionary journey with its promise of criminalising migration as funny. The president’s attack on the bishop of Washington who asked for mercy for migrants tells the whole story.

Ask God

It doesn’t matter. Trump is not pretending he is on this mission to save the world. He’s not in it to save the climate, make his neighbours happy, champion a global moral force for good, or prevent chaos in international trade. He is sure not on this journey for an Africa that was not on the ballot when he was elected, warts and all.

Conservatives — especially African evangelicals — who love him do so for the same reason Christians swear by Israel in the mistaken belief that it is a Christian country. It is not, in the same token by which Trump’s piety is skin deep. But that is immaterial now.

Anyone who doubts that Trump is on a divine mission can take up the matter with God. DM

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