When it comes to Africa, what would Donald Trump do?
The five remaining candidates for the Democratic and Republican presidential tickets haven’t said much about U.S.-Africa relations — hardly a hot-button issue in American politics at the moment. Since we probably can’t expect questions about Feed the Future, or the African Growth and Opportunity Act, or sanctions against Zimbabwe to surface in the primary debates — where job growth and national security reign supreme — the Africa-America Institute brought together some of the candidates’ advisors to speculate on what sort of “Africa legacy” each of them might try to build as president of the United States.
Foreign policy toward Africa has not typically been a divisive subject in American politics. Fiscally conservative politicians lent their support to massive aid packages like the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief — or PEPFAR — while the Democratic Barack Obama administration has championed a business-first approach to investments in energy and agriculture. Yet amidst a U.S. primary season more combative and colorful than any in recent memory, even the candidates’ “surrogates” offered some stark — and quotable — differences of opinion.