Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: Welcome to Into Africa. My name is Mvemba Phezo Dizolele. I'm a senior fellow and the director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. This is a podcast where we talk everything Africa: politics, economics, security and culture. Welcome.
In four days, a change of the guard will take place on the steps of the Capitol, inaugurating the returning President Trump as he takes over from Joe Biden. Many issues are on the table now as we look at the world, whether we're talking about the Ukraine war, we're talking about what's happening in Gaza, but we are the Africa Program here at CSIS, and what is of great importance to us is what's happening in Africa. Africa is grappling with various crises and also a lot of opportunities.
But today, we want to talk about some of those crises and some of these opportunities. There is conflict in the Sahel that has shifted quite a bit when it comes to the structures that are supposed to deal with these issues. ECOWAS, for instance, is no longer what it used to be with the emergence and the creation of the Alliance of Sahelian States. We have France that has continued to scale down its military presence in the region. Whether the French are being asked to leave or whether they've made strategic retreats as Macron would like the world to know, that's a question that we will be talking about today.
We also will be looking at what's happening in Eastern Congo provinces. So we see in those provinces, in Ituri, in the Kivus, what's happening there is something of great alarm, the conflict between Rwanda and the DRC, the intervention of Burundi, Uganda, and the M23 rebel group, which of course people and the UN have accused that they are part of the Rwandan army; it's not necessarily an independent group doing its own thing. We also look at areas like Mozambique, where Al-Shabaab continue to have a grip on Cabo Delgado and the provinces in the north, but the role of the post-electoral violence that is gripping the country now and what that may mean for Mozambique and neighboring countries. And of course, in terms of opportunities, President Joe Biden visited Angola in December and this was about the Lobito Corridor, which has come now to be seen as a flagship of US engagement on the economic front in Africa.
Joining me today to discuss these issues and how the world, particularly the world of analysts and the press and foreign policy specialists are looking at this, is Julian Pecquet, who is the United States correspondent for the Africa Report. Julian, welcome to Into Africa. It's a pleasure to have you.
Julian Pecquet: It's great to be with you today. Thanks for having me on.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: You know, Julian, we as analysts in places like CSIS and our counterparts across the country, but also around the world, think tanks, we do our own analysis. We go to the field, we talk to people, reporters talk to us. You are a reporter. What I know is that reporters talk to a lot of people, a lot more than we do. So, when it comes to these issues, you often write your own analysis, 2,000 word, 5,000 words, but we know there's a lot of material that you don't even include in this report. So today, we'd like to tap into your reporter's notes and see what you have and what you can share with us regarding these issues. First and foremost, what is your sense of the mood on the African continent about the incoming administration or the change of the guard we should say?
Julian Pecquet: That's a really good question. I think overall, the mood is a lot less negative than people think it is. You know, the Biden administration came in four years ago with a change of rhetoric, right? Because Donald Trump had talked about shithole countries. He'd never really shown a lot of interest in Africa. He didn't go there. Of course, Biden didn't go until like the very last month of his presidency. But you get the idea. There was this sense that Trump sort of ignored Africa and that Biden would be different.
And rhetorically, you know, there was a difference. I think the Biden administration was very careful in how it spoke about Africa. It went out of its way not to antagonize African economies by, you know, giving 'em a choice between like US and Chinese technology the way maybe Trump did. So, they tried to play a less maybe aggressive role, if you will. But at the end of the day, you know, US trade with the continent hardly budged. Not a lot really happened. When you talk to Africans, they're still pretty down on the US as a commercial partner, you know? The Chinese are still way ahead of us. And so, the rhetoric only gets you so far, I would say. So, with Trump coming back, there is a lot of hope, a more transactional approach could actually be a good thing.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: Were you surprised to see that the mood is not as negative?
Julian Pecquet: I was surprised that the mood was as negative as it is on Biden.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: Oh, okay.
Julian Pecquet: You know? I mean, Lobido Corridor is a big thing, obviously, you know? It encompasses the DRC, it encompasses Zambia and Tanzania more and more where we have really good relations. But on a lot of other fronts, I think there was a sense that, you know, the US just still isn't showing up. And that's a very complicated story, you know? And you talked about the reporter's notebook and how we don't necessarily write about everything we hear, but one thing that's, that informs all of my reporting and the way I look at it is, you know, of a way that the continent is written about. We at The Africa Report and the Jeune Afrique Group in general try to write about it in a very different way, in an Africa-centric sort of way, if you will.
And I think that that continues to be a problem here. The way that Western media writes about the continent is still very negative, still very focused on conflict and poverty and all those things. And so, I think that has a very strong impact on US investors, you know, whether you're talking about small and medium enterprises, whether you're talking about venture capital, like there's still this sense that Africa is a troubled place, a place where you don't want to go put your money.
And it’s ‘til that rhetoric changes fundamentally, especially in the media, which is the space where I live in. You know, US governments can only do so much, you know? They cannot make American companies go to Africa. Like, that has to be a decision that American companies make. And it's a decision that American companies are still not making other than, you know, your multinationals, your banks, your oil and gas companies, you know? But the sort of small and medium enterprises that the Biden administration really is trying to bring over there, the whole diaspora sort of council that they set up to try to get these small and medium black businesses to really engage with the continent, like that's still very difficult.
It's not like the Chinese where they can really help a lot of these Chinese companies go. The US system just doesn't work that way. And so, there's still a lot of reluctance to engage with the continent on the commercial side in the US and the private sector side. And it's just a long way of saying that, you know, it's hard to fault a Trump administration or a Biden administration for not being able to do more. At least on that front, the private sector in the US has to make those decisions.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: At the same time, listening to you, Julian, what I hear is actually a tale of two legacies here. There's the legacy of Joe Biden, which is what we are about to start now. History will judge him, but we are living now with contemporaries. When you say where the mood on the change of the guard is not as negative as it was, that really juxtaposes Trump one and the sunsetting on Biden. So, let's take it from the sunsetting on Biden now on his administration. How do you see it over the last four years you've been covering Africa? What is it in his legacy on his performance that informed that mood the way you just described it?
Julian Pecquet: That's a complicated question with a lot of parts, but you know, what I keep on hearing from Africa specialists at the State Department is that Africa is the place that you want to keep off of the White House plate, you know? It's not a place where you typically look for the White House to engage. It's a place where the White House historically only engages when there's a problem. And so, the role of like the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, and I've been told this by several of them, is don't let Africa get on my desk at the Oval Office, you know? Nip those problems in the bud. And it's very different from Europe, from Asia where, you know, the White House looks at those places in a more positive light, if you will, and they want to have those engagements. With Africa, it's typically been a place where we don't want to get engaged because the only times we do get engaged is because there's a problem and we have to come in and, you know, spend money, act as firefighter, try to resolve a conflict, etc.
I think that's slowly changing in part because of China. China is in Africa, and so all of a sudden, we're realizing that we need to be there too, right? So, there's a lot more like proactively taking the reins on that and and trying to forge these new relationships. And so you see that with the Lobido Corridor. Obviously, that's a big one that is very much about green minerals, you know, being in that space where the Chinese, I think, own like or control 70% of some of these minerals in places like DRC. There's a long legacy there that you're familiar with, you know, and the Americans are slowly, because of COVID, because of the war in Ukraine, you know, realizing how vulnerable we are to supply chain shocks. Uh, if the Chinese, if the Russians control a lot of these supply chains, it's very problematic for Europe, for the Americans, for the Western in general. So, you know, there's this big engagement now to be a part of that in a more proactive way.
So that's a big legacy, I think, of the Biden administration to, you know, really be all in on that. The Sahel, obviously, a lot of these things happened during Biden's time. I don't wanna say under his watch, but that's what happened, right? You had these coups in the Sahel, the war in Sudan blew up. It's been an era of conflict on the continent for the past four years. And rightly or wrongly, you know, the US, the current administration gets some of the blame for that. You know, Tom Perriello, the Envoy to Sudan, was just speaking a couple hours ago talking about how really the US doesn't have nearly as much leverage as it did like 20 years ago, but still, you know, it's a powerful player and it's gonna get criticized when, when things sort of go out of whack.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: So, the US does not have as much leverage as it did 20 years ago, but the US as a brand is still a very attractive brand to the Africans. You and I know we're talking about African leadership across the board, president, minister of Foreign Affairs. They still want the American brand. They want to work with the US. If the US it's in a mood where the matrix of the State Department says do not bring Africa to the White House, don't put it on the President's desk, that matrix, unless it changes quickly, will continue to undermine US standing in Africa in terms of the lack of delivery, right? They want to be with the US, but the US is not delivering. What do your friends that you talk to, the same one we talk about this matrix, how do they intend to bridge the gap because the Chinese don't have that matrix? The Chinese go in and they do what they have to do. So, we can return to the Sahel and the other crisis in Sudan in a minute, but just what is this conflict and how do we resolve it?
Julian Pecquet: Yeah. I mean, I think it's very hard to resolve. I was traveling with the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, in January. You know, he made his four-nation trip to... January of last year, 2024, he made his four nation trip to Africa. He's been doing one a year. You compare that to Europe, he's constantly in Europe, he's constantly in the Middle East. He did one trip a year in Africa, and that was right at, you know, at Gaza, the Ukraine war were going on. And he got so much criticism. I remember even at the State Department, people were criticizing like, "Why are you going to Africa when Gaza is burning, when Ukraine is burning?" And the fact of the matter is that there's always a part of the world that's burning. If you pay attention to Africa during those times, you get criticized. And that hasn't changed.
President Biden had to delay his trip because there were natural disasters that he had to take care of back home. That was, I think it was like October, right? Of last year. He delayed his trip to Angola for a couple months, but even before then, he was supposed to go to Africa way before then. But then, you know, conflict in the Middle East exploded. So, it's like there's always an excuse to put Africa... We have this talk, we have this rhetoric about how Africa is so important. And anytime anything big comes up, like the first thing that gets shelved is the trip to Africa, right? Like this happens all the time, and Africans notice that. And I think that when you have a rhetoric like the Biden administration did, that's very, we're much more pro-Africa than Trump was-
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: Especially with, I'm just gonna add, especially with the US-Africa Leaders Summit that President Biden had put back on the table.
Julian Pecquet: Exactly. But then if your actions don't match your rhetoric, I think that is worse than having a bad rhetoric. Do you know what I mean? Like, I think that's just seen as like hypocrisy, we just don't believe you. You know, we saw a little bit about that. I mean, just to go off on a tangent a little bit, but there was a little bit about that on the African-American vote for Trump, right? Where it's like, well, the Democrats keep on promising and promising and promising, and the Republicans might have a rhetoric towards us that's not nearly as positive. But if you keep on promising things and you never deliver, at some point, it's worse.
And I think that that is a problem that the US needs to really, you know, pay attention to going forward. And I think that's part of the backlash on the continent against Democrats, against the Biden administration. It's like, all right, you talk a good game, but where's the delivery? And that's not, you know, that's not entirely fair obviously. I talk to a lot of people at Prosper Africa all the time, like there's a lot of attempts to grow the commercial relationship. But again, until the private sector, you know, really buys in, things are not gonna change.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: There's something here to be said. The private sector, when you mention the Chinese, they also have, I mean this is a communist country, but they still have a private sector. And the Chinese private sector is replete with American investment. The John Deeres of the world, you name the company, GE, they're all doing business in China. And they managed to find a way to do business in China. And yet those companies struggle to find the way to Africa to do business. And that also is something that is very difficult to understand because if their Chinese partners manage to find a way to Zambia, to DRC, and literally across the entire continent, you name the country, the Chinese are there. The US may not... As a government, the US may not push the private sector because of the separation that is there.
But the US government, through its various arms, Development Finance Corporation, the Prosper Africa platform at USAID and Commerce, they can create platforms that make this conversation possible. We see this with the US military. The US military is on the continent all the time. You name the month, AFRICOM is doing some engagement. There's a summit of African Chiefs of Defense, there's a summit for special forces. So, they have all these relationships that they've built over the last 20 years, way before even AFRICOM was in place. We don't see anything similar on the civilian side.
Julian Pecquet: And there are a lot of legacies here, you know? And, I mean, since this is an informal talk, I think it's really important to talk about the racist undertones of a lot of this, right? Like in Europe, there's a colonial history and it is what it is, but that does create real relationships that have their issues. But there's like a real connection there. To me, with the US, you know, we have the African American Legacy, we have a long history with the diaspora. But at the same time, the way that the US government has approached Africa is very much, you know, as an aid funder. It's a problem that needs to be solved, right?
And so even today, you see a lot of people, young people, very excited to get into, you know, good works or whatever. And whether it's religious groups or, you know, aid groups, NGOs, etcetera. I think most of them still see Africa as, "Oh, I'm gonna go help the Africans," right? And that's still the mentality. And slowly, I think the American government is realizing that that is not the way that the Africans want to be seen. The Chinese see Africa as a market, as a place to do business, you know? The Americans generally as a population, and I don't know if you agree with this, but isn't there yet, right? They see still Africa as a place that needs our help, that needs our advice, whatever, instead of a place where there's money to be made, let's go cut a deal. They've got, you know, great FinTech infrastructure, you know?
It's always amazing to talk to Americans who go to Senegal, and that's the first time that they're doing mobile banking on their phones, right? A lot of these countries are just so much more advanced on some of these things than we are, and, but you wouldn't know that reading the news. So that's slowly changing. And I think, you know, that's where Trump is really interesting to a lot of these people because he's transactional, because he wants to do business.
I was talking to the AU ambassador, Hilda Suka-Mafudze just this morning about, you know, she's going to the inauguration. She's pretty excited about Trump coming in and seeing if there's like a new way of doing business. One thing that I keep on hearing from Africans is oil and gas, you know? At the beginning of the Biden administration, they tried to shut down a lot of the investments in the fossil fuel industries. That has knock-on effects on the private sector because private American companies are like, "Ooh, we don't, you know, want to go do oil and gas and coal in Africa if the US government is saying that that's not their preferred thing to do."
And we saw that sort of change slowly but surely over time during the Biden administration. But that's something that infuriated, as you know, a lot of African countries. Because on the one hand, as we know, Africa is the smallest contributor to global greenhouse gases and the main victim of climate change. So, climate change is obviously a huge problem for the continent. But at the same time, it's also... There's still hundreds of millions of people without electricity. And when you tell countries that they can't exploit their coal and their oil and their gas, they're just like, "What are you talking about, you know? You in the West have reached this level of development thanks to your exploitation of these natural resources. We need to be able to do the same."
And the rhetoric from the Trump people has been much more like, all right, we're back in business, fossil fuel industry, you know, we're back. I think one of the only, if not the only, African business person that I know of who's attending the Trump inauguration is a DRC businesswoman who's in the oil and gas sector. You know? So, there's a lot of connections happening at that level. And I think that excites a lot of people on the continent this idea that Trump is gonna be less focused on green initiatives and less of an agenda to push and more like what does the business community want? I think that's important.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: On that note, I've always felt inadequate sometime when in the places like Kenya, you mentioned Dakar. You're at the restaurant, it's time for tipping and, and, and everybody's tipping with their phone because they're always using mobile money. And sometimes, you don't have any currency on you. They're so advanced in that way, right? Anybody at a cafe would just say, "Here's my number." You can just tip them directly. They don't have to worry about the business restaurant manager taking their money and so on. At the same time, what you're saying in terms of the Trump administration coming in, but the Trump administration is coming to face some of these other security issues. So, the Sahel, for instance, how do you see the engagement shifting? Or do you expect it to shift? I mean, you have Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, the US just lost two bases in Niger. France is still fighting itself. Only God knows what exactly France is trying to do. This is a, is a situation that needs attention from the US as well.
Julian Pecquet: A couple of things, okay? One is on counterterrorism; I was really struck... So, Marco Rubio, you know, the Trump's pick to be Secretary of State, had his nomination hearing yesterday on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And one of the things he said was that the US-Africa relationship is too much about counterterrorism. I thought that was really interesting, you know? People should read The Africa Report and my reporting on this 'cause I mentioned everything that he said in his five-hour hearings on Africa. That was one of the things that really struck to me, you know? And he was talking about, I think he said, yeah, uh, littoral West African states. So coastal West African states is like one of the big commercial engagements that the US should be looking at. And, you know, I've written about this quite a bit.
The US government has been playing a huge role in Côte d'Ivoire, which used to be France's chasse gardée. Now the Americans are showing up. The Ivory Coast is one of those countries that's a hub for the region that's seen as, you know, commercially open. And so, the Americans are showing up in force. Rubio mentioned Morocco as well as some of these hubs for investment. So, he had this interesting discourse, you know, it's Africa, it was hardly the main topic of conversation at this hearing. But when it did come up, there was an acknowledgement that, you know, the, the way the US has been doing things needs to change, needs to evolve.
A couple of thoughts come to mind when you're talking about the Sahel states. You know, the former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Tibor Nagy, just a few hours ago tweeted that he's going offline for a few days because on Monday, he's expected to get a big new job at the State Department. And everybody expects it to be some sort of like undersecretariat for management or something like that, which would be greater than just Africa. But this is a person who's been engaged on the continent. You know, when you talk about why Africans are, those who are in the know are sort of positive about Trump, he's bringing back a lot of people who are experts, you know? Peter Pham is another one who's rumored to be in the running to be Assistant Secretary of State, so Tibor Nagy's former job. These are people who are gonna be pushing engagement with Africa in a new way.
And my conversations with both of them over the years have often been about how maybe we should engage with the Sahelian states instead of having this rigid policy of like, "Ooh, there was a coup, let's write them off," okay, there was a coup. Now what? You know? They're much more, now this is a complicated dance because there's democracy concerns, there's legislation in Congress that sort of prohibits you from engaging with putschist countries. But at the same time, there's acknowledgement that, you know, if you don't engage with them, they're gonna turn to Russia, they're gonna turn to, you know, the Wagner Group, which is now the Africa Corps, which has had, I think objectively, a disastrous record of dealing with counterterrorism. They're not good at it and the African countries where they're operating know that, I'm sure.
Um, you know, so it's either the terrorists sort of gain ground if you don't engage with the putschists or the Russians show up, all the things that the Americans don't want. And so, I think you're gonna see a big push to sort of rethink our engagement with some of these countries, be less rigid with, you know, writing off countries that have coups. And part of that you could say is realpolitik and is a sellout to our freedom agenda or pro-democracy agenda.
But I think from an African point of view, that's not true. I think for a lot of Africans, sticking with these so-called elected leaders that get elected time and time again over decades, like you saw in Gabon, they're not Democrats. They just have elections. Who cares, right? Like that doesn't mean that they represent their people. And I think under a Trump administration, you're gonna hear more and more from people like Tibor Nagy and Peter Pham who have that sort of discourse of just because they had an election doesn't make them a democracy. And just because they overthrew their elected leader doesn't make them the be all, end all of evil. There has to be another way of dealing with them.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: And these countries are young, they're young on average. I mean, they're 60 years old, like as a country since independence. It's not that long ago that they became countries or trying to be country in the way of the Westphalian model. What about Eastern DRC, the Great Lakes region, where you saw in the, in the Biden administration Avril Haines, Judd Devermont, that entire team was engaging, scaling down the escalation of the conflict. Now that they're out, do you have any sense in your crystal ball in the reporter's notebook, do you hear anything about how that may evolve?
Julian Pecquet: I mean, it's tough, you know? So, you just saw yesterday the US government criticizing Rwanda again after a UN report, you know, said that they were actively involved in Eastern DRC, that the M23, the rebel groups very much are supported by, by Rwanda, that Rwanda actually has forces on the continent. That's gonna be really interesting to see what happens there, you know? I mean, especially if Peter Pham comes back, he was an envoy to the Great Lakes. He's been doing business with DRC and, you know, he's on the board of several minerals companies like Rainbow Minerals, like those things. So, he's in the DRC quite a bit. So, he has a very good sort of handle on these different actors, you know?
I mean, I think it's fair to say that over the past few years, the State Department has been very critical of Paul Kagame and, and you know, he used to be the darling of the US Western aid world. And more and more, he's come under criticism. But that hasn't necessarily had any, uh, real pressure for him to change. I know he's coming next month for the National Prayer Breakfast again most likely, he was there last year, you know? So, he's very much involved in this US political circle, talking to Christian conservatives, you know? He has a strong support there. I, I don't have a crystal ball as to how DRC versus Rwanda is gonna play out, but hopefully, you know, if they bring them both to the table-
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: You know, often people say for this kind of conflict, this is not for you and me to decide. But recently reflecting on it, we were just in the region. I was in Kinshasa, in Goma, in Kigali, in Uganda, in Kenya and in Ethiopia. It was interesting because you get a sense like nobody really wants peace. Everybody talks peace, but nobody is really working hard to do peace. People meet at conferences, they call peace process and peace talks. Sometimes they don't show up. And people have been more and more saying, you know, there are only two ways you get peace. Either you have a full war and somebody wins and imposes peace, or you have people who are fully committed to peace. But that's a conversation for another time. You mentioned Sudan when we started talking. The US government just declared genocide took place and now they've just sanctioned both parties to the war. Why now and what does it mean now that we are four days from the end of the Biden administration? What does that mean and what do you think the Trump administration will do about this?
Julian Pecquet: Great question. I want to go back to DRC real quick and then I'll answer Sudan and, 'cause I did want to point out on the DRC, Herman Cohen, who was the Dean of the Assistant Secretaries of State for African Affairs, and I spoke to him at Carnegie a few months ago, he was in that role under the first George Bush. And he said something really interesting, which is that since the 1960s, US governments have been dealing with war in the DRC. And I'd never thought about it that way, but it's like it's been the central conflict, if you will, on the continent.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: Yeah. But that narrative, I think, gets skewed quite a bit because as a Congolese, I know that is not true. There was a war in the 60s, '60 to '65 or so, then Congo had 32 years of peace. So, in the history of the country, the narrative that, uh, Herman Cohen present is very contradictory because he himself has contradicted himself quite a bit over the years. So, I think it's a very checkered analysis. It's a easy way out to say it's always been conflict.
Julian Pecquet: Be that as it may, on Sudan, yeah, Sudan is really interesting. There's a lot happening right now. A lot of people were asking about these designations, what they mean for Trump. I think Rubio put that sort of question to rest yesterday. He was very upfront that it was a genocide. The UAE is responsible for arming the RSF. Like I was surprised at how like completely in sync with the designations he seemed to be. I think that, you know, under a Trump administration, you're gonna see a continuation here. Perriello, so the Sudan Special Envoy, who was just talking earlier today, said a few things that were really interesting. One is that he's kind of hopeful that, you know, with the Turks getting involved and the Egyptians on the humanitarian corridors and getting food, there are more regional actors involved, which is, you know, a recipe for chaos. But it's also possibly a recipe for a lot of these countries getting involved.
He mentioned that the World Bank had calculated that East Africa had lost 2% of GDP, I think is what he said, from the conflict in Sudan. So there are a lot of reasons to think that a lot of these countries are waking up to the fact that they really need to step up their game and intervene here. One thing that he said that was interesting was that in his calculation, Sudan is nine months away from being a failed state. And he made basically a call, a pitch to the Trump administration to take it very, very seriously to get involved from the get-go in this conflict. And as he said, you know, Trump wants to be seen as a man of action, as a man who maybe deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Like what better place than Sudan to bring that sort of energy that he has this chaotic energy, right?
Few reasons to think that that might be possible. Not that Trump is gonna get into the nitty-gritty of the Sudan war, but there are a lot of actors there, external actors, US allies that want to see this resolved, you know, the UAE and the Egyptians, etc, etc. So there's a lot of pressure there. As you know, Sudan was one of the countries that Trump was looking at for the Abraham Accords trying to strike a deal with Israel. So, I think there's like a lingering interest there. And one of the things that Perriello said that was really interesting was that, you know, I think he's been pulling his hair out, to be perfectly honest, because of the slow pace of the national security establishment in the US of the State Department approving any sort of engagement.
And the way he framed it is that, you know, there's this very big in the US diplomatic space, there's a lot of pressure not to do anything because if you take action in a place like Sudan, you sanction Hemedti, for example, he didn't mention this, he didn't say this directly, but like for example, you sanction Hemedti, you sanction Burhan, you might arguably push him in a corner and then the war gets worse and you would get blamed for that, right? Because you took an affirmative action that had an impact. But to his point, there's a very big risk of inaction. Not doing anything can lead to terrible outcomes. But when that happens, nobody blames the US, the State Department, a specific diplomat, right? It's just, well, there are many actors, right?
So if there's action and it has a bad consequence, it can be directly tied back to the US. If there's just inaction, then it's nobody's fault. It is what it is. And he was talking about how biased that is and sort of held out hope that somebody like Trump, who's willing to get in there and make a mess, you know, might be able to turn that around on Sudan, I, I think was sort of the subtext of what he was saying. He was just really inviting Trump to be like, okay, be as forward-leading as you were on via Abraham Accords on, you know, recognizing Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara, all these things that Trump did that, killing Soleimani, people said would explode and clearly they haven't, you know? And so maybe there's some hope that Trump, if he gets engaged on Sudan, can help. I mean, we'll see.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: What about Somaliland? This is another hot topic that there's more and more talks in town about the US recognizing Somaliland sovereignty and independence. What do you hear on that front?
Julian Pecquet: Well, I mean, the thing of Somaliland, right? Is that the two names that we've brought up several times in this conversation, Tibor Nagy and Peter Pham, have both been publicly supportive of recognizing the Somaliland independence since they've left the Trump one administration. So, they didn't do anything under Trump one, but then under Biden, they keep on saying, "We should do this now." And now they're back in presumably, right? We don't know for sure until Monday. I mean, certainly they're on the record. These are people who are gonna be in administration, at least some of them. Tibor Nagy seems pretty clear that he will be in the administration, who have been very vocal in the past few years about the need to recognize Somaliland. And the way that they framed it, right? Is as a backstop to Chinese influence. Djibouti is too close to China. We need to diversify our presence. Somaliland is a great ally. They're on our side in the whole struggle with China.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: And the access to the Port of Berbera and-
Julian Pecquet: Yeah, access to the port, Berbera, etc. So, the way that they framed it is very much gonna resonate with Donald Trump, for example. You know what I mean? It's not like some esoteric Somaliland, Somalia, one Somalia policy. Like that's not it. It's like these are anti-Chinese people and we can count on them. Why would Trump turn his back on that? So-
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: What about Mozambique? It's a troubling one now. There were some stability brought by the Rwandan troops, at least as we were told in Cabo Delgado, in neighboring, uh, provinces there. But then the elections, you were talking about the elections earlier, elections can be source of escalation in conflict and Mozambique is a case in point. Do you see any increased engagement on the US side?
Julian Pecquet: I'm not sure. I will tell you that the new president of Mozambique had hired a PR firm to sort of get the word out that he was a legitimate president. So, they've certainly taken the reins on that and, and sort of are trying to engage with US audiences in terms of presenting themselves as the legitimate government. I mean, I don't see any reason to think that Trump is gonna have any negative response to Mozambique just because the election was disputed, you know? I mean, that's another oil and gas place that he probably sees as ripe for, for US investment. I don't think Trump is gonna pick fights with any of these people, you know? One of the places that's interesting that we haven't talked about is South Africa 'cause that's one place where everybody's sort of wondering what's gonna happen, you know, with the case against Israel at the ICC. I mean, that did not stand well at all with Republicans on Capitol Hill, including Marco Rubio.
There'd already been rumors of, you know, kicking them out of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, AGOA. You know, people like Rish were saying that at some point, now he's the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. So that's gonna be an interesting relationship to watch, South Africa. Do they change their rhetoric now that they have got a coalition government? I mean, that's sort of what we started to see back in... I think they were here in the fall around, you know, the IMF, World Bank meetings, the finance minister's dual-hatted, you know, between the Democratic Alliance and Ramaphosa's party, the ANC. They seem to be changing the rhetoric a little bit, but we'll see. That's gonna be one to watch for sure.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: Well, on that note, I think South Africa remains the largest economy on the continent. So, whatever happens with South Africa will signal quite a bit about the direction and the tone of US engagement on Africa. Julian Pecquet, US correspondent for The Africa Report. Thank you for joining us today on Into Africa and sharing your reporter's notebook and notes with us and our audience. Thank you very much, Julian.
Julian Pecquet: Okay, thank you.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: Thank you for listening. We want to have more conversations about Africa. Tell your friends, subscribe to our podcast at Apple Podcasts. You can also read our analysis and report at csis.org/africa. So long.
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