Mills & Hartley: Trump the disruptor creates opportunities for Africa

Key topics:Trump disruption reshapes aid, defence, trade and global alliancesAfrica’s young, growing population drives major economic opportunityMinerals, agriculture and infrastructure offer Africa strong growth potential.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By Greg Mills and Ray Hartley for The Common Sense*.The recent Delphi Economic Forum focused almost entirely on possible responses to a world of “disorder” wrought by Trump II, the weighting of the programme emphasising more the challenge facing Europe in its estrangement with the United States (US) than the opportunities presented elsewhere, including in Africa.And yet there are several clear strategic openings that have been created for Africa and its partners by Trump the disruptor.The first of these is Trump’s upset of the great game that had become aid.Close to five trillion dollars (in real, raw cash terms) has been disbursed on aid to Africa in the last 60 years. Yet much has been wasted, not only because the governance conditions of the primary recipients meant that it could not be properly spent. Chunks were also given for strategic purposes (for which read, to friends, a Cold War imperative), and a lot of it was spent on the givers themselves to manage important constituencies and providers, not least in the non-governmental organisation (NGO) sector, the 21st century imperial service.The second, related disruption has been to end the entitlement character that the Trump administration thinks defines Washington’s relationship with Europe. Whereas the US spent 3.2% of its GDP on defence, as one measure, totalling $920 billion in 2025, for example, the average among other European members of the North Atlantic treaty Organisation (NATO) plus Canada that year was 2.3%, or $574 billion.Europe’s problems are worsened by how it spends its money – less collectively than individually. The capability cracks are most notable in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; command and control functionality; land-based tactical missile capabilities; air-to-air refuelling; strategic airlift and missile defence; along with in-depth supply chains. Basically, everything.Such susceptibility is exposed by Vladimir Putin’s Russia, weak economically by comparison to the 26 member states of the European Union (EU), $2.1 trillion versus over $18 trillion, about the same size as the Spanish economy, and, at least on paper, relatively strong militarily, with the third-highest annual expenditure worldwide (estimated $190 billion).Paradoxically, Europe’s economic strength does not count for enough in the face of Russian malignancy, its impotency echoing Stalin’s comment about the moral authority of the Vatican. “The Pope?” asked the Soviet strongman in 1935 of the French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval. “How many divisions has he got?”.Future of NATO.Hence talk in the margins of Delphi centred on the future of NATO, whether it would, as Trump apparently prefers, have an expanded role to include Asian security, or if it might disappear altogether, as his pal Putin would unapologetically like. Since its formation in 1949, the US has led NATO. Whatever the outcome of Trump’s foreign policy towards NATO, American leadership in Europe can no longer be taken for granted.Resetting the lopsided expenditure pattern is not only about defence per se, but also the defence of the commons, including maritime security, a burden which is shouldered mainly by Europe. To some extent the numbers overlook the mutuality of defence, with more than half of European materiel purchases currently from the US.While artificial intelligence featured in conversations, this was less to do with the prospects this technology offered, but more in terms of the threats posed by the failure of Europe to invest in data centres and the corresponding need for surplus energy.And there were hardy conversational perennials, including EU membership expansion and climate change, each of which seemingly have lives outside of current priorities. But climate change is apparently on the retreat in the face of a White House intent on sewing up global oil centres, first in Venezuela and, now, in Iran. American attendees close to the administration spoke gleefully of the success of Trump’s plan to not only pinch Chinese oil supplies but to secure preferential investment and production opportunities for US companies in Iran.Whether this world brings about cheaper energy is questionable but relevant for the 38 African countries (of 55) that are net oil importers.And the third disruption is the shift away from European-centric security to the creation of new alliances centring on twin drivers of defending against China, as above, and nakedly promoting American business. In that way, America has become more Chinese, and even less apologetic and certainly less diplomatic, which is as painful as it is refreshingly blunt for those on the other end of these deals..Rise of Africa.And yet, despite the skewed rhetorical agenda, several of the opportunities arising pertain specifically to Africa, given its rapid rate of demographic change, from a population of under 500 million in 1980 (when less than 30% lived in urban areas) to 1.55 billion today and a projected 2.5 billion by 2050, when over 60% will live in the continent’s towns and cities.This rapid growth rate will make Africa, along with Asia, the driver of global urbanisation. Africa already enjoys the world's youngest population. Some 60% are under 25. The median age is just 19 (with Niger, the youngest, at just 15). The 400 million Africans aged today between 15-35 will provide the source of the rapid expansion in the next generation.In this scenario, Africa is not a problem to be solved by aid, but a market with which to be engaged.A second big driver of change is in the relative poverty of Africans. The per capita income of continental citizens is (in real terms) just $1 589 compared to the global average of $11 852. Revealingly, the average sub-Saharan Africa per capita income, as a proportion of the average global per capita income, has decreased from 31% in 1960 to 13% in 2024.As a result, the continent is now the largest repository of the world’s poor, some 460 million, or 30%, of all Africans compared to the global average of 8.5%.But this means, too, that getting a few things right, including infrastructure – just 58% of Africa's population has access to electricity, leaving roughly 600 million to 626 million people without power. While North Africa has near-universal access, sub-Saharan Africa houses over 80% of the world's unelectrified population. Simple improvements in transport logistics (in using digitisation for trade, removing the scope for malfeasance) and skills can make a tremendous difference given the scale of the catch-up growth and the low cost of African wages.And the third is what is below and beneath the African soil.The era of green energy and digitisation have propelled critical minerals into focus, and Africa is blessed with a wide variety of those essential to this latest revolution – for now. The continent dominates the global supply of several minerals essential for the energy transition, digital devices and/or electric vehicles, particularly cobalt (over 70% of production), manganese (62%), platinum group metals (80-90% of global resources), along with significant deposits of graphite, lithium, and copper.To turn this endowment into offtake, significant investment is needed in mapping as well as in production facilities and infrastructure, which is driven by an oft-elusive combination of political stability along with attractive and stable policy regimes and efficient administration..Natural Advantage.Agriculture is another natural comparative advantage for Africa, an area of the lowest-hanging fruit given its seasonal returns. It contains some 60% of the world's uncultivated arable land. While the sector supports two-thirds of the continent’s workforce, this operates mostly at low productivity, at 40% of the global average, with low tech, the lowest use of fertiliser in the world (at an average of 20kg per hectare, roughly seven times lower than the global average), poor access to market, and low yields, with just 6% of lands under irrigation, seven times less than Asia, for instance. Again, the market upside is enormous.In this respect at least, Africa is very Trumpian. The continent’s leaders see the world sceptically, and trade deals even more so. From their vantage, trade is mercantilist, a zero-sum game of imports, exports, and value-addition versus raw and even semi-processed minerals.This is a developmental dead-end. When the market for the beneficiated version of these minerals exists outside, and so long as Africa lacks the energy to refine them further, they will be exported in the shape and purity that makes best commercial sense.To prosper in this world, it will have to better leverage endowments not for spurious industrial projects, but through using the proceeds to invest in the hardware of infrastructure and software of skills..It’s Complicated.Working from the sanctity of the Temple of Apollo, the Oracle at Delphi acted as a centre for divine counsel in ancient Greece, delivering prophecies concerning wars, politics, and even on personal matters. The Oracle’s advice, often delivered in an ecstatic state, provided legitimacy for critical choices.The modern Delphi was fixated on one topic: Is America under Trump a threat or ally of Europe? The answer, like the relationship, is complicated.The transactional relationship has brought to the fore the Angry American, as much as it has put Europe on the spot for its past failings in balancing the relationship and managing the tension between warfare and welfare. These issues predate Trump, of course, though his personal idiosyncrasies and profanities have stressed the relationship. He has simply highlighted a longer-term strategic European vulnerability, whether around technology, energy, or defence. It should, in response, drive convergence between European allies around capital markets, trade and energy integration, and defence expenditure and cooperation.But the answer as to whether it does or doesn’t depends on a psychological dimension – about how Europe sees itself: as a great power, or a slowly fragmenting collective of middle powers? Its choices should not be driven by wishful thinking, including what might or might not happen in the upcoming mid-term US primaries, but an appreciation of what is realistic and possible. On NATO, for instance, there is a role for Europe to be proactive in linking with Asian allies – a sensible move before Washington pivots away and in this direction.Europe has to appreciate its comparative agency and strengths, and act on them.No Oracle is needed to understand the options amid the Trump disruption. To grasp the opportunities, like Europe, Africa will need to decide what it wants to be, and how it can plausibly get there..*Dr Mills is on the board of the Delphi Forum. Both Hartley and Mills are members of the Platform for African Democrats.

Mills & Hartley: Trump the disruptor creates opportunities for Africa

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