By Kestér Kenn KLOMEGÂH
In the context of rapidly changing geopolitical situation characterized by complexities and contradictions, majority of African countries are facing strained challenges with trade and in economic sectors.
In April 2025, US President Donald John Trump introduced new trade policies world-wide, and these policies have flashy impact on Africa.
In an indepth and scathing analysis of this trade situation, Mikatekiso Kubayi, senior researcher at Institute for Global Dialogue associated with UNISA, research fellow at Institute for Pan African Thought and Conversation, and part-time professor at Zhejiang Normal University, explicitly discussed significant aspects relating to U.S.-African trade, and to a large extent, how it will certainly twist future directions. Here are the interview excerpts:
How would you characterize emerging trade wars between the United States and Asian countries, particularly with China? Does that give any signals to exporting African countries?
Mikatekiso Kubayi: Right now, the trade war with China is a piece of a much larger and more ambitious agenda for the rebirth of American greatness by the Trump administration. The radical thrust of tariffs on products from nearly every trading partner speaks a lot about the level of ambition of the administration’s domestic agenda.
However, while the world watches in awe at how it engages Greenland and Denmark, it has also become clear that the administration prefers a single theatre for its potential future conflict. China appears to be what it signals to the world, projecting a ‘with them or with us’ posture.
From the first Trump administration, the second continues an almost disregard for Africa as is customary for the administration to project its power over and disdain for the less powerful. However, African agency can still hold and engage in the crafting of the best possible development relationship for its interests, at least for the next four years and possibly a third Trump administration.
In the first place, why such a situation becomes increasingly pronounced in the emerging multipolar world? Is the United States, under the 47th President Donald Trump, turned as an instrument competing for trade supremacy?
MK: Some have argued that it may be precisely the changing geopolitical landscape that is characterised by rising global south powers and a global consensus on the importance of collaboration and solidarity.
These things have been cast as inimical to the American projection of its dominance and power for decades. Given the combination of significant domestic challenges and external economic and political threats posed by rising others, this acting out ‘in defense of the national interest’ is not a surprise. Its crude selfishness has been confirmed in official statements aplenty.
Concretely, does South Africa face economic uncertainty as the United States recently changed its policy in an attempt to control and influence its geopolitics? How would you interpret these new developments in South African-United States bilateral trade relations?
MK: These relations are just as dynamic as any other between states and trading partners. The EU is historically very close to the US but has been hit with pinching tariffs. South Africa is an African country from a continent that the first Trump administration was contemptuous enough to describe the use of expletives.
The administration has a strong domestic and foreign policy agenda that does not appear to place African interests under any serious consideration. However, there is still an opportunity to engage the administration and do what states do: craft mutually beneficial relations and consider each other’s interests.
The rise of the southern other is not a mistake and is rooted in the historical rejection of some of the posturing displayed in the new geopolitics. The non-aligned movement and other solidarity movements, including those of liberation struggles such as the Palestinian and African struggles, were recognised and resolved on many UN declarations and are very difficult to betray.
How would you argue that South Africa expands trade within the framework of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and yet consistently advocates for ‘de-dollarization’ together with BRICS+ members?
MK: The BRICS bloc has never called for de-dollarisation. Since its inception in 2009, it has called for the reform of the global financial architecture and global governance system to recognise the inherent debilitating inequalities almost by the design of an outcome that celebrates ‘winners over losers’ of the second world war. Multilateralism is itself today under threat, with some suggesting that the US pull out of the UN system altogether.
The BRICS bloc has advocated for more significant equity in voices considered in global governance, equal consideration of all nations’ interests, aspirations, and challenges, and that all states have a genuine claim for the pursuit of development.
This means that if the benefits of development can be advanced by trading directly with each other’s currencies and/or payment systems, that is what countries will do. Development aspirations are not about the US but those who have struggled for just space in the common global village for ages and have begun to rise.
Many South African products have been traded outside of AGOA. AGOA is a unilateral arrangement of the US administration. South Africa’s membership in AGOA has always been under review, as much as AGOA itself has been under review, and trade will continue even without AGOA. It’s up to states to negotiate the best possible outcomes, including increasing their efforts toward self-reliance and sovereignty in all respects.
The United States earlier suspended operations of USAID, which has had a tremendous impact on Africa. Can you suggest South Africa’s economic outlook if the United States, as part of its trade war, completely shut its doors to South Africa and the rest of Africa by discontinuing AGOA? What then will be the future of Africa-U.S. trade relations?
MK: New relations with the US will have to be crafted in a way that considers and secures the interests of all. Change may be uncertain but constant. AGOA was not South Africa’s only trade access with the US.
It is also not an aid-dependent economy. However, the loss of financial injections for crucial social programs on the continent coupled with high tariffs will be felt, and the continent needs to adjust to a new reality and advance towards self-reliance and disciplined use of increased domestic resource mobilisation for its development, and sovereignty.
Do you think trade and foreign investment are at the cross-road, with risks and/or opportunities, as Africa continues to experience instability? What do you think of the current status of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) today, and particularly within the context of United States global trade war?
MK: The world must and will continue with or without US trade wars. It must continue. All states and people have interests, not only the US. The AfCFTA is an African initiative not about any second or third party but about African integration and development. It is progressing and must and will continue.
The reality is that Official Development assistance numbers globally have declined and will continue to do so globally. Funds are being directed toward defense spending instead. The IMF has indicated that DFIs have also been following geopolitical alliances recently. Many of the Trump positions are not new, just more pronounced without the inhibition that comes from care of legitimacy in the eyes of others.
