From the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in December 2022 to four high-level U.S. government representative visits to Africa between January and March, including Vice President Kamala Harris, the United States is scrambling for Africa after decades of neglect, half-hearted gestures, later, all-out races, and Trump-era foreign policies. With deepening Africa-China ties, growing non-alignment sentiment, and increasing self-cooperation mechanisms, Washington's scramble for hegemony in Africa is unsurprising, echoing the question: How and when did we lose Africa?
The current U.S. response strategy to reinvigorate soft power and media hegemony on the continent became evident in August 2022 with a new Africa-focused foreign policy. The 17-page document mentioned China and Russia ten times combined, pledging to counter harmful foreign actors, without once referencing sovereignty or Africa's sovereign development interests. Despite officials repeating that African leaders freely choose partners and claiming U.S. interest in bolstering Africa's development plans, the document unabashedly centers U.S. ambitions on competitive terms around Africa's foreign partners' presence and relations rather than supporting African goals.
This strategy revives old McCarthyism, shifting from trade and development contests where China made mutually beneficial advances over two decades, toward militarism reminiscent of past decades. At Tricontinental, we documented this shift in studies available on our website. Part of this militaristic move, as Ben noted, involves information warfare where the U.S. still reigns supreme across Africa.
The March 2022 COMPETES Act exemplifies this approach. The U.S. frames everything competitively, combatively — through fighting and battles. The Act addresses U.S. tech, communications, foreign relations, and national security, pledging approximately $500 million to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, explicitly framed in aggressive terms targeting foreign partners rather than African realities.
Consequently, Africa-based civil society organizations increasingly gear up to undermine China's development cooperation while promoting the U.S. democratic development model. Months after the Act's passage, reports circulated in Zimbabwe about U.S. embassy-funded educational workshops encouraging African journalists to target and criticize Chinese investments. The implementing local organization, Information for Development Trust, received funding from the U.S. government's National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Though this information was available two years ago, it's now inaccessible online.
This funding requires greater mapping and awareness among African media workers. As Ben and others noted, these dynamics emerge from historical processes forged during colonial, neo-colonial, and neoliberal eras. To illustrate the decades-long trajectory of U.S. media strategy, I'll reference South Africa, where I lived for many years.
Progress against the apartheid regime was obstructed by Washington, which viewed the situation through frameworks diminishing Soviet, then foreign partners' relationships. Despite documented atrocities against South Africa's Black majority and neighboring countries, the regime was considered a strategic bulwark against socialism and Soviet influence. During the mid-to-late 1980s, while aiding apartheid South Africa's war against liberation struggles, Washington simultaneously orchestrated targeted media campaigns claiming to educate Black populations about democracy.
A 1989 internal communication outlined funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to South African media outlets and journalists to create awareness of democratic ideals among Black communities. The U.S. government stated in a grant to a media group: "A concrete discussion of democratic values will help counter strong Marxist campaigns coercing South African blacks, pointing toward more desirable and achievable democratic government forms. Systematic myth dissemination generates large-scale awareness of democratic principles." This dismissed mass movements, trade unions, and women's organizations operating throughout the 1980s as unaware of democratic values, asserting democratic principles could only propagate through regular publications in popular Black media.
They co-opted City Press, then South Africa's most widely circulated newspaper, to promote their exclusive U.S. development model as the optimal form of democracy. The NED served as principal funder during the 1980s. Though branded an independent nonprofit, the NED was founded by the U.S. government under Reagan. Founder Alan Weinstein stated in the 1990s: "Much NED work today was done covertly by the CIA 25 years ago."
Concurrently funding Afghan Mujahideen, Nicaraguan Contras, Eastern European anti-Soviet unions, and Grenadan anti-government groups, the NED continues funding civil society organizations from this specific historical viewpoint. This underscores the need for media projects recognizing political stakes, conjunctures, and class interests.
Capitalist ideology dehumanizes, humiliates, and fuels crises; only anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist media frameworks enable truth-speaking and grassroots organizing.
Many dedicated organizations undertake this work, requiring amplification through solidarity-based communication channels. We face shared challenges requiring collective solutions. At Dongsheng, which shares China-related stories internationally, my podcast "The Crane" exemplifies our dual challenge: sensing macro and micro moments simultaneously. While recognizing most African countries' refusal to join U.S.-led NATO wars breaks historical patterns, we must also acknowledge governments resisting NATO often fail to advance their peoples' socioeconomic interests.
Media now confronts the challenge of whose stories get told, how they're told, and how to encompass complexity — from South Africa's National Union of Metalworkers to Brazilian intellectuals — using varied formats to multiply impact with limited resources. In Africa, the revolving door between U.S.-funded efforts and dominant media platforms demands innovation, creativity, and collaboration premised on solidarity and alternative politics dominating our regions.
(Transcribed from recording and edited.)