In his first call with sub Saharan African leaders on Feb. 13, US president Donald Trump chose to dial up two of the continent\u2019s embattled presidents\u2014Nigeria\u2019s Muhammadu Buhari and South Africa\u2019s Jacob Zuma.<\/p>\n
Both men, presiding over the continent\u2019s largest economies, have faced public dissent in the past week. Across major cities in Nigeria, protests were held decrying difficult living conditions amid Nigeria\u2019s economic recession. Jacob Zuma, on the other hand, saw his State of the Nation speech delayed and disrupted by opposition members of parliament who repeated long-running allegations of corruption against Zuma.<\/p>\n
Trump, who spoke with Egypt\u2019s president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi back in November, has shown little to no interest in Africa as a candidate over the last year or in the first few weeks of his presidency till now.<\/p>\n
Friends-in-arms<\/strong><\/p>\n Niceties aside, the main thrust of Trump\u2019s conversation with Buhari, who received the call from London where he remains on an extended sick leave, was improving cooperation to fight terrorism. For much of the past decade, terrorist sect Boko Haram has led an insurgency resulting in more than 20,000 deaths and the displacement of millions across Nigeria\u2019s northeast.<\/p>\n Trump commended Buhari\u2019s progress in the fight against Boko Haram, particularly securing the release of some of the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram in 2014, according to a readout released by Nigeria\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n Crucially, Trump also signaled a change in tack from recent US foreign policy by suggesting he is ready \u201cto cut a new deal in helping Nigeria in terms of military weapons to combat terrorism.\u201d But with Trump and Buhari discussing stepping up anti-terrorism cooperation \u201cthrough provision of necessary equipment,\u201d Nigeria may soon be able to count on more US support. While Buhari\u2019s government has recorded major success in the fight against Boko Haram, the terrorist sect remains capable of guerrilla-style attacks like the recent bombing of the largest university in Borno, a state in Nigeria\u2019s northeast.<\/p>\n Mutual friend<\/strong><\/p>\n For their part, all day, South Africans speculated what the trans-Atlantic call between Trump and Zuma could entail, from the serious to the downright absurd, like both presidents\u2019 questionable gender relations to their insistence on keeping their adult children close to the corridors of power. The South African president\u2019s office said he and Trump \u201creaffirmed their commitment to strengthening the already strong bilateral relations between the two countries.\u201d Trump and Zuma also agreed to work together toward peace and stability on the continent, reaffirming South Africa\u2019s role as one of Africa\u2019s strongest diplomatic players.<\/p>\n Trump and Zuma already share a friend on the international stage in Vladimir Putin. Trump\u2019s chummy relationship with Putin is already well documented. Zuma\u2019s relationship with Putin goes beyond BRICS, to a controversial deal that could see South Africa ignore its abundant green energy resources for nuclear power plants built by a Russian company.<\/p>\n Source:<\/em><\/strong> \u00a0\u00a0qz.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In his first call with sub Saharan African leaders on Feb. 13, US president Donald Trump chose to dial up two of the continent\u2019s embattled presidents\u2014Nigeria\u2019s Muhammadu Buhari and South Africa\u2019s Jacob Zuma. Both men, presiding over the continent\u2019s largest economies, have faced public dissent in the past week. Across major cities in Nigeria, protests were held decrying difficult living… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":512,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511\/revisions\/512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nUnder the Obama administration, the US refused to sell weapons to Nigeria to aid its fight against Boko Haram. Much of the US\u2019 refusal was down to damning reports of human rights abuse by Nigeria\u2019s military including arbitrary arrests, detention and killing of civilians (an Amnesty International report released in June 2015 pegged the number of civilians who have died in military detention at 7,000).<\/p>\n
\nIn the end, Trump\u2019s call to Zuma focused on trade between the US and South Africa. Africa\u2019s most advanced economy already hosts six hundred American companies, according to a statement from the South African presidency.<\/p>\n