OPINION: Why do some Africans admire Trump despite his blatant racism towards them?
By Hans Ngala
The first election of Donald Trump in 2016 saw a lot of fanfare among some groups of Africans: those mainly identifying as Christian – a striking similarity with Trump’s voters in the US. The only difference with the African Trump ‘fan base’ and the American one is that the Africans are black and Trump does not represent them. At least he was not elected to be a president for Africans. But why the strong support for Trump among Christian circles in Africa?
The admiration for Trump could be because of a number of factors. Chief among them is the fact that many see Trump in Africa very much the way White evangelical voters in the US see him: a sort of ‘saviour’ who is coming to restore order in the faith that has been under attack. While movements like the LGBTQ movement have grown rapidly in the US to the point where they are now mainstream discussion, this is not the case in Africa although during her 2023 visit to three African countries, US Vice President Kamala Harris had the LGBTQ agenda as top on her list. All of the African countries she visited, pushed back against the insistence on LGBTQ issues. Most African countries have laws banning homosexuality and transgenderism, preferring to focus on their development needs.
In 2015, former US president, Barack Obama while advocating for gay rights in Kenya, also faced pushback from the then Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta who made it clear that “The fact of the matter is Kenya and the U.S. share so many values: common love for democracy, entrepreneurship, value for families – these are some things that we share,” Kenyatta said. “But there are some things that we must admit we don’t share. Our culture, our societies don’t accept.
“It is very difficult for us to be able to impose on people that which they themselves do not accept,” Kenyatta continued. “This is why I repeatedly say for Kenyans today the (gay rights issue) is generally a non-issue. We want to focus on other areas.”
Kenyatta went on to explain that Kenyans want to rather focus on infrastructure like roads, schools, etc., to attain the same level of development like the US.
Obama’s victory in 2008 was widely celebrated across Africa because many Africans saw his win not just as a victory for African-Americans but also for Africans and with Obama’s father being from Kenya, the victory rang very close to home for Africans. For the first time in history, a black man had risen to the highest office in the United States and arguably the top office in the world – and Africans were definitely proud. However, it would soon become clear that Africans only shared a skin-deep connection with Obama. There was nothing more that they shared. Obama would become the first US president to legislate gay marriage in the US, draping the White House in the signature gay colors on June 26, 2015 – becoming the first-ever US president to do so. There was nothing proud about this for Africans as it was neither their culture nor priority.
Again, in 2011 as the Arab Spring spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa, Obama would mastermind the killing of Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi claiming “We knew that if we waited one more day, Benghazi…could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.”
However, Obama’s war would turn the oil-rich nation into a real-life Game of Thrones, causing a humanitarian disaster that persists to this day. Gaddafi who was a pan-Africanist and advocated for the creation of one African currency and an African satellite – challenging Western interests on the continent essentially. On October 20, 2011, Gaddafi was discovered hiding in a culvert in Sirte. He was beaten, sodomized with a bayonet, shot, and killed. Africans were enraged by Gaddafi’s murder and to them, Obama, their ‘own’, had betrayed them. The scales began to fall off their eyes and they began to see Obama for who he really was, a Black man who was more interested in serving the interests of his Democratic Party than he was in doing the right thing to serve Africans. Obama would later admit that his decisions in Libya were a tragic mistake but the harm had already been done.
On the other hand, Donald Trump even when he referred to African countries as “shithole countries” in 2018 was still admired by many Africans, mainly Christians. African leaders were furious with Trump’s comments but some African citizens saw his comments as a wake-up call for many of the continent’s leaders who embark on luxury trips overseas many times a year, to sit up and begin prioritizing the development of their countries.
Also, Trump is a leader who as callous as he may be, speaks some hard facts while peddling some conspiracies and outright lies in some cases. Whatever the case, he appeals to ordinary Africans a lot because most African leaders tend to be far removed from the daily realities of their citizens. For example, Paul Biya in Cameroon never grants press conferences to Cameroonian journalists, never interacts with ordinary Cameroonian citizens and prefers spending time in the Unity Palace, Cameroon’s presidential house, receiving diplomats and business tycoons – thereby never sharing in the daily, lived realities of Cameroonians. Whenever he is sick or needs time away, his place of choice is Switzerland, making it hard (if not outright impossible) for him to speak to the contemporary issues of Cameroonians.
Biya’s recent end-of-year speech last December was a clear indication of this. The 91-year-old spoke superficially as a leader with no grasp of the issues facing Cameroonians, giving the impression that after his four-decade rule of the country, all was well and that his resolve to keep serving Cameroonians was growing stronger because he was (by implication) doing such a great job even though unemployment in Cameroon stands at 27.3% (World Bank, 2023). This means that out of Cameroon’s population of 27 million people (according to the World Bank), 7.2 million Cameroonians are unemployed. According to the National Institute of Statistics of Cameroon “In 2022, approximately four in ten persons were poor (37.7%). Thus, out of a population estimated at nearly 26.7 million inhabitants in 2022, 10.1 million people lived on less than 813 CFA Francs per day, i.e. 24,724 CFA Francs per month.” Cameroon’s development index stands at a meager 0.542 (Human Development Index, 2023) and Cameroon is ranked by Transparency International in 2024 as the 12th most corrupt country in the world. In 1998, when Biya had been leader for 16 years, Cameroon was ranked by Transparency International as the world’s most corrupt country.
With such a distant style of leadership that fails to address the concerns of ordinary Cameroonians, Trump stands in stark contrast to Biya and many other African leaders. Trump speaks to his supporter base and addresses the issues that are of concern to them, unlike African leaders who prefer to spend their citizens’ taxes abroad and fail to deliver public services.
The support for Donald Trump among some Africans is a complex, paradoxical response to the disappointment many feel with their own leaders. Despite his racism and offensive rhetoric, Trump appeals to those disillusioned by political elites who remain out of touch with their people’s struggles. His bluntness and willingness to voice controversial opinions resonate with Africans who see their leaders as complacent, corrupt, and disconnected from the real issues they face daily, such as poverty, unemployment, and lack of basic infrastructure. African citizens who have grown frustrated with the failure of their governments may find Trump’s unapologetic attitude refreshing, even if they do not agree with all his views. This contrast between the brashness of Trump and the disconnect of African leaders is what fuels his admiration. While his policies have certainly been harmful, the broader political vacuum left by ineffective African governance has created space for Trump to be seen, in the eyes of some, as a more relatable figure – a leader who at least acknowledges the reality of the common people. In this context, Trump’s appeal, though deeply flawed, reflects the broader discontent with leadership across the continent.
*Hans Ngala is a journalist who reports on politics, religion, aviation and health with a focus on Cameroon. He holds a BA and an MA, both in Journalism and Media Studies from Wits University in Johannesburg. He has served as communications consultant for Mission Aviation Fellowship in Chad, communications officer for Mercy Ships in Madagascar and is currently political affairs editor for Cameroon News Agency. He lives in Cape Town, South Africa.
