Africa eyes senior Trump envoy visit for US policy hints

ADDIS ABABA - U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley arrived in Ethiopia yesterday, among the first visits to Africa by a senior member of President Donald Trump’s administration that diplomats hope will shed light on his plans to engage with the continent.

While Africa is traditionally overshadowed by more urgent issues, the Trump administration has so far been hands-off.

“The president is sending me because we want to build (our Africa policy) back up to what it was under (President George W. Bush); it has fallen and our African friends feel that,” Haley told a George W. Bush Institute event in New York last Thursday.

Trump has been vocal about North Korea, Iran and tackling Islamic State militants during his first nine months in office, but said little about Africa until he held a lunch last month with nine leaders on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.

It was there he announced he would send Haley to South Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo to help with efforts to broker peace in both countries, where millions of people have been displaced by ongoing violence and U.N. peacekeeping missions, each costing more than $1 billion annually, are deployed.

Some African diplomats hope Haley’s trip will spark a conversation in Washington on the administration’s broader engagement with Africa.

Haley’s visit to Africa comes after four U.S. soldiers were killed during an October 4 ambush in Niger.