Why Trump Is Good News for Egypt

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.

The highlights this week: Egypt prepares to benefit from Trump 2.0, voters in Mauritius oust their ruling party, and Ghana reintroduces an anti-LGBTQ bill.

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U.S. President-elect Donald Trump paid little attention to Africa in his first term, except for making disparaging comments. Nevertheless, there are clear African winners and losers now that he’s poised to return to the presidency.

South Africa and Kenya are among those worried about potentially diminished relations—unlike Nigeria, Uganda, Morocco, and Egypt, which foresee increased trade and arms deals without what they see as lectures on human rights.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was among the first world leaders to congratulate Trump on his victory even before The Associated Press called the election on the morning of Nov. 6. “We look forward to achieving peace together, preserving regional peace and stability,” he posted on social media. Sisi later called Trump that evening to extend further congratulations.

Both leaders respect strongman politics. During his first administration, in 2019, Trump sparked controversy by yelling out, “Where’s my favorite dictator?” as he waited for Sisi to arrive at a meeting during a G-7 summit held in France.

At that time, Trump applauded Sisi for being “a very tough man.” He added, “We understood each other very well.”

Egypt was the world’s seventh-largest importer of weapons from 2019 to 2023, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Cairo imported many of those weapons from the United States during the Trump administration, but in more recent years, more have come from Russia, Italy, and Germany.

Cairo has faced scrutiny over attempts to influence U.S. politics. The U.S. government investigated allegations that Sisi offered Trump $10 million to boost his 2016 presidential campaign, according to a Washington Post investigation. Biden called for “no more blank checks for Trump’s ‘favorite dictator,’” during his electoral campaign back in 2020. He froze some aid money last September over Egypt’s human rights record, and the assistance was targeted with some new scrutiny following the conviction of outgoing Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez on accepting bribes from Egyptians linked to the government.

Yet Egypt’s mediator role between Israel and Hamas over the past year has solidified its importance as a U.S. ally, prompting Washington to overlook Cairo’s authoritarian regime; $1.3 billion in annual military aid to Cairo was granted this year.

Sisi’s government has silenced critics by jailing them. There are thousands of political prisoners in Egypt, including U.S. citizens, according to the State Department’s own 2023 report on the country. Washington was continuing “a rigorous dialogue with the Egyptian government on the importance of concrete human rights improvements that are crucial to sustaining the strongest possible US-Egypt partnership,” the State Department said last September.

Under Trump, Egypt can expect no such reprimands on human rights. By focusing on the Abraham Accords as a key driver of foreign policy in the region, Trump could inadvertently grant Egypt free rein to cement its role as a significant player in Horn of Africa geopolitics. Egypt militarily backs Somalia’s and Eritrea’s grievances against Ethiopia. It also supports the Sudanese army and its war against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

Officials in Cairo are hoping that Trump’s strongman style may bring about a decisive end to Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon, during which Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping have deterred transit through the Suez Canal and harmed Egypt’s economy.

Monday, Nov. 11 to Friday, Nov. 22: African delegations attend the United Nations COP29 climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Wednesday, Nov. 13: Somaliland holds elections.

Thursday, Nov. 14: The U.N. Security Council convenes a military staff committee and the African Union holds a meeting.

Somaliland elections. The self-declared state of Somaliland, a breakaway region of Somalia, holds elections today. The vote has been delayed since 2022, despite the expiration of the incumbent President Muse Bihi Abdi’s term and the region’s parliament, which led to instability.

The U.S. warned of human rights backsliding amid crackdowns on free press and after more than 100 people were killed last year in clashes between Somaliland security forces and clan militias. Although Somaliland made the transition from a clan-based system to a multiparty democracy after a referendum more than two decades ago, those political parties are dominated by a single clan, the Isaaq.

Abdi will be running for a second five-year term under the ruling party, Kulmiye, against Mohamed Abdilahi of the Waddani party and the Justice and Welfare Party’s Faysal Ali Warabe, who has run in every presidential race since 2003.

Despite lacking international recognition, Somaliland has its own currency, military, issues its own passport, and has governed itself largely peacefully, holding free and fair elections. Recent unilateral port deals with the United Arab Emirates and Ethiopia raised tensions with Somalia and Egypt.

Mauritius elections. Mauritian Prime Minister Pravind Kumar Jugnauth conceded after admitting a “huge defeat.” Jugnauth ran for a third term amid a phone tap scandal and concerns over the high cost of living. Navinchandra Ramgoolam is poised to become the next prime minister.

Private calls made by politicians, diplomats, and journalists were leaked online a week before the ballot, resulting in a government ban of social media until Nov. 11. In one of the recordings, the police commissioner allegedly asks a forensic examiner to alter a report on a person who died after being beaten in police custody. Jugnauth and the police have claimed the leaked calls were manipulated using artificial intelligence.

Three families have run the country since independence from Britain in 1968. Jugnauth, 62, inherited the premiership in 2017 when his father died; his coalition, Alliance Lepep, won the 2019 election. Ramgoolam’s Alliance du Changement coalition won 62.6 percent of votes. He is a three-time prime minister and son of the country’s first leader. Opposition leaders Nando Bodha and Roshi Bhadain of Linion Reform alliance planned to alternate as prime minister if they had won, and campaigned under the slogan “Neither Navin, Nor Pravind”—criticizing what they view as the country’s nepotism.

Mauritius was ranked second-best for “overall governance” among Africa’s countries, after the Seychelles, in a report published by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation last month with 7 percent GDP growth in 2023 but inflation riled voters. The ballot followed a historic October agreement for Britain to cede the Chagos Islands to Mauritius while retaining the joint U.S. military base on the island Diego Garcia.

Ghana’s anti-LGBTQ bill. Ghana’s parliament has resubmitted an anti-LGBTQ bill to the president, defying an order to wait until the Supreme Court rules on its constitutionality.

The bill proposes up to three years of imprisonment for individuals who identify as LGBTQ and five years for “promoting” LGBTQ activities.

President Nana Akufo-Addo had previously declined to sign it into law amid protests by young Ghanaians and warnings by Ghana’s finance ministry that the country could lose $3.8 billion in World Bank funding over the next five to six years if the bill became law. But Trump’s presidential victory suggests that anticipated U.S. condemnation of the law may no longer be a problem.

Mozambique post-election protests. Mozambique deployed its army over the weekend to help quell protests against the ruling party accused of rigging last month’s election to maintain its hold on power. The ruling Frelimo party has been in power for 49 years, since the country gained independence from Portugal in 1975. At least three people were killed and 66 injured during mass demonstrations in the capital city of Maputo.

Algeria bans prize-winning novel. The Prix Goncourt, France’s top literary prize, was awarded to French Algerian novelist Kamel Daoud for his novel Houris, a fictional account of a young woman scarred by the violence of Algeria’s 10-year civil war, which lasted from the 1990s to the early 2000s. Daoud is the first Algerian to win the prize. However, the book is banned in Algeria, as a 2005 “reconciliation” law makes it a crime punishable by jail to “instrumentalize” or evoke the civil war. Daoud’s French publisher, Gallimard, said it was asked not to display his works at the Algiers International Book Fair, which runs this week.

Ghana’s statue backlash. Ghanaians have criticized outgoing President Nana Akufo-Addo for unveiling a statue of himself outside a hospital in the country’s Western Region. Some Ghanaians are calling for the statue to be removed after he leaves office.

“This extravagant display of self-aggrandizement comes at a time when the region has been largely neglected, with pressing needs and concerns left unaddressed,” opposition parliamentarian Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah posted on social media. Ghana will hold presidential elections in December amid public dissatisfaction with inflation and management of the economy by the ruling New Patriotic Party.

• How Did Voter Turnout Compare? by Anusha Rathi
• Why She Lost by Michael Hirsh
• What Trump’s Win Means for U.S. Foreign Policy by FP Staff

Ex-Trump official’s anti-contraception deal in Uganda. Former Trump White House advisor Valerie Huber’s Protego project, signed with Uganda’s government in May, promotes abstinence-focused sex education and “natural” contraceptive methods—which local health experts say are ineffective, reports the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Uganda has the highest rate of teenage pregnancies in East Africa.

Clean energy’s dirty mining in Nigeria. In Premium Times, Beloved John reports that a global demand for lithium is fueling illegal mining of the mineral in Nigeria’s Oyo state, north of Lagos. The “state government overlooks the activities of the traders, content with receiving peanuts as royalties. Security officials, too concerned with personal gains, do the same, while the federal government is completely blindsided,” John writes.