United States Foreign Policy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa: Soft Power, Great Power Competition and Pursuit of Strategic Interests

Abstract

The study examined United States (US) foreign policy toward Sub-Saharan Africa, with particular attention to the deployment of soft power instruments, the dynamics of great power competition, and the strategic objectives framing US engagement with the continent. The study adopted a qualitative literature-based methodology, drawing on peer-reviewed journal articles, institutional reports, and official policy documents. The analysis was anchored in Joseph Nye's soft power theory and augmented by realist and liberal theoretical frameworks. Findings reveal that US engagement with Sub-Saharan Africa has been shaped by successive administrations through a combination of development aid, trade frameworks, security partnerships, and public diplomacy. The escalating rivalry between the US, China, and Russia in Africa has further reconfigured the strategic rationale of American engagement. The study concludes that for US foreign policy to yield sustainable outcomes in Africa, Washington should transcend the instrumentalization of the continent and embrace genuine partnership premised on African agency and mutually defined priorities. The study recommends United States government should prioritize the renewal and substantive reform of AGOA beyond its current preference-based model, incorporating reciprocal provisions that incentivize African industrial value-addition and align with the AfCFTA integration agenda. Washington should institutionalize its development and health programming in Africa through legislative frameworks and multi-year funding commitments that reduce the vulnerability of these programs to partisan domestic politics, thereby reinforcing the credibility of US soft power. The US should expand multilateral diplomatic engagement with African institutions, including the African Union and the African Development Bank, and ensure that its commercial diplomacy through Prosper Africa and Power Africa initiatives is adequately funded and coordinated across relevant government agencies. US policymakers should incorporate African civil society, diaspora communities, and private sector actors as substantive co-designers of engagement frameworks rather than as secondary consultees, thereby anchoring US policy in African-owned development priorities.

Keywords: US foreign policy, Sub-Saharan Africa, soft power, great power competition, diplomacy, AGOA, Biden Africa strategy