According to the African Youth Survey 2024, China and Russia are winning the war for the hearts and minds of Africa’s youth, almost by default.

As the Russia-Ukraine war moves toward its third anniversary with no end in sight, and as Israel and Iran square off, African concerns all too often appear as a mere afterthought in Western strategic planning.

For centuries, Western nations have focused more on extracting Africa’s mineral wealth, often by bribing strongmen, than on forging alliances with the people who inhabit Africa’s 54 nations. As African nations began shaking off the bonds of colonialism after World War II, their people were desperate enough to trust unscrupulous dictators who lined their own pockets while selling off national wealth to the progeny of their former colonial masters.

As all three African Youth Surveys have shown, today’s African youth, who in just six years’ time will constitute a third of the global youth population, are grossly offended by the corruption of their leaders and by those whose money and power fed that corruption. This year’s survey found that nearly 60 percent of the 5,604 Africans aged 18 to 24 interviewed across 16 countries want to leave their countries because of unchecked corruption.

Russia’s influence in Africa has risen since 2020, with 41 percent suggesting Russia is a leading foreign influencer on the continent and 68 percent suggesting that influence is positive. This shift, most notably in Malawi and South Africa, is linked to the Russia-Ukraine war and Russia’s displacement of Ukraine as a major supplier of grain and fertilizer. Two-thirds believe that war could have been avoided, and nearly a third blame NATO, the U.S., and the EU.

A recent Council on Foreign Relations report states that Moscow’s military focus is mostly on weapons trading and new military bases. Diplomatically, Russia works with private military companies and local political allies to tap into lingering anti-colonial sentiment. Russia’s $18 billion in trade with African countries lags far behind that of the U.S. (($64 billion) and China ($254 billion) and is largely focused on gold, diamonds, uranium, and oil.

The CFR report further notesthat longstanding frustration with the failures of Western intervention and a simmering resentment over a lack of African representation in international institutions have fueled Russia’s growing support in Africa. South African philanthropist Ivor Ichikowitz, whose family foundation funds the African Youth Survey, points out that while nearly 30 percent of the votes in the United Nations come from African countries, no African nation holds a permanent seat at the UN Security Council.

China’s growing involvement with African nations poses a much greater threat to the West as well as to unsuspecting African leaders gulled by the red-carpet treatment many receive in China. According to Cobus van Staden, co-founder of the China-Global South Project, Xi Jinping signals solidarity with African nations by emphasizing its own status (reaffirmed in the Paris Agreements) as a “developing” nation while avoiding the “dreariness of the U.S. and EU’s ongoing aid forces with its attendant conditionality and preaching.”

The results have been spectacular, as a fifth of Africa’s exports go to China, including metals, mineral products, and fuel. Exports to China have quadrupled since 2001. Meanwhile, China is also the single largest source of imports to African nations of manufactured goods and machinery, according to the International Monetary Fund, with the balance of trade massively favoring the Chinese.

Von Staden says the recent 2024 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation eschewed the traditional focus of aid to operate at a higher level, with successive funding commitments and an expanding scope to respond to African demands. While Western “Africa plus one” summits often fall into the “Africa is a country” trap, the Chinese have been adept at bilateral negotiations. Still, old money is often recycled into “new” projects while the initial projects never came to fruition.

But how do African youth view China?

According to the 2024 African Youth Survey, 76 percent see China as the most influential global power, and 82 percent call the character of Chinese influence positive. The U.S. comes in second, at 70 percent influential and 79 percent positive. The EU, the United Kingdom, and France have all dropped significantly as African influencers.

In a just-issued Council on Foreign Relations “global memo” focused on the impact of the 2024 U.S. presidential election on African policy, Michelle Gavin, the CFR’s Ralph Bunche Fellow for Africa Policy Studies, said U.S. Africa policy is hardly a factor in either candidate’s foreign policy platforms or discussions. America’s struggles with election integrity and political violence are undermining faith among Africans that it remains a beacon of light for African democracies.

Gavin suggests that a second Trump Administration would ensure that Africa policy would be largely an afterthought, and that a Harris Administration, while less predictable and more proactive, could still be viewed as “inflexible, ponderous, unresponsive, or just plain absent.”

What U.S. foreign policy in Africa needs, she suggested, is not just the swapping out of personnel but a bigger change in mindset. American policy makers need to wake up to the reality that other major and middle powers have been far more ambitious in their engagements in Africa for years, often to the detriment of U.S. interests.

African nations are moving beyond postcolonialism toward exerting stronger influences in the future of critical supply chains and next-generation international institutions and norms. Gavin urges anyone serious about U.S. foreign policy to seek common ground between the most urgent interests of Africans and those of the United States.  

Likewise, Eghosa E. Osaghae, Director-General, Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, calls for a U.S.-Africa relations reset. While noting the “crucial role” the U.S. plays in the stability and development of the African continent, he adds there is a widespread perception across Africa that its strategic relevance to the U.S. has been waning, leading to neglect and a lack of empathy.

U.S. involvement across Africa, he says, has focused primarily on humanitarian and democratic interventions at the expense of more critical engagements around development goals such as reducing debt problems, mitigating state fragility, and addressing the harms of climate change. This neglect has led to growing discontent and impatience with the U.S. and Europe and is the chief reason that China and Russia have rapidly expanded their influence.

Osaghae warns that a realignment of U.S.-Africa relations is an absolute necessity if the U.S. wants to compete successfully with China and Russia on the African continent, yet no matter the outcome of the U.S. elections he sees the chances of such a fundamental shift as “quite slim.”

Ichikowitz echoes the need that “the world must pay attention to Africa’s emerging force – the youth. As the fastest-growing demographic, they are the heartbeat of the future.” Yet he fears that, unless Western nations take Africa’s youth more seriously, they may be relegated to being “passive spectators” in a world run by the rich and powerful.

Sadly, while Western policymakers continue to demand that Africans conform to Western norms that are often not achievable where there is no electricity, sanitation, or functioning infrastructure, Russia views the continent much as the West did for centuries — as a source of wealth and an outlet for its power. The Chinese have over five millennia viewed themselves as “culturally superior,” suggesting that equal partnerships between Africans and the Chinese are doomed to failure.

A proper realignment of U.S. Africa policy, therefore, must focus on developing the full potential of Africa’s youth, who, as Ichikowitz points out, are no longer content to be bystanders in global discourse. They are, he says, “ready to rewrite the narrative, and they have every intention of wielding the pen themselves.”

“The West,” he concludes, “can no longer afford to ignore the reality: disengagement and disregard for Africa’s youth will have far-reaching consequences. This is not a plea for attention; it’s a demand for action.”