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The US State Department’s senior Africa adviser on Wednesday said that the continent “doesn’t need charity,” driving home President Donald Trump’s message that Washington should build a new relationship with Africa based on trade, not aid.
“We strongly believe that the African continent doesn’t need charity,” Massad Boulos said at Semafor’s The Next 3 Billion summit. “The African continent is very rich. It has its own resources, and I’m not talking only about natural resources, but its human resources. So we need to establish those partnerships.”
Boulos, a businessman who also serves as a senior adviser to Trump on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs, stressed that his mandate in Africa was based on three Ps: peace, partnerships, and prosperity.
He argued that Washington’s approach under the Trump administration was “not transactional,” but designed for “the long run.” Boulos stressed that any partnerships would be “win-win in nature… nobody is taking advantage of anybody else.”
Trump held his first multilateral meeting with leaders from the continent in July, hosting top officials from five West African countries known for being rich in highly sought-after critical minerals.
Boulos added that a US-brokered peace deal signed in June between DR Congo and Rwanda was a successful outcome of Trump’s new approach to the continent. Despite the deal, fighting has continued in DR Congo’s eastern region. Boulos said the agreement was a piece of a larger “puzzle” that still needs to be completed — with negotiations in Doha involving the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels and Kinshasa still ongoing.
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The Trump administration’s push for conflict resolution in DR Congo has been linked to a strategic bid by the US for access to the country’s estimated $25 trillion mineral wealth, Semafor reported in August, as well as an attempt to counter China’s dominance on the continent.
Boulos has spent a large part of his professional life in Nigeria, where he has been involved in several businesses, including a trucking and heavy machinery company. He also played an active role as an emissary to Arab American voters during last year’s US presidential election, pitching Trump as a candidate who would bring peace to the Middle East, and his son, Michael Boulos, is married to Trump’s daughter, Tiffany Trump.