America’s Façade Fades.
The United States, once hailed as the “indispensable nation” in global affairs, has abandoned even the pretense of enlightened leadership. Under Donald Trump’s administration, its foreign policy has shed diplomatic niceties, laying bare a system driven by capitalist exploitation and imperial coercion. Nowhere is this clearer than in Ukraine, where Trump’s alleged interest in leveraging the country’s vast rare earth mineral reserves—critical for tech and defense industries—as a bargaining chip for “peace” with Russia exposes the transactional core of U.S. strategy. For African nations, this moment demands more than caution—it requires a fundamental reassessment of engagement with a superpower in decline.
Recent reports reveal that Trump advisors have quietly pushed for Ukraine to cede control of its eastern territories, rich in lithium, titanium, and cobalt, to Russia in exchange for a ceasefire. Such a deal would effectively hand Moscow—and its allies in U.S. fossil fuel and defense sectors—access to minerals worth trillions, while legitimizing territorial conquest. This is not diplomacy; it is resource colonialism, masked as conflict resolution
Prof. Richard D. Wolff, a preeminent Marxist economist and Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, provides a critical lens here. A towering figure in heterodox economics, Wolff is renowned for his incisive critiques of capitalism’s structural inequities and his advocacy for democratic worker cooperatives. His seminal works, including “Capitalism Hits the Fan” and “Understanding Marxism”, dissect how capitalist systems prioritize profit over people by extracting surplus labour from workers—a dynamic that fuels imperialism, inequality, and environmental degradation. Through his widely syndicated program “Economic Update”, Wolff has galvanized global audiences to rethink economic justice.
For Wolff, Trump’s America—with its deregulation frenzy, militarized foreign policy, and disdain for multilateralism—is not an anomaly. It is capitalism in decay, doubling down on extraction to delay its crisis. For Africa, the implications are dire.
- Trump’s America: Capitalism’s Ugly Truth Unleashed.
Wolff’s analysis begins at home. The Trump administration’s domestic agenda—massive tax cuts for corporations ($1.9 trillion in 2017), erosion of labour protections, and environmental deregulation—exemplifies capitalism’s core contradiction: the relentless pursuit of profit at the expense of people and planet.
- Corporate Capture: The U.S. state now functions as a full-service subsidiary of capital. The 2020 CARES Act, for instance, allocated $500 billion in corporate bailouts with minimal oversight, while 10 million Americans lost healthcare during the pandemic.
- Worker Exploitation: Trump’s gutting of OSHA workplace safety rules and promotion of “gig economy” precarity (e.g., opposing California’s AB5 labour law) mirror Wolff’s critique of capitalism’s reliance on depressing wages to maximize profits.
- Militarized Imperialism: The record $886 billion Pentagon budget (2024) funds 750 overseas bases, many in Africa. Wolff would note this as capitalism’s need for state violence to control global resources and labour.
Is Trump’s America still capitalistic? The question answers itself. This is capitalism stripped of reformist veneers: authoritarian neoliberalism, where oligarchs wield state power to entrench inequality.
- Africa in the Crosshairs: Extraction, Debt, and Coercion.
Wolff’s framework explains how capitalist crises are externalized onto the Global South. Africa, with its vast resources and strategic geography, faces three primary threats under U.S. policy:
- Resource Plunder
The U.S.-backed “Lobito Corridor”—a $1.3 billion rail project linking Angola, DRC, and Zambia—is marketed as “development.” In reality, it’s designed to extract cobalt and lithium for Western tech firms while bypassing African processing. The DRC, holding 70% of the world’s cobalt, sees 80% of its mining revenues flow to foreign shareholders. Wolff’s “surplus extraction” is laid bare: African labour and resources enrich Wall Street, leaving polluted lands and underfunded schools.
- Debt Colonialism
The IMF, led by U.S. veto power, imposes austerity on Ghana, Zambia, and Kenya in exchange for loans. Zambia spends 30% of its revenue on debt servicing—more than healthcare and education combined. Wolff would recognize this as a modern iteration of colonial tribute: debt traps ensure perpetual resource outflows to Global North banks.
- Militarized “Partnerships.
U.S. bases in Niger (Air Base 201) and Somalia exist not for “counterterrorism” but to secure ExxonMobil’s $30 billion Mozambique LNG project and surveil Chinese investments. Civilian casualties from U.S. drone strikes in Somalia (250+ since 2022) go uninvestigated, illustrating Wolff’s axiom: capitalism’s “order” relies on violence.
- A Wolffian Alternative: Reclaiming African Sovereignty.
Wolff’s prescription—democratizing workplaces and decommodifying essentials—offers Africa a path beyond extractive capitalism.
- Worker-Centered Resource Governance.
Nationalize mining and energy sectors, but not under state bureaucracies. Instead, adopt Wolff’s model of worker cooperatives, where communities control production and reinvest profits locally. Bolivia’s lithium strategy, prioritizing state-community joint ventures over foreign corporations, offers a template.
- South-South Solidarity.
The BRICS bloc, now including Egypt and Ethiopia, should launch a Global South Development Bank to replace IMF conditionalities. Partner with Kerala, India, where cooperatives generate 35% of GDP, or Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement, which redistributed 7 million acres to farming collectives.
- Reparations, Not Aid.
Africa loses $89 billion annually to illicit financial flows (UNCTAD, 2023)—a fraction of the $152 trillion in wealth extracted since 1500 (Thomas Piketty). Demand reparations via the UN Loss and Damage Fund and debt cancellation. As Wolff argues, justice requires restoring stolen surplus, not charity.
Africa’s Post-Capitalist Horizon.
The Trump era has dispelled illusions of U.S. benevolence. Its policies—whether led by Trump or Biden—are rooted in capitalism’s death throes: a system cannibalizing itself and the planet. Africa need not choose between U.S. and Chinese capitalism; it can pioneer an alternative.
By reclaiming resources, democratizing economies, and uniting the Global South, Africa can model what Wolff calls “post-capitalist democracy”—where sovereignty means more than flags and anthems. The task is monumental, but the cost of complacency is higher. As Wolff warns, “Capitalism won’t reform itself. The exploited must seize their future”.