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The latest Afrobarometer survey of 38 countries reveals mixed perceptions of American economic and political influence even before the Trump administration’s aid cuts and visa bans.

The US remains widely popular in Africa but is falling behind China, according to the most comprehensive bi-annual survey of public opinion across the continent.

The flagship 2026 report of the Ghana-based Afrobarometer shows that positive perceptions of the US dropped by 10 percentage points between 2019-2021 and 2021-2023, from 59% to 49%, before only partially recovering to 53% in 2024-2025. Over the same period, Africans’ opinion of China has remained steady, with 62% of respondents approving of Beijing’s impact.

“To the extent that there is an emerging winner in the contest for Africans’ allegiance, China appears to be coming out on top, holding steady in popular assessments, while the US is losing ground and Russia struggles to gain it,” concludes the report, which was published on 5 August.

Of the 38 countries included in the latest round of surveys, only nine were polled before President Donald Trump’s inauguration. They include South Africa, where negative perception of the US has almost doubled since 2019-2021 to 33% today, and Mozambique, where support for the US is down five percentage points, with 59% holding a positive view.

While she avoids predicting future African attitudes, Afrobarometer senior adviser and former director of Analysis and Capacity Building Carolyn Logan says Trump’s policies can be expected to further dampen America’s image in many countries.

“There are some places where you get support for a sort of more strongman approach to politics that I think is part of what we’ve seen,” Logan tells The Africa Report. “I’d have to assume that major cuts in aid and major cuts in visa access to travel in the US would not be broadly popular.”

Polling by the Pew Research Centre released last month supports that conclusion: in four out of five countries surveyed – Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa – support for the US is down while attitudes towards China have improved during the first 18 months of the second Trump administration.

National variations and common threads

Digging deeper into the Afrobarometer data reveals interesting national variations.

In some cases, increased support for the US or China correlates with falling approval of the other. In Tunisia, the US is down 12 points while China is up 13 points since 2019.

For the most part, however, support for Washington and Beijing usually moves in the same direction – even if China usually comes out on top. In Sierra Leone, positive views of the US and China are up 37 and 36 points, respectively, while in Morocco respondents with a positive view of China fell by 20 points and 25 points for the US (Moroccans were surveyed before the start of the strongly pro-Rabat second Trump administration).

“While these changes in perceptions are generally correlated, it is clear that China is faring better than the US in the court of African opinion,” Afrobarometer says.

For Logan, the trend should inform policymakers in Washington that most Africans don’t want to choose between the US and China.

“People are looking for countries that will deal with them fairly and effectively. They’re not very interested in conditionality. They’re not very interested in being told what to do. They want countries that will treat them respectfully, as opposed to ideologically,” she says.

Russia breaks through

Besides the US and China, the latest Afrobarometer survey is also full of insight about evolving African attitudes toward Russia.

While views about Moscow were largely subdued in 2019-2021 – 49% of respondents had a neutral opinion – African attitudes have solidified since then as Moscow takes on a larger role on the continent as France and other former colonial powers step back.

In the latest survey, both positive and negative feelings about Russia increased by three percentage points and six percentage points, respectively.

Mali, whose putschist regime has thrown in its lot with Moscow and its paramilitary Africa Corps, stands out: 88% of respondents had a positive view of Russia, while support for the US and China is down 22 points and 2 points, respectively, since 2019-2021. In only three other countries did more than half of respondents hold positive views of Moscow: Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea-Bissau.

Whether that support will hold as Mali and the Sahel’s other Russian-backed juntas, Niger and Burkina Faso, continue to struggle to contain their jihadist insurgencies, remains an open question. For now, Logan says Afrobarometer’s pollsters feel confident they captured a snapshot of Malians’ real impressions, unimpeded by the military regime.

“We think this is legitimate, that Russia is still pretty popular there,” she says.

Julian Pecquet
in Washington

16 August 2026 - Reuters

The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has killed 2,325 people, government data showed on Sunday, surpassing the toll from the 2018-2020 outbreak to become the deadliest in the country's history.

The D.R.C.'s public health institute said in its latest report that confirmed cases had risen to 4,945, including 101 new cases detected in the previous 24 hours.

The outbreak, the country's 17th, was already the biggest in its history in terms of number of cases — a milestone reached in late July.

The latest government data shows that the total number of deaths has surpassed the 2,299 deaths recorded in Congo's 2018-2020 outbreak, which was previously the country's worst on record.

There are now 4,945 confirmed cases, the data showed.

Three months after it was formally announced, the outbreak is now dwarfed only by West Africa's 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in which 28,616 cases and 11,310 deaths were recorded across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to the World Health Organization.

It took nearly five months from the declaration of that outbreak to hit 1,000 deaths, whereas Congo's current outbreak hit 2,000 deaths in less than three months.

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