The US loses to Russia and China in popularity across Africa

  • China and Russia surpass the U.S. in approval ratings in Africa.
  • U.S. approval ratings in Africa at 56%, lagging behind China (58%) and Russia (64%).
  • Russia’s increasing popularity is attributed to arms sales, military training, and economic initiatives in Africa.

The survey which involved 130 countries globally saw a global increase in America’s disapproval ratings from 33% in 2022 to 36% in 2023. However, the US’s approval ratings between the same period remained the same at 41%.

In Africa however, the US’s approval rating stands at 56%, with China and Russia having 2% and 8% more respectively. ⠀

In Uganda, Gambia, and Kenya the approval rating of the US dropped by 29, 21 and 14 percentage points, respectively. With 23% and 25%, respectively, Libya and Somalia had the lowest scores. ⠀

As the US media recently claimed, citing an anonymous US source, Moscow may be able to address the continent’s urgent security demands through arms sales that exceed Washington’s capacity, which might account for Russia’s increasing popularity in Africa. ⠀

Russia has been on a mission to increase its influence in Africa. In addition to military ties, Russia has initiated a number of economic initiatives with the continent, including the building of a House of Africa in several of its states, shipments of free grains to the continent, nuclear deals, and more.

Binthinkin,

American aid USAID is the laziest thing Americans can do for Africa because 75% of the country is too fat to fly there and 100% are too stupid to know what to do.

The Chinese put in sweat equity while Americans avoid sweating at all costs because it’ll ruin their new Tee shirt or whatever.

Statistically speaking, 75% of people commenting in here are over 250lbs and never seen a flight longer than 3 hours. Thus making it impossible to help in any realistic way.

The Chinese are just taking over what colonials and Americans have abandoned because it let’s face it, they have a racism and fascism problem.

Americans think throwing worthless dollars at problems they can solve anything.

You guys really are fucking collapsing huh?

livus,
livus avatar

One of the weirdest things about having a kbin account is we can see low effort trolling comments like this even after the mods removed it and the rest of the people in here can't see it.

davel, (edited )
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

USAID isn’t lazy, it’s a constituent part of US imperialism. Samantha Power is a war criminal. Three women, loads of lies and the destruction of Libya

Mapping U.S. Imperialism

U.S. imperialism has also been built through “soft power” organizations like USAID, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), World Bank, the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the Organization of American States (OAS). These nominally international bodies are practically unilateral in their subservience to the interests of the U.S. state and U.S. corporations. In the 1950s and ‘60s, USAID (and its precursor organizations) made “development aid” to Asian, African, and South American countries conditional on those countries’ legal formalization of capitalist property relations, and reorganization of their economies around homeownership debt. The goal was to enclose Indigenous land, and land shared through alternate economic systems, as a method of “combatting Communism with homeownership” and creating dependency and buy-in to U.S. capitalist hegemony (Nancy Kwak, A World of Homeowners). In order to retain access to desperately needed streams of resources (e.g. IMF “loans”), Global South governments are forced to accept resource-extraction by the U.S., while at the same time denying their own people popularly supported policies such as land reform, economic diversification, and food sovereignty. It is also important to note that Global South nations have never received reparations or compensation for the resources that have been stolen from them–this makes the idea of “loans” by global monetary institutions even more outrageous.

Arcturus,

Moscow may be able to address the continent’s urgent security demands through arms sales that exceed Washington’s capacity

Happens when you deindustrialize your own country to crush working-class movements

frauddogg,
@frauddogg@lemmygrad.ml avatar

https://lemmygrad.ml/pictrs/image/c67b1997-9c83-4789-80c0-8f2be31fd186.gif

haw haw haw

draughtcyclist,

How much money has China invested in Africa?

FenrirIII,
@FenrirIII@lemmy.world avatar

‘Invested’ is a polite term. They’re granting loans in exchange for ports and land. Most of those loans will probably not be repaid and China will come to collect.

davel,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Have you read these agreements or are you just going on vibes?

frauddogg, (edited )
@frauddogg@lemmygrad.ml avatar

Not as much as the IMF yet. Difference is in the strings attached (or lack thereof, in Russia and China’s cases). Strangest thing, is those two entities get accused of debt trapping all the time, but I’ve never once heard of Russia or China actually leveraging the traps the crackers INSIST are being planted and engaged. Meanwhile, I hear about Amerikan pressure all the goddamn time.

It’s almost like they see what’s happening to their neighbors, see what’s happening across the water, and decide “well we can’t trust them old crackers in the West.”

blterrible,

deleted_by_moderator

    •
    highalectical,
    @highalectical@lemmygrad.ml avatar

    Considering the debt trap diplomacy narrative is a load of horse shit and China has already forgiven a shitload of loans that couldn’t be paid back, Ghana is in for a good deal.

    slurpyslop,

    it's absolutely baffling to me that tankies can look at us hegemony, and then at all the problems that arise from superpowers throwing their weight around on the world stage, going back to pretty much the point the concept of a "great power" came into existence, and then go "china will be different when it's in charge"

    davel,
    @davel@lemmy.ml avatar

    The dept trap diplomacy narrative is neocolonial* projection from the imperial core states.

    *Even Wikipedia’s entry on neocolonialism projects it onto China, because Wikipedia is full of imperial core propaganda.

    Ram_The_Manparts,
    @Ram_The_Manparts@hexbear.net avatar

    lmafo

    NoneOfUrBusiness,

    Even if this was true (I'm not well-read on the topic but it seems like Western copium) it's much better than the shit France does in West Africa and the US does everywhere.

    Ram_The_Manparts, (edited )
    @Ram_The_Manparts@hexbear.net avatar

    I’m sure that the Chinese will be happy to forgive those debts

    You should look that up, you might actually learn something

    This isn’t reddit where you’re just told what you want to hear

    SexMachineStalin, (edited )
    @SexMachineStalin@hexbear.net avatar

    Russia forgave €20BN of African debt (90%) 2 years ago with the stroke of a pen and the debt to China has levelled off to around €90BN (which is roughly 10% of the total debt), while African countries are getting workforce training, education, healthcare, heavy industrial equipment and infrastructure, an economic base allowing for trade and growing control of a nation’s own resources, most of which was not a possibility just a decade ago.

    Several countries on the continent (especially Namibia and South Africa in the past 2 years) have dismissed this anti-China drivel as a bunch of nonsensical anti-cracker-aktion cope from the saltine-cracker-sphere.

    PIGPOOPBALLS

    Phen,

    Why wouldn’t it?

    davel,
    @davel@lemmy.ml avatar

    Islamic countries aren’t buying the US’s Uyghur genocide psyop. That propaganda only seems to work on the Fourteen Eyes’ own people, who live in a media bubble.

    sexy_peach,

    I don’t think that’s it

    thetreesaysbark,

    Is this all bullshit then?

    …wikipedia.org/…/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_China

    highalectical,
    @highalectical@lemmygrad.ml avatar

    The Grayzone demolished those allegations ages ago. Do better.

    davel,
    @davel@lemmy.ml avatar

    Yes, all this bullshit again: lemmy.ml/comment/10617237

    carl_marks_1312,
    @carl_marks_1312@lemmy.ml avatar

    Yes it is check the Talk page. wikipedia had even changed their title from “Uyghur Genocide” to this in light of an actual Genocide going on in Gaza. Also the fact that RFA, ASPI and other openly funded by western government sources are allowed, but no Chinese sources is a heavy western bias in wikipedia…

    brain_in_a_box,

    A lot of it is, yeah.

    Did you think a Wikipedia link, of all things, was some kind of slam dunk, unimpeachable proof?

    blterrible, (edited )

    deleted_by_moderator

    •
    davel,
    @davel@lemmy.ml avatar

    What in the 50 Cent Party kinda post is this?

    I elaborated elsewhere in this post: lemmy.ml/comment/10617237

    BeamBrain,
    @BeamBrain@hexbear.net avatar

    What does a rapper have to do with it?

    NoLifeGaming,

    No, they don’t like US and EU due to recent colonization past and wars (add the palestine issue now too). Many either don’t know about the uyghur issue or see russia and China as allies for them. Though I’d say false allies because Russia for example has done many heinous crimes in the mid east including help the Asad regime against his people.

    NoneOfUrBusiness,

    Palestine isn't a "now" issue, but otherwise yeah.

    frauddogg,
    @frauddogg@lemmygrad.ml avatar

    Ooof, kicked the cracker nest with that one big homie

    davel,
    @davel@lemmy.ml avatar

    It ain’t much, but it’s honest work.

    nyctre,

    Psyop is a big word. Overblown, maybe, but definitely not a psyop. Just because there’s no evidence that they’re getting murdered doesn’t mean what’s happening is ok.

    People are more likely just uniformed, like the vast majority of people everywhere. And it’s easy to distrust america when they’re all over the news with their fucked up stuff. And despite all that they’re still above 50% with russia and china not much higher, so… Whatever.

    davel,
    @davel@lemmy.ml avatar

    The US tried to foment division in China by funding and organizing terrorist cells in Xinjiang, and when those efforts failed it concocted and promoted a genocide narrative. Antony Blinken is still pushing this slop, just last week.

    We see here for example the evolution of public opinion in regards to China. In 2019, the ‘Uyghur genocide’ was broken by the media (Buzzfeed, of all outlets). In this story, we saw the machine I described up until now move in real time. Suddenly, newspapers, TV, websites were all flooded with stories about the ‘genocide’, all day, every day. People whom we’d never heard of before were brought in as experts — Adrian Zenz, to name just one; a man who does not even speak a word of Chinese.

    Organizations were suddenly becoming very active and important. The World Uyghur Congress, a very serious-sounding NGO, is actually an NED Front operating out of Germany […]. From their official website, they declare themselves to be the sole legitimate representative of all Uyghurs — presumably not having asked Uyghurs in Xinjiang what they thought about that.

    The WUC also has ties to the Grey Wolves, a fascist paramilitary group in Turkey, through the father of their founder, Isa Yusuf Alptekin.

    Documents came out from NGOs to further legitimize the media reporting. This is how a report from the very professional-sounding China Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) came to exist. They claimed ‘up to 1.3 million’ Uyghurs were imprisoned in camps. What they didn’t say was how they got this number: they interviewed a total of 10 people from rural Xinjiang and asked them to estimate how many people might have been taken away. They then extrapolated the guesstimates they got and arrived at the 1.3 million figure.

    Sanctions were enacted against China — Xinjiang cotton for example had trouble finding buyers after Western companies were pressured into boycotting it. Instead of helping fight against the purported genocide, this act actually made life more difficult for the people of Xinjiang who depend on this trade for their livelihood (as we all do depend on our skills to make a livelihood).

    Any attempt China made to defend itself was met with more suspicion. They invited a UN delegation which was blocked by the US. The delegation eventually made it there, but three years later. The Arab League also visited Xinjiang and actually commended China on their policies — aimed at reducing terrorism through education and social integration, not through bombing like we tend to do in the West.

    nyctre,

    Wow, so many links and so much effort just to say: “enemy super smart and powerful that creates world-wide misinformation and controls the world”, but then they’re also super stupid and sends a “CIA agent” to do an ama on reddit. Fascism 101, isn’t it?

    davel,
    @davel@lemmy.ml avatar

    Other than putting words in my mouth and invoking Umberto Eco with no evidence, you seem to have nothing to say.

    livus,
    livus avatar

    invoking Umberto Eco with no evidence

    Gold. I'm tempted to put this on a rules list somewhere.

    moon, (edited )

    Africa: Liberates itself from imperialist colonisation in the decades after after WWII

    USA: Takes advantage of the post-war European Imperialist vacuum to go and do some imperialism for itself in Latin America, Asia and later the Middle-East

    Africa: Mistrusts USA

    USA: Pikachu shocked face

    NoneOfUrBusiness,

    Don't forget France. France never stopped colonizing Africa, just changed their methods.

    Ram_The_Manparts,
    @Ram_The_Manparts@hexbear.net avatar

    shocked-pikachu

    qwertilliopasd,
    @qwertilliopasd@lemmy.world avatar

    This might’ve hurt too.

    Skua,

    https://news.gallup.com/poll/644222/loses-soft-power-edge-africa.aspx

    America was up above 80% in 2009/2010, so this change can't be because either of those

    Verqix,

    Unless people in Africa became more educated, so it feels a bit easy to just disregard them. Also, people often don’t change their mind overnight.

    Skua,

    I don't think anyone is saying anything happened overnight. We're talking a fifty-sixty year delay on the events mentioned above. But also, I would want to see some evidence that Africans on average weren't aware of the legacy of colonialism up until the 2010s, because that seems like an unreasonably low estimation of education on the continent.

    Besides that, Russia and China also saw declines throughout the 2010s from peaks in 2009/2010. That would suggest to me that something in the 2010s made Africans on average less approving of the world's major powers in general

    moon,

    This was a fascinating read

    Zehzin,
    @Zehzin@lemmy.world avatar

    What are the approval numbers for France and are they lower than Malaria’s

    Ram_The_Manparts,
    @Ram_The_Manparts@hexbear.net avatar

    Owned

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