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US lawmakers have called on Nigeria to repeal sharia lag in the country's north as they probe US President Donald Trump's unfounded allegations of Christian persecution in the country.
They're killing record numbers of Christians in Nigeria and they have other countries very bad also. You know that that part of the world very bad and killing the Christians and killing them in very large numbers.
We're not going to allow that to happen.
This follows previous unfounded claims from the US administration of a white genocide in South Africa, with thousands.
Of stories talking about it. Surely we have documentaries, we have news stores. I could show you a couple of things, and I would. I just I have to it has to be responded to.
On today's podcast, we'll look at how Nigeria, Christians and white South Africans have become a pretty big issue in Washington, d C. And what impact it's having on US Africa relations. I'm Jennifer's Abisaja and this is the Next Africa Podcast, bringing you one story each week from the continent driving the future of global growth with the context only Bloomberg
can provide. Now, joining us today is our deputy Managing editor for the Middle East and Africa, that's Neil Munshi, and also our South Africa government reporter that is Sembile Stele, who both of them have been covering this extensively. So thank you both for joining us this week. Neil, maybe we just start with you if we take a look at what the US Congress committee was investigating, was intended on investigating, how did we get to this point? Give us a few of the steps into how we got here.
So, the idea that Christians have been persecuted in Nigeria has been floating around evangelical circles, especially in the US, for many years. It goes back to Trump's first term as well. I mean, there is also within the Nigerian Christian community some agitation about this, that Christians are being persecuted in the country, et cetera. And it's been picked up by members of the Trump coalition and made its
way to the President's desk at some point. I think the background here is important because Nigeria has an incredibly bad problem with insecurity across the country, and just to put it in context, Nigeria is about two hundred and some million people, roughly split between Christians and Muslims. Christians mostly live in the South, Muslims mostly live in the North.
Everyone in Nigeria, regardless of faith, is a victim of insecurity, terrorism, armed gangs of bandits, communal violence, you name it, and it tends not to be religiously denominated. That's kind of the context here.
Right, And we should probably say, you spent quite a lot of time living in the country. Can you talk about maybe what the reaction from what you know has been from Nigerians to this whole entire spotlight from the US administration being on the country in this way.
When you hear from ordinary Nigerians, it would be we have an incredibly bad insecurity problem, and it is an issue. But it's not government persecution of Christians. It's not even that Christians are disproportionately victims of crime or murder or attacks. It's that the government, successive governments going back fifteen twenty years have done very little to nothing to address the
insecurity problem that swallowed the country. This includes kidnapping for ransom, you know, arm bandits on motorcycles with AK forty seven.
Listeners might have heard of from Boko.
Haram and affiliated groups that are mostly in the northeast of the country and mostly impact the Muslims who mainly live up there.
Tim BILLI can you jump in here, because if we think about some of the allegations that we've heard from President Trump, it's been quite different in South Africa, but of course we do want to talk about the ways in which he is still targeting some African countries. Last year we spoke about South Africa and President Trump. What impact have his most recent allegations had here in the country if we talk about ordinary South Africans and even the South African administration.
So I would say maybe just to pick up on Neil's point, is that what South Africa has undatedly been battling to deal with for the longest time, and even the president he conceded us right when President Sirama Posa met with President Trump on the Oval Office last year, is that South Africa's issue is crime that affects every single aspects of daily life, much the same way that insecurity does in Nigeria, and it's something that is indiscriminate.
But in fact, if you do want to bring it.
To the metrics, it disproportionately affects young black men in the main when you're looking at the murders, and we need to talk about these members because they're important in the context of the claim that's been made falsely so by the Trump administration that the white minority in the country, particularly farmers, are being targeted. There are victims of this kind of persecution that we're seeing.
And so that's what we saw unfolding for most of last year.
Even when the South African government has tried to clarify that it's not the case that there are no white Africanas as it were, being targeted, they still offer this so called refugee program. We saw hundreds of African and South Africans leaving on a charter a jet to go
and resettle in the US. And by the way, since then, we've not heard really great things about the living conditions about those South Africans that have left, many of them so that they're living in very cramped conditions and hotels, they're struggling to find work. It's quite a tedious bureaucratic process to get them to live the life that I think they would have anticipated that they would be.
Living in the US. That's the one impact of it.
The other major concern around the growing tensions that we saw last year and that have been somewhat sustained between Pretoria and Washington is the tariffs, the thirty percent tariff.
That was imposed on South Africa.
When we're looking at the export data from the year twenty twenty five, the first two quarters were strong. This was obviously before the liberation tablets came into effect. But what did happen when they did come rather when they
were postponed? There was a ninety day pause, and during that ninety day pause, we saw exporters exporting a higher volume than usual and that's kind of given a cushion to the final export datas which are in the main Not to say that there has not been a massive impact on exporters the agricultural sector in the main, but it's been somewhat muted and offset by a number of other things that are happening. Maybe then, just the last point to make again linking to crime, some of the things.
One of the things that has been a deterrent to tourists coming to South Africa is the experience of some that they have experienced really violent crime against to the point that it happens, it affects everyone in the country. When we're looking at South Africa's tourism data, obviously, like every other tourist destination in the world, there's been a somewhat of a slow down or a cooling in terms of tourists since the COVID period.
In South Africa is no different to that.
In terms of a lot of the countries that come to South Africa, we've not seen them return to the pre COVID levels, with the exception of two countries funny enough, that being Australia and the UK last year when we
look at the final figures. So whatever the rhetorica has been coming from the Trump administration with the false allegations that they've been making, it's not been a determined at least that's what the numbers are selling us in terms of US citizens that are looking to come to South Africa for the purposes of tourism and leisure.
One thing I think that's important to point out about the South Africa example of a Nigerian example is while they're rooted in this sort of you know, reality of insecurity issues in those countries, the main root of it is in US domestic politics. Right, so two strains of kind of Trumpian politics, White grievance politics and the evangelical Christian community in the US, which forms the bedrock of
Trump's bace. And in both cases, this kind of conspiracy theorizing came up through those two political bases, and Trump has latched onto them in office to give those communities what they want. It's a pretty canny political move back in the US.
Can I asked then, Neil, what do officials think is behind it? Do they think it is, as you say, rooted in US domestic politics, potentially it's about the mid term elections or do they think it's potentially about something more?
No, I mean you can see from even public statements from I mean particularly in South Africa more than Nigeria. I don't think it has something to do with the midterms. This stuff came up last year, right very soon into his first term, well before the midterms, so I don't think it's linked to that. But I think it's clear that it's linked to these kind of US domestic issues.
The thing is how the countries have responded, and like Stambilee said, both countries have acknowledged these insecurity issues and what Nigeria has done that I think is a bit different than what South Africa has done. Those Stimbula can correct me if I'm wrong, is they've kind of used it as an opportunity to ask the Trump administration for
help in addressing the insecurity issues. So we've seen US military trainers, US intelligence sharing to target the Jihadis and to some extent, the armed bandit groups in the country. But again, they're doing that while not conceding or admitting that there is persecution of Christians in the country. They're saying very plainly that there's not persecution of Christians in
the country. The government is led by a Muslim whose wife is herself an evangelical pastor, so they're sort of not conceding the point, but they are using it as an opportunity to address the insecurity issue that they and their predecessor governments have done very little to address.
Hold that thought, Neil and Stambula stick with us. We're going to take a quick break and when we come back, we'll talk more about what this means for the future of these relationships between African countries and the US.
We'll be right back.
Welcome back today. We're looking at the US attention on alleged persecution in South Africa and Nigeria and the relationship between the US and African countries. We have Neil Munchi and also Sembile Stele joining us here. Simbile, we were talking a bit with you before the break about the state of relations when it comes to the US and South Africa. What more have we heard from the government about maybe what this looks like ahead in their mind?
Look, I think very much is a situation where you have the US president kind of blowing hot and cold, and because it's not really clear what it is that he wants from South Africa, some commentations would argue that it seems like he forgets about the country at some point and point and then maybe someone was persent as year, hey, you remember this is happening, and then you'll kind of poke the bear again.
At the moment, I think things are kind of muted.
South Africa's position has remained that we are always open to engagement.
But in the intervening period.
What we've seen, obviously is the successful hosting from South Africa side of the G twenty, where the US, of course, you will remember, opted out of those meetings they have since taken over presidency the US now of the G twenty and they have actively excluded South Africa from the meetings which would have gotten underway in December. Interestingly enough, alongside that, though, one of the things that the South African government was worried about was South Africa's exclusion from
the AGOA preferential free trade agreements. And what we've seen in the past few months is a US lawmakers actually renewing that agreement for a year and including South Africa rather not excluding it, because that was one.
Of the fears.
In addition to that South Africa not being excluded from that very pre preferential trade agreement, the US finally has an ambassador designate to His credentials have not yet been.
Accepted in South Africa.
But Leo Brent Bosel, who was a defender of the apartheid regime if you can call him that, in that period pre democracy in South Africa, he has now landed on South African shows. He's been doing a number of meetings and to be fair in his welcoming message, he's not really made many public addresses, but on social media, the welcoming messages that he made was very much conciliatory. It didn't give any sense of hostility. And I'm here
to cause a mess. And so America has sent someone to represent them in South Africa and those engagements are underway. So it's kind of a mixed bag of things. That's why I say it seems to blow hot and cold.
You never know what's going to happen next. But to Neil's points earlier about the electoral base which Donald Trump relies on and pants to, we might see that should he come under pressure in the months leading up to the midterms, he might revert his attention back to South Africa and kind of want to make a connection with that base again to say, look, I haven't forgotten about
these interests. You say you're worried about the persecution of white South Africans in that country, So am I. That may give him a little bit of closeness again to that base as we move close up to the midterms. Again, not to say that his actions have been because of the midterms, but we do see that when election campaigns get underway, it's one way to offset the kind of pressures that come to be associated with that period of accountability that is associated with the midterms.
Yeah, and Neil, how is diplomacy or how's Nigeria handling diplomacy different from South Africa. Is it a different picture altogether or do you still see some similarities maybe to how they're reacting.
I mean, I think it's similar to a lot of how a lot of emergent markets, I mean, even European allies do, which is a sort of you know, head down, don't want to cause too much trouble, don't want to get noticed too much kind of thing in case they
incur his wrath. So there's a bit of that. But again, I think just like it's important to say for both countries that they're not conceding the point that there's any validity to these conspiracy theories about persecution of whites and South Africa or Christians in Nigeria, but they are attempting to kind of turn the conversation to a more comfortable one and one in which kind of both countries, both the US and Nigeria in this case, can claim a win.
And so far Nigeria seems to be doing a pretty decent job at that.
And thanks so much Neil and Stanbula again for joining us at this week on the podcast, and you can read more of our reporting from across the region on Bloomberg platforms.
Now Here are some of.
The other stories we've been following across the region this week, Billionaire Aliko dan Gote's oil refinery will prioritize supplying fuel in Nigeria, its home market, as long as it can access local crude.
The West African.
Nation is among the few on the continent with refineries, and as Africa's largest oil producer, is not reliant on Middle Eastern supplies. And South Africa's Central Bank is monitoring the market and would take action in the event of major dysfunction after the worst bond sell off since the COVID pandemic, as concerns mount that soaring oil prices and a weaker rand will fuel inflation. And you can follow these stories across Bloomberg, including of course the Next Africa Newsletter.
Will put a link to that in the show notes. This program was produced by Adrian.
Bradley and Tiwa Adubio.
Don't forget to follow and review this show wherever you usually get your podcasts, but for now I'm Jennifer's Abasacha. Thanks as always for listening.