# Africa **Africa** is a continent of 54 sovereign states and about 1.5 billion people, and in this vault it is mostly a stage: the place where the United States, China, Russia and the former colonial powers compete for minerals, ports, votes at the UN and military access. This page is the continent-level overview and router. Individual countries have their own pages in this folder. ## The countries filed in this vault | Region | Pages | |---|---| | Sahel | [[Mali]] · [[Burkina Faso]] · [[Niger]] (the [[Alliance of Sahel States]]) | | North Africa | [[Egypt]] · [[Libya]] | | Horn and Nile | [[Ethiopia]] · [[Eritrea]] · [[Sudan]] | | Central | [[Central African Republic]] · [[Democratic Republic of the Congo]] · [[Rwanda]] | | Southern | [[South Africa]] | The continent's main political body is the [[African Union]] (55 members, including the disputed Sahrawi Republic). ## The great-power contest **Russia** sells regime security. The [[Wagner Group]], and since 2023 the defense ministry's [[Africa Corps]], protect governments in the Sahel, the Central African Republic and Libya in exchange for mining concessions and influence; see [[Security-for-Minerals]] and the shell companies behind it ([[M Invest]], [[Meroe Gold]], [[Lobaye Invest]]). The model's limits showed in Mali in April 2026 ([[2026 Mali Attacks]]). **China** is the continent's largest trading partner and lender, through the [[Belt and Road Initiative]], and dominates the processing of African [[Critical Minerals]], above all the Congo's [[Cobalt]]. **The United States** has shifted from aid to deals. In 2025 it dismantled [[USAID]], the largest bilateral aid donor to the continent, and extended its travel bans to a growing list of African countries, including all three Sahel juntas from January 2026. Its trade-preference law, AGOA, lapsed in September 2025 and was renewed only to December 2026. Instead it brokered a minerals-linked peace deal between the Congo and Rwanda and turned on South Africa over land policy and its genocide case against Israel. **France**, the former colonial power across much of West and Central Africa, has been pushed out of the Sahel (see [[France]]). ## Why it matters to this vault Africa appears here through three lenses: extraction (who gets the minerals), influence (Russian disinformation and Chinese finance competing with Western aid) and the domestic American right's own Africa politics, from the "white genocide" claims about South Africa promoted by [[Elon Musk]] and others to the [[Great Replacement Theory]] framing of African migration to Europe. ## See Also - [[African Union]] · [[Alliance of Sahel States]] · [[Africa Corps]] · [[Wagner Group]] - [[Critical Minerals]] · [[Cobalt]] · [[Security-for-Minerals]] · [[Belt and Road Initiative]] - [[South Africa]] · [[Democratic Republic of the Congo]] · [[Sudan]] · [[Ethiopia]]