Judging by events in the Sahel over the past few years, America’s standing in Africa has taken a severe knock. It has patently failed to stop the spread of coups across a belt stretching from Guinea in the west to Sudan in east, all now run by military men. American efforts to nudge Sudan from military dictatorship to democracy have ended in a bloody civil war. Last year Niger’s generals told America to close down its base, from which it provided intelligence in the war against jihadists linked to Islamic State and al-Qaeda.

After the coup there an American delegation led by Molly Phee, the state department’s hapless Africa chief, was given short shrift by the generals. “It was a humiliation,” says an American expert on the Sahel. Worse was to come early this month, when the commander of us Africa Command said America would have to withdraw most of its smaller force from Chad “as part of an ongoing review of our security co-operation”.

Meanwhile Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have welcomed Russia as their ally of choice. Russian troops are also entrenched in the Central African Republic. South Sudan, where America mediated independence in 2011, has fallen into “the lost bucket”, in the words of a doleful adviser to President Joe Biden. A poll last year by Gallup found that African approval of America’s leadership has waned while that of China’s has risen (see chart).

As America’s global rivalry with Russia and China intensifies, its ability to project influence in regions such as Africa is coming into sharper focus. At the same time America faces competing demands to divert its resources—military, political, diplomatic and financial—to its allies’ flashpoints in eastern Europe and East Asia.

Its fading power in parts of Africa stems from three main factors: increased competition, including from middle powers such as Turkey and the United Arab Emirates; a growing tension between its avowed intent to promote an idealistic democracy-promoting foreign policy versus the harsher demands of realpolitik; and the distraction of crises in other continents. “Africa has once again slipped a long way down the totem pole,” laments an executive at the pro-democracy Open Society Foundations. As many civilians may be perishing in Sudan as in Gaza and or Ukraine, yet that catastrophe gets far less American (or global) attention.

The first two of those factors have been plainest in the coup belt. American diplomats have been torn between maintaining relations with the new juntas and complying with America’s legal restrictions on providing military aid to governments that have seized power unconstitutionally and that violate human rights. This has created an opening for Russia, which has no such qualms and is keen to provide forces to “coup-proof” the new military regimes.

Yet many Africans have been quick to accuse America of hypocrisy and double standards. Disappointed rights activists point to a renewed readiness by the administration to engage with some of the worst regimes in Africa, such as the one in Equatorial Guinea, where China is said to want to build a naval base. America also seemed happy to wink at flaws in the latest election in Congo, which has the world’s largest reserves of cobalt.

Jeffrey Smith, founder of Vanguard Africa, a pro-democracy outfit in Washington, bemoans what he considers Mr Biden’s dismal failure to speak out robustly against human-rights abuses in countries such as Ethiopia, Rwanda, Swaziland and Uganda. America’s overriding policy nowadays, he says, is “not to rock the boat”.

At the un America has been faring little better. Its ambassador, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, an experienced and respected Africanist who previously had Ms Phee’s job, has made the best of it, recently seeking to rekindle international interest in Sudan. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, America has expended much diplomatic energy trying to persuade the African bloc to vote against Russia—with only limited success; South Africa, among other leading countries, has refused to back Ukraine. Shortly after the invasion, 28 African countries condemned Russia in the un General Assembly, but another 25 abstained or stayed away.

America’s support for Israel’s campaign against Gaza since last October has tilted African opinion heavily against America. Samantha Power, a human-rights champion who runs usaid, America’s foreign-assistance agency, has been pilloried by rights campaigners for not speaking out against Israel over Gaza. “I’ve never experienced such low perceptions of our foreign policy by Africans,” says Mr Smith.

This gloomy list of American setbacks should not, however, be exaggerated. “We’ve succeeded in reframing why Africa is so important,” says Judd Devermont, who was Mr Biden’s chief Africa adviser in the National Security Council until February. “As the international system has been reordered and the global governance architecture has changed, Africa has to be much more a part of it.” The continent’s complexity, he says, is being better understood by Americans. It is not just about keeping China and Russia at bay. Besides, friends of America note that the Sahelian countries are among the poorest and most desolate in Africa, and have long been misgoverned. It is most unlikely that Russia, which still has a poor reputation across the continent, will succeed in bringing them lasting peace or prosperity.

We’re helping more than you think

At a grand summit in Washington in December 2022 leading lights from 49 African countries (only five were shunned as too toxic to be invited) were assured by Mr Biden that, unlike his predecessor, he was “all in” for Africa. He said he was determined to see it seated permanently at the top table in a range of global forums. He talked of pouring $55bn into an array of new African projects. He promised to visit the continent by the end of 2023.

Some of this materialised. The African Union was inducted at America’s initiative into gatherings of the g20. America declared its support for an African country (it warily refuses to say which) to have a permanent seat in the un Security Council. With America’s backing, Africa has won better representation at the imf and international banks.

But much of that $55bn turned out to be rebranded projects already planned or in the pipeline, spread over several years. No African country is permanently in the Security Council. Mr Biden failed to keep his promise to visit Africa last year; his Africa advisers reel off what they insist is an unprecedentedly long list of cabinet members, led by the secretary of state and the vice-president, who have swung through it since the summit.

On the credit side, America has boosted programmes such as Power Africa (said to have helped more than 33m Africans last year alone to get electricity) and the Digital Transformation for Africa. Mr Biden’s Africa team gushes about a plan under way to revamp a railway from Zambia and Congo to the Angolan port of Lobito. Denying that American policy is driven by superpower rivalry, Mr Devermont says China’s push into Africa has anyway peaked: new lending has dropped sharply since 2016.

Though Mr Biden’s Africa team still looks to Nigeria and South Africa as the continent’s undisputed giants, in the short run the thrust of America’s diplomacy has shifted away from them. While Nigeria is considered vibrant but messy, American relations with South Africa have worsened, in view of the ruling African National Congress’s dismal record of misgovernment and its pro-Russian stand over Ukraine.

So it is notable that Kenya’s William Ruto later this month will become Africa’s first president to be granted a state visit to Washington since 2008, though in 2010 he was indicted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for his alleged role in post-election violence (the charges were later dropped). “From sinner to saint,” chuckles a rueful Washington pundit.

Kenya has won American plaudits for its role as east Africa’s diplomatic and business hub, and as a bridgehead for humanitarian supplies to the troubled parts of the wider region, including Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia and eastern Congo. Mr Ruto hosts American special forces near the border with jihadist-threatened Somalia and has pleased America by offering to send Kenyan police under un helmets to Haiti.

At least it is some comfort to American Africanists that policy towards the continent is still a rare case where congressional oversight is broadly bipartisan. But if Donald Trump were to regain the presidency, Africa would surely fall even further down the list of priorities. Mr Biden’s administration can at least claim to have laid out an ambitious agenda for Africa, even if many of its aims have yet to be fulfilled.