every other year there is a "trade war" with a new handful of african countries pushing to stop accepting 2nd hand american clothes, or some other trash goods (that kills their homegrown industries) ... and then america threatens to stop importing or to raise tariffs on whatever goods are imported from that country. and the economies are so out of wack that the african countries (or haiti or whoever) eventually cave in.

that is how some goofball company in nebraska becomes a multi-million dollar business doing uneven trade with africa, with the US Govt having its back

at a national level, US just cares about feeding the military beast. and without any active wars, they gotta do something to keep the train moving. so troops get deployed in niger and mali and djibouti and anywhere else that keeps the defense budget up

the angle of the main article imo is just that a whole nother paradigm is building up in africa, while america been asleep at the wheel since the 90's