Africa–United States relations are the political, economic and cultural ties between the United States and the independent African countries.
History Before World War II, the United States dealt directly only with the former American colony of Liberia, the independent nation of Ethiopia, the self-governing dominion of the British Empire of South Africa and the semi-independent nation of Egypt.
South Africa
The United States and South Africa have currently maintained bilateral relations since 1994 after the end of Apartheid, with Nelson Mandela as the first black president and head of state, with the new flag first flown on 27 April 1994, following the landslide victory of South African general election, which declares 27 April as the first South African public holiday as Freedom Day. The ANC represents the first democratic election take place to coincide with its first post-apartheid elections that was recognized by President Bill Clinton on 10 May 1994. Originally intended to be an interim flag, the new design blended the black-green-yellow tricolour of the African National Congress with the red-white-blue colour scheme found on the flags of the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. The six colours were arranged around a Y shape, representing a convergence on a new harmonious future which has led the opinions of the past since the British settlers who came to South Africa and the Afrikaners with Dutch settlement along with those opinions of the majority Black population between the tribes of Xhosa and the Zulu peoples along with the former German colony that once settled by the Germans and the mandate of South African administration of Namibia since independence in 1990, which shares the border between the two countries since the end of Apartheid regime.
Angola
The enslaved people of Angola were captured by the Dutch and Portuguese traders which transported to tens of thousands of African slaves especially the descent of Mestiço that became a vast majority of Luso-Africans that lived in Portuguese Africa were taken from the port city of São Paulo da Assunção de Loanda to the colony of New Amsterdam by the Dutch West India Company, later renaming the city of New York which became part of the British America. With the slave ships docked in Manhattan were many enslaved people were bought and sold in auctions by the colonists, while the other slaves were brought to work on sugar and coffee plantations in the area surrounding Cap-Français (now Cap-Haïtien), which was a major port and center of the French Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue (later known as Haiti). The city of Rio de Janeiro once founded by Estácio de Sá became an important colony for the Portuguese after it was discovered by the navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral as the primary port for the forced migration of enslaved Africans to Brazil with a direct route for the transatlantic slave trade was established between the Portuguese colony of Rio de Janeiro and Luanda. Rio de Janeiro is home to the largest Portuguese population outside of Lisbon and for the settlers from Angola. The Seven Years' War as well as the French and Indian War had led so many campaigns in the Caribbean and in New France which led the French defeat more devastating. Following the American Revolution which led the surrender of Yorktown and the Evacuation of New York, some colonists of the newly independent young United States wanted to join the British which left New York City for British-controlled Canada as the United Empire Loyalists which then became part of British North America. The French Revolution had begun with the Storming of the Bastille, which was later followed by the September Massacres, the establishment of the French Republic, the Execution of Louis XVI and Robespierre's Reign of Terror. In Saint Domingue, the black leaders such as Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Henri Christophe had defeated the French army of Napoleon Bonaparte during the Haitian Revolution with Napoleon selling Louisiana, once part of Spain and France to the United States as part of Louisiana Purchase by Thomas Jefferson during his presidency. Following the betrayal and death of Toussaint Louverture at Fort de Joux in France, Dessalines had finally defeated the French army led by Rochambeau at the Battle of Vertières with a famous victory for the black soldiers once they became slaves by defeating the white settlers of Saint Domingue and finally declared independence from French rule and rename the island of Ayiti (Land of High Mountains). Haiti became the world's first and oldest black-led republic, the first country to abolish slavery, the first Latin America and Caribbean state and the first in the Greater Antilles as a whole and also the second oldest independent nation in the Americas after the United States. As the Portuguese Colonial War had compared to Angolan War of Independence led to the overthrow of Estado Novo during the Carnation Revolution, the new Angolan politician and poet Agostinho Neto had declared Angola independence from Portugal on 11 November 1975 after 400 years of Portuguese colonial rule. Brazil was the first country to recognize Angola's independence from Portuguese rule. The Angolan Civil War went on until 4 April 2002 when the war came to conclude with a victory for the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola – Partido do Trabalho for more than 26 years. In East Flatbush, located in Brooklyn, New York, has a notable Angolan community, and is known as a hub for the African American community, with parts of the neighborhood known as Little Haiti with 91.4% Black or African-American and 51% foreign-born, with the majority of foreign-born residents being from both Africa and Haiti.
Democratic Republic of the Congo
The Belgian Congo proclaimed its independence from Belgium on 30 June 1960, the actual transfer of sovereignty from Belgium to the Congolese people involved a handover ceremony where King Baudouin of Belgium declared it, as President Eisenhower recognized the Democratic Republic of the Congo's independence from Belgian rule as a new nation in Africa. While the United States and Belgium were concerned about Lumumba's policies, particularly his close relationship with the Soviet Union and his perceived communist sympathies. Joseph-Desiré Mobutu came to power and renamed the country Zaire until its overthrow in 1997 by the First Congo War, which was a nationalist move supported by the United States, following the Congo Crisis that ended in 1965. Mobutu's rule was characterized by widespread corruption, human rights abuses, and economic hardship by the repressive totalitarian government of which Mobutu had created as the Mouvement Populaire de la Révolution (MPR), and was responsible for utilizing various methods to maintain power and silence opposition, including the establishment of a security apparatus to monitor and control the population, by reinforcing fear and intimidation that characterized Mobutu's regime. Mobutu's forces were unable to effectively counter the ADFL's advance, leading to the collapse of his regime and the Republic of Zaire itself that led the capture of Kinshasa. He was forced to flee the capital in May 1997 that effectively ending Mobutu's long rule, while the rebel leader Laurent Kabila had changed the country's name back to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as Mobutu had fled into exile in Morocco, where he later died in the same year. With the DRC marked by significant violence and conflict, with the legacy of both Belgian colonial rule and Mobutu's totalitarian regime. The Second Congo War manifested in various forms, including atrocities, genocide, starvation, and widespread violence which forced many Congolese individuals to evacuate and fled their country as refugees to the United States and Belgium due to the ongoing violence, instability, and human rights abuses, causing widespread displacement of millions more.
Ghana Kwame Nkrumah, the founder of Ghana came to the United States in 1942 and spent his summer there Harlem in New York, a center of black life, thought and culture which titled as the Black Capital or the Capital of Black America. He also went to Britain which came to London from the British West African colony of the Gold Coast, following the end of the Second World War in Europe which marked as VE Day in May 1945. Nkrumah ensured that his native Africa became developed and free from British colonial rule which it did until 1957 as Ghana which became the first subsaharan country in Africa as a whole to gain independence.
Nigeria
Nigeria gained its independence from Britain on 1 October 1960 and it was recognized by the United States. Nigeria's long history dates back to the 15th century where it was discovered by the Portuguese navigators in 1472, the slaves were brought to the American colonies from their homeland of West Africa, which has earned Nigeria as a Slave Coast. They finally landed in New York through decades until the American Revolution defeated the British which led the Evacuation Day from New York for Canada which became part of the United Empire Loyalist along with the British, their settlers and with their slaves. Sir Frederick Lugard (Lord Lugard) unified both northern and southern protectorate into Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria. The British and then the French invaded the German colony of Kamerun during World War I. Following the end of World War II in 1945, it became the Federation of Nigeria before finally becoming independent from British control as did in the same way as the American Revolutionary War. Nigerian English is the same language and the same dialect as the American and British English which unites both Black British and African Americans into one family of Mother Africa. Following the independence from British rule, Nigeria's film industry became a masterpiece which has modelled as Nollywood after the American film studio as Hollywood along with the United Kingdom as part of the British source material. Nigeria enjoys both friendship with the United States and the United Kingdom as part of a Special Relationship.
Liberia
U.S. relations with Liberia date back to 1819, when the Congress appropriated $100,000 for the establishment of Liberia. The settlers were free blacks or freed slaves who were selected and funded by the American Colonization Society (ACS). The religious ethos and cultural norms of the ACS shaped Afro-American settler society and determined social behavior in 19th-century Liberia.Amos J. Beyan, "The American Colonization Society and the Socio-Religious Characterization of Liberia: A Historical Survey, 1822-1900." Liberian Studies Journal 10.2 (1984): 1-11. The Methodist Episcopal Church sent black ministers as missionaries to Liberia. Although they could identify with the local population on a purely racial basis, the nature of their religious indoctrination caused them to view the Liberians as inferiors whose souls needed saving.Eunjin Park, "Between Two Worlds: Identity Problems of Nineteenth-Century Black American Methodist Missionaries To Africa" Miguk-sa Yongu (2002) Vol. 16, pp 111-131.
Under Republican President Abraham Lincoln, The United States officially recognized Liberia in 1862, 15 years after its establishment as a sovereign nation, and the two nations shared very close diplomatic, economic, and military ties until the 1990s.
The United States had a long history of intervening in Liberia's internal affairs, occasionally sending naval vessels to help the Americo-Liberians, who comprised the ruling minority, put down insurrections by indigenous tribes (in 1821, 1843, 1876, 1910, and 1915). By 1909, Liberia faced serious external threats to its sovereignty from the European colonial powers over unpaid foreign loans and annexation of its borderlands.