Selective Engagement after Unipolarity: U.S. Foreign Policy, Strategic Competition, and African Agency in Sub-Saharan Africa

Selective engagement after unipolarity provides a framework for understanding U.S. foreign policy toward Sub-Saharan Africa in the post-unipolar moment, emphasising strategic competition and the limits of liberal internationalism. Post-unipolar U.S.–Africa policy is best understood as a shifting compromise among liberal internationalist rhetoric, strategic competition, counterterror imperatives, and bureaucratic fragmentation across security, development, and commercial agencies. Drawing on comparative analysis of Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden Africa strategies; content analysis of National Security Strategy documents, congressional hearings, and AFRICOM budget data; and elite interviews with former State Department and NSC officials, the study engages debates in hegemonic stability theory, liberal internationalism versus offshore balancing, and African international relations theory. It situates U.S.–Africa policy within broader transformations in the international order. Three core claims are advanced. First, successive administrations sustained a discourse of democracy and partnership while prioritising security access and regime cooperation where strategic interests were highest. Second, Sino–American competition has widened African bargaining space in some areas but also intensified transactionalism and weakened value-based conditionality. Third, the coexistence of AFRICOM, USAID, MCC, Treasury, and diplomatic priorities generates persistent implementation incoherence that African governments navigate strategically. The study concludes that an African-centred reading of U.S. policy must assess not only stated objectives but also the distributional consequences of aid, military partnerships, and investment tools. Greater policy coherence is needed to align governanc