By Emman Usman Shehu

The global cacophony, Donald Trump’s name resounds like a drumbeat, polarizing the world with fierce loyalty and visceral contempt. To many in the Global North, he is an aberration—a brash figure threatening America’s democratic ideals. But from the Global South, where empire’s wounds still shape our realities, Trump is no anomaly. He is the unfiltered reflection of America’s core: a nation forged in conquest, capitalism, and contradiction. The problem with Trump isn’t that he’s the worst America offers. It’s that he’s the most honest product of what America has always been.

For us in the Global South, America’s myth of exceptionalism rings hollow. From the transatlantic slave trade to the Scramble for Africa, from CIA-orchestrated coups in Congo to drone strikes in Somalia, the United States has wielded power with a pragmatism Trump merely vocalizes. His crude rhetoric—calling poorer nations “shitholes” or demanding loyalty from allies—echoes the colonial hierarchies that justified exploitation. When he dismisses Haiti or Somalia, he channels the same arrogance that saw European powers carve up Africa at the Berlin Conference, with America later inheriting that mantle. The difference? Trump says it without the diplomatic mask.

Economically, Trump’s “America First” stance is no deviation but a continuation of history. The United States has long prioritized its dominance, from the slave-driven cotton trade that fueled its early wealth to the structural adjustment programs of the 1980s and ’90s, imposed by the IMF and World Bank with American backing. In Zambia, these policies gutted public services, forcing copper-rich communities into poverty to service Western debts. In Nigeria, oil wealth flowed to multinationals while locals faced environmental ruin from spills in the Niger Delta. Trump’s tariffs and trade wars strip away the pretense of mutual benefit, exposing the zero-sum reality of global capitalism for nations like Ghana, still recovering from colonial-era resource extraction.

America’s political influence tells a similar story. Trump’s flirtation with authoritarianism—his election denial, press attacks, and the January 6 Capitol riot—feels familiar to those of us who have seen America’s hand in our politics. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the CIA’s role in Patrice Lumumba’s 1961 assassination paved the way for Mobutu’s kleptocracy, backed by U.S. interests. In South Africa, Cold War-era support for apartheid’s regime prioritized anti-communism over human rights. Trump’s strongman tendencies don’t betray American values; they mirror a political culture that has long tolerated autocracy abroad when it served its ends.

Culturally, Trump embodies the excess America projects globally. His gilded persona and reality-TV bravado are the culmination of a nation that equates wealth with virtue and spectacle with power. From Hollywood’s dominance to the shock-and-awe of Iraq invasions, America has sold itself as larger than life. In Ethiopia, where American media saturates urban centers, young people grow up idolizing a culture that celebrates consumption while their country grapples with the fallout of Western-driven climate policies. Trump, with his MAGA rallies and social media tirades, is the unapologetic showman of this ethos.

For activists across Africa, Trump’s rise is a clarifying lens. He forces the world to see America not as a democratic beacon but as a complex empire—generous yet greedy, innovative yet insular. His movement reflects the contradictions of a nation built on stolen land and enslaved labor, from the genocide of Native Americans to the enslavement of millions from places like Senegal and Angola. To call him an outlier is to ignore these roots. His policies—like the Muslim ban or border wall—harm the marginalized, but they stem from the same logic that saw America back coups in Burkina Faso or ignore Rwanda’s genocide when it suited geopolitical aims.

Trump is not the disease but the symptom. The America that birthed him shaped our world, often at our expense. In Mali, French and American military presence under the guise of counterterrorism has done little to stabilize the Sahel, leaving local communities caught in the crossfire. In Zimbabwe, sanctions meant to punish elites have instead deepened poverty for ordinary citizens. Trump’s bluntness merely lays bare these dynamics.

As we fight for justice—against neocolonial debt in Zambia, environmental degradation in Nigeria, or cultural erasure in Ethiopia—Trump’s America reminds us: change won’t come from appealing to a mythical West. It will come from building our systems, telling our stories, and holding empires accountable, whether they wear suits or red hats. Trump is America’s mirror, but our future must reflect us.

Dr Shehu is an Abuja-based  writer, educator and activist