By Paul Schemm

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — In Barack Obama’s landmark speech before the African Union in July 2015 — the first by a sitting U.S. president — he told the assembled heads of state and delegates that the United States was ready to be a development partner with the continent, while warning that would come along with American promotion of human rights, whether they liked it or not.

“You are kind of stuck with us — this is how we are. We believe in these things and we’re going to keep talking about them,” he said to applause and laughter from the delegates.

Now a year-and-a-half later, the African Union is grappling with a new U.S. president who has said very little about Africa but looks set to step away from decades of bipartisan investment in Africa and has advocated using torture during interrogations.

At the African Union’s annual summit meeting in Addis Ababa that ended Tuesday, Africa’s leaders heatedly debated a number of issues, including whom to elect as chairman, whether to admit Morocco, and whether to walk out from the International Criminal Court. But beyond the official agenda was a sense of unease over what many see as a new era of nationalism ushered in by the election of President Trump.

Outgoing African Union chairwoman Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma departed from her prepared remarks opening the summit to lash out at Trump over his executive order banning refugees.

“It is clear that globally, we are entering very turbulent times. For an example, the very country to whom many of our people were taken as slaves during the transatlantic slave trade has now decided to ban refugees from some of our countries,” she said.

“What do we do about this? Indeed, this is one of the greatest challenges to our unity and solidarity,” she said.

Starting with the Bill Clinton administration, the United States began to increasingly focus on Africa. Aid quadrupled under the George W. Bush administration, particularly with his PEPFAR program aimed at stamping out AIDS in the continent. (With each administration, a new acronym to promote trade, health, good government was born, including AGOA, giving countries with good human rights records better access to U.S. markets; YALI, the Young African Leadership Initiative of Obama; PEPFAR; and Power Africa, to increase electricity on the continent.)

Questions from Trump’s transition team to the State Department about Africa suggest a deep skepticism about many of these African programs, which they contend are mired in corruption and don’t help the continent. Programs such as PEPFAR and AGOA were specifically questioned as whether they were worth the funds, and there was the point-blank question of why we should be sending aid to Africa when there is poverty at home.

Many experts believe those programs will come to an end under the administration of Trump, who has been skeptical about international aid and suggested that the money would be better spent on Americans.

“I must regretfully conclude that the future of all such partnership is in doubt,” said Reuben E. Brigety, a former U.S. ambassador to the African Union and now the dean of George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. Brigety held a number of positions in the Obama administration dealing with Africa.

“Because of the rapid fire and unconventional methods by which Trump has upended vital relationships from Mexico and China in a matter of days, one cannot assume continuity in any of America’s initiatives in Africa,” he said in a lecture in the Ethiopian capital timed to coincide with the summit.

He added that Trump’s public backing of torture would also send the wrong message to the continent’s autocrats.

“It is outrageous, it is absolutely outrageous,” he said. “Of course, one can just see the thought process of any number of leaders of other places, ‘well if the president of United States says it’s okay,’ ” he said.

Read more: Africa’s leaders consider a future when the U.S. no longer cares

South: Washington post