Trump's new diplomat in Yaounde: "...we speak English".

In diplomatic parlance, US-Cameroon relations are "a mix of strong partnership and tensions, focusing on security, health, and development, but complicated by US concerns over human rights, governance, and political repression, particularly regarding the Anglophone crisis".

With Trump, the relationship is often characterised with insults, mockery and crude slur, which many observers describe as both undiplomatic and deeply disrespectful. 

For instance, during a high-profile White House meeting with several African Heads of State, held on July 9, 2025, in Washington, DC, Trump expressed surprise at Liberian President, Joseph Boakai’s command of the English language.

“Such good English, it’s beautiful,” Trump was quoted as saying, going ahead to question: “Where did you learn to speak English language so beautifully?”

His aids argue that Trump’s focus on the English language has long been a pillar of his “America First” agenda. During a 2015 presidential debate, he famously declared: “We’re a country where we speak English”.

That rhetoric was codified in March 2025, when Trump signed an executive order officially designating English as the United States’ official language.

His new Ambassador to Yaounde, will be coming at a critical period where Cameroon, officially an English and French bilingual country, is classified by American diplomacy as French-speaking.

Some of the editors of the defunct The Herald newspaper, today working at The Guardian Post, are known to have turned down an invitation to a seminar organised by the US Embassy in Yaounde on grounds that it was to be conducted exclusively in French.

Against that background, it is left to be seen how the new diplomat will navigate Trump's "English First" policy and widely reported comments in which he once referred to migrants from Africa as coming from "shithole countries", a crude slur that sparked global condemnation and reinforced longstanding concerns over his attitude toward Africa and its people.

The Trump Administration has cancelled temporal protection granted to some 7,900 Cameroonians legally in the US by his predecessor.

Cameroonian political activist, Chance Leon, in his international media comment on Trump's relation with Africa, went on to highlight the stark contrast between Trump’s condescending treatment of African leaders and the ongoing economic exploitation.

“While Trump treats African Heads of State with deference bordering on dismissal, American multinational corporations continue to extract the continent’s minerals, oil, and rare earths with no fair compensation.

“Africa deserves far more than humiliating handshakes and paternalistic speeches; it deserves partners who treat it as an equal. If African leaders truly want to serve their peoples, they must stop acting like supplicants and start demanding the respect our continent rightfully deserves. Otherwise, they will remain nothing more than extras on the stage of Western dominance,” Leon wrote.

Last July 2025, Times Magazine reported that Trump’s treatment of African Heads of State at the White House only fueled the criticisms that have dogged him since the start of his second term.

“In his second term so far, Trump has been criticised for championing false claims of ‘white genocide’ in South Africa, granting refugee privileges to white Afrikaners while implementing new travel restrictions that inexplicably seem to target several majority-Black African nations,” Times reported.

The influential weekly journal further explained that Trump has significantly cut humanitarian aid to the continent at a time Africa is among the largest recipients of support from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and the agency’s dismantling is expected to cost millions of African lives.

For many, the publication noted these moves that appear to reflect Trump’s clear disregard for the continent. It concluded that Africa is increasingly recognised as the next frontier of global economic growth, with immense potential, driven by its diverse natural resources, a burgeoning youth population, and untapped innovation.

With China, Russia, Türkiye, etc joining former colonial masters to hustle for African resources, the incoming US Ambassador should, however, be told that in Yaounde, her interest should not just be joining the bandwagon or language, but a complex diplomacy in which her country is often expected to play key roles in promoting democratic engagements and human rights defense, which are no longer internal affairs of any country.

She should, given her experience, work to ameliorate the record of her predecessor, which Barrister Alice Kom, human rights activist, said after receiving Ambassador Christopher J. Lamora at her Douala residence this week: “I want to pay tribute...for his attentiveness. For his rare modesty, especially at this level of responsibility. When you have the chance to meet him, and even better, to get close to him, such a humane diplomat, you understand one essential thing: nothing is impossible. Diplomacy can be a matter of power. But sometimes, it is also a matter of respect, of sincere presence". 

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3668 of Friday January 09, 2026