President Trump’s approach to Africa has shown potential but is reaching a critical point.

The president’s focus on pursuing greater economic and security cooperation with key countries has gained traction, but it is clashing with competing domestic priorities, like immigration and tariffs. If the administration cannot reconcile these goals, it risks leaving massive opportunities on the table.

Trump’s recently concluded July summit with five West African leaders displayed many of the characteristics of his second-term Africa strategy thus far — it was direct and transactional, with a focus on areas where interests converge. This strategy has shown substantial promise, albeit unfulfilled.

For example, U.S. diplomacy between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda has, for now, limited fighting in their conflict-stricken border area while creating potential opportunities for U.S. investment and critical mineral access as part of a broader peace framework. Such access would conveniently also help the U.S. diminish Chinese dominance of several critical minerals found in the region.

The small U.S.-Africa summit focused on a handful of countries — Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania and Senegal — that can provide the administration a big “bang for its buck.” All five countries play various roles in Trump’s key priorities: combating Chinese influence, stemming migration, accessing critical minerals, and containing the spread of Salafi-jihadi terror groups. They also highlight the central tension of the Trump administration’s Africa policy, where foreign policy goals and domestic priorities compete.

In Gabon, greater U.S. investment and defense cooperation can address two of Trump’s objectives: critical minerals and China. The United States has an opportunity to support Gabonese efforts to grow its domestic refining capacity to counter China’s outsized influence on the manganese market, which multiple U.S. agencies list as a critical mineral due to its role in steel production and lithium-ion battery manufacturing. Gabon has little domestic refinement capability, exporting most of its manganese to China. China has the second-largest manganese reserves and is largest manganese consumer but is heavily reliant on

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