At this newspaper we hope that Donald Trump’s recent statement on Islamist violence in Nigeria marks an important and long-overdue turning point in Western engagement with Africa.

In a post on Truth Social, he wrote: “If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities.” He added: “I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action” and warned that if the United States attacks: “it will be fast, vicious, and sweet.”

For years, Western governments have looked away as Islamist extremism has swept across the continent. The European Union Institute for Security Studies estimates that more than half of all violence targeting civilians in Africa now comes from jihadist organisations.

Countries such as Nigeria, Mali, Niger, Mozambique, and Kenya face greater terrorist threats today than parts of the Middle East, once synonymous with global terror. Thousands of Christians are murdered each year in attacks that involve beheadings, bombings, and the burning of churches.

Trump’s intervention is significant because it focuses the world’s attention on a moral crisis that many have preferred to ignore. His willingness to speak plainly about the persecution of Christians gives the United States an opportunity to redefine its relationship with Africa.

For too long, that relationship has been seen through the lens of race – black versus white, coloniser versus oppressed. But the deeper divide shaping Africa’s future is civilisational: Christian and humanist values on one side, and jihadist oppression on the other.

If America could define its relationship with Africa in those terms it could build a new kind of partnership with Africa – one rooted not in guilt or ideology, but in shared values. Trump’s words have opened the way to that opportunity.