A Comparative Study Of Us And China Foreign Policy In The Horn Of Africa

The Horn of Africa with countries as important as Ethiopia, Kenya and Sudan has always been at the center of rivalry between great powers. From Cold War to our days, this region was the land of "recurrent conflict. Between peoples, between political structures, and between competing civilizations areas"’.Already subject to the destabilizing effects of piracy, radical Islamism and civil wars, it is nowadays the theater of the competition between China and the United States.China’s engagement with Africa has deepened substantially over the past decade. In just fifteen years, between1998and2012, China’s trade value with Africa grew from under$6billion to$198.5billion making china Africa’s largest trading partner2.The United States in recent years have made a remarkable return on the African continent. To better control the Horn of Africa, its waterways, facilitate the fight against terrorism, secure its Oils needs, project American power and contain Chinese expansion on the continent, the United States are now militarily present in the Horn of Africa with the USAFRICOM.In this context of new competition between the United States and China in Africa, this thesis will analyze the foreign policies of China and the United States in the Horn of Africa. This will be to see what are the motives, the contents and the effects of the foreign policies of the two powers.The study found that if the core interest and motives are similar, United States and China policy differ in terms of content and strategies. The effects of these two policies on the ground are also very different.