By Eugene Robinson

The most important thing President Joe Biden did this past week had nothing to do with his son Hunter. It was his trip to Angola, which sought to put the United States back on the map in a region where much of the world’s future will be shaped.

This will be, increasingly, an African century. The continent’s population has grown from 283 million in 1960 to more than 1.5 billion this year, and by 2050 that number will soar to 2.5 billion, according to United Nations projections. At that point, one of every four human beings on the planet will be African. And the fact that populations in other regions are aging — and leveling off or even declining — means that Africa will be home to an increasing share of the world’s working-age adults.

Quite simply, demography is destiny.

This truth is lost on Republican critics who are blasting Biden’s announcement on Tuesday of $1 billion in new U.S. humanitarian aid to address famine, displacement and other crises in 31 African countries. Biden called this assistance “the right thing for the wealthiest nation in the world to do.” It is also the smart thing to do.

Nikki Haley, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, surely understands that. But the Grand Old Party is now the MAGA Party, following President-elect Donald Trump’s victory, and Haley chose to play dumb with a nativist post on X: “After pardoning his son and fleeing to Africa, Biden gives a BILLION of our tax dollars to rebuild homes in Africa when we still have people homeless from the hurricane! Completely tone deaf and insulting.”

Anyone who understands how the federal budget works knows full well that the aid Biden announced does not take a penny away from federal assistance for residents of the communities devastated this fall by Hurricane Helene. Haley is just trying to score a political point — and perhaps seek relevance in a party that has left her behind.

In fact, $1 billion is a small fraction of the money that needs to flow to Africa from private and public sources in the United States. We might not want to pay attention to the continent, but our geopolitical competitors, China and Russia, certainly do. And they are pulling ahead, forging long-term relationships with key nations that promise economic and strategic advantages over the coming decades.

Biden also announced $600 million in U.S. investment in the Lobito Corridor, a rail line linking Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia. By contrast, at a meeting of African leaders in Beijing in September, President Xi Jinping announced $51 billion in new Chinese investment across Africa over the next three years, with most of that money coming in loans. China is now Africa’s biggest trading partner and the continent’s biggest lender.

China has already been involved in building railways in Nigeria, Kenya and Zambia, among other countries. In Ethiopia, China provided almost all of the financing for a light-rail system in Addis Ababa that serves some 4 million residents. China is making it possible for African nations to modernize ports and to build dams that provide hydroelectric power. In the Angolan capital of Luanda, where Biden spoke on Tuesday, there is a large open-air mall named China City.

Though it does provide some direct humanitarian aid, China is hardly being altruistic. Much of the Chinese investment has been with the aim of extracting and ultimately obtaining resources — Nigerian and Angolan oil, for example, and Congolese minerals. Some money has been simply to establish footholds in economies that will inevitably grow rapidly as populations increase.

The United States is generally a more benign investor and trading partner. But the web of Chinese economic relationships on the continent is now so extensive that it would be difficult for countries to untangle themselves even if they wanted to.

Russia, meanwhile, has bolstered its influence in Africa by being the continent’s biggest arms supplier and using mercenary forces, such as the Wagner Group, to support factions in countries wracked by political instability — and to weaken the strategic U.S. presence wherever possible.

For example, the United States built a $100 million military base in Niger that was intended to be a headquarters for antiterrorism operations across the Sahel, the belt of Africa just south of the Sahara Desert. But following a 2023 coup that ousted Niger’s elected government, the newly installed military junta ordered the 1,000 U.S. troops at the new base to leave the country. The junta ejected French troops as well, and turned instead to the Wagner Group for military assistance.

Ultimately, it will be Nigerians, South Africans, Ethiopians, Angolans and the people of other African nations who decide the continent’s future. They will remember who was there beside them all along. And who was not.

Eugene Robinson writes a column for the Washington Post.