Donald Trump has not gone out of his way to endear himself to Africans. He has slashed life-saving aid, threatened crushing tariffs and banned many of them from travelling to the US. He has praised the president of Liberia (official language English) for his beautiful English, suggested that neither Lesotho nor the Democratic Republic of Congo really exist and turned the history of apartheid on its head by insisting that the real victims in South Africa are white.

Still, with the exception of South Africa, many people across Africa seem to like the US president. In a poll of 24 countries, the Pew Research Center found that two of the top three approval ratings for Trump were African. In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, and Kenya, 79 per cent and 64 per cent of respondents respectively expressed confidence in Trump “to do the right thing regarding world affairs”.

One poll in two countries is hardly conclusive. But we do know that Trump’s leadership style is familiar. Many of his actions, from appointing relatives to key positions to circulating his own merchandise, are common in a continent where “big men” have all too often triumphed over institutions. And Trump’s blunt honesty is seen by some as less hypocritical than the pious do-goodery and coded finger-wagging of more earnest international interlocutors.