The fourth stage is from the early 1990s to the early 2000s. The world pattern has changed from the "bipolar pattern" in the cold war to the "one super many strong" in the United States. At the beginning of this phase, the United States urgently needed to establish a new international order led by itself in the world. Therefore, it increased its assistance to Africa to show its strength and expand its sphere of influence in Africa. Since then, thanks to the collapse of the Soviet union, the United States has been able to get a satisfactory return on less aid in Africa, and has cut aid accordingly. Therefore, at this stage, the United States' assistance to Africa showed a trend of improvement in the early stage and decline in the later stage, and the assistance was mainly based on political and economic reform assistance.
The fifth stage is the early 21st century. After "9.11" incident, the United States for its own security, at the beginning of the global strategic focus turned to fight terrorism. Africa, because of its poverty and weakness, is easily a breeding ground for terrorism, which has become a focus of attention in the United States. At the same time, Africa's economic status has been enhanced by its greater energy resources. These two factors make the United States pay more attention to Africa, and the degree of assistance to Africa is different from that before. Therefore, at this stage, the U.S. assistance to Africa shows a sharp upward trend.
Currently, the United States, as the largest bilateral foreign aid country in the world, has more kinds of ways and institutions of aid to Africa. Generally speaking, the way of aid to Africa can be divided into bilateral aid and multilateral aid from the perspective of channels, and the institutions of American aid to Africa can be divided into official agencies and unofficial agencies from the perspective of nature.
The United States approach to Africa adopts a multi-flowering strategy of bilateral aid and multilateral assistance.
U.S. bilateral aid to Africa refers to the money, technology and materials provided by the United States without payment or compensation in the form of agreements between the United States and Africa or African countries, so as to help Africa or African countries through difficult times or development. Taking the actual bilateral aid program to Africa in 2010 as an example, it can be divided into five categories: global health and child survival, food aid, development aid, economic support fund and security aid.
The United States' multilateral