On the third leg of Mike Pompeo’s recent Africa tour, which concluded last week in Ethiopia after stops in Senegal and Angola, the US secretary of state chose Addis Ababa to berate Beijing. “Countries should be wary of authoritarian regimes and their empty promises,” he told his audience in remarks clearly referring to China. “They breed corruption, dependency, they don’t hire the local people, they don’t train, they don’t lead them.”

The message — which echoes a policy laid out by former national security adviser John Bolton, who accused Beijing of using Africa “to pursue global dominance” — was tone deaf. It reinforces the view, wholly offensive to most people on the continent, that the Trump administration sees Africa as little more than an arena of great power rivalry.

That Mr Pompeo chose to make his remarks in Ethiopia, a country that for all its problems has one of Africa’s most successful economies partly thanks to close ties with Beijing was particularly bemusing. Ethiopia is the second-biggest destination of Chinese investment in Africa. It has grown at near double-digit rates for 15 years. Much of the infrastructure that has made this possible was built and financed by China.