One was “highly emotional”, another prone to “erratic personal behaviour”, and one was said to have quite impressive intellectual and political skills.

Those were some of the frank assessments of African leaders by the CIA, prepared for presidents ahead of meetings, a new research paper shows.

But we’ll have to wait to hear what the US intelligence service thought of the likes of Kenyan President William Ruto and other current African heads of state.

For decades, the CIA has analysed African heads of state ahead of their visits to the United States, profiling them through “visit pieces” for the use of government officials, according to Judd Devermont, a former White House Africa director.

Devermont, now a non-resident senior adviser of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, published a research paper based on declassified CIA documents, press releases and publications between 1961 and 1987 to explain those type of intelligence briefings.

The visit piece explores the personalities of foreign leaders and what they want from the US, according to Davermont, and gained prominence during the Cold War, as the US hungered for insight into how leaders viewed the geopolitical situation and their place in it – amid an East-West divide that’s growing again.

When Kenyan President William Ruto recently visited the US and met US President Joe Biden, the US head of state was inundated with paper, said Devermont. There were talking points and draft statements and dinner menus, all prepared by White House staffers.