President-elect Donald J. Trump’s impending return to the White House has raised hopes among some African leaders, who expect it could lead to more investment, more trade deals and less lecturing on issues like democracy and human rights.

Until now, Mr. Trump’s most memorable pronouncements on Africa were to describe its countries with an expletive and to ban immigration from some of them.

Nevertheless, interviews with over a dozen current and former African and American officials, along with security analysts and business experts, reveal that, far from dreading Mr. Trump’s return, many African leaders are keen to engage him.

“I see a ray of light in this administration,” said Hilda Suka-Mafudze, the African Union ambassador to the United States, at a recent event in Washington where African diplomats and experts questioned former officials from Mr. Trump’s first term about what the incoming administration might bring.

Experts say that Mr. Trump is expected to take a pragmatic and transactional approach to his dealings with Africa. Because of that, some African leaders now expect that his administration could bring their countries more profit from Africa’s wealth of natural resources, more healthy competition with China and other African partners and more jobs to help the world’s fastest-growing continent deal with a massive youth boom.