President Trump will host five African leaders at the White House on Wednesday to discuss commercial investment, part of the administration’s effort to recalibrate its trade approach to the region while gutting humanitarian aid.

Mr. Trump will welcome the leaders of Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania and Senegal in the State Dining Room for lunch. A White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview the event said Mr. Trump believed that each of the countries represented at the lunch offered opportunities to collaborate on economic investment. The administration is aiming to strike deals with African countries to expand the United States’ access to critical minerals and to counter China’s rising influence on the continent.

Though Mr. Trump has taken an optimistic tone in recent weeks over the potential partnerships, the meeting with the leaders also comes as the president’s dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development has left African countries reeling. U.S. aid to Liberia, for example, amounted to 2.6 percent of the country’s gross national income, the highest percentage of any nation in the world, according to the Center for Global Development.

Mr. Trump is also considering expanding his travel ban to four out of the five countries whose leaders will be at the Oval Office, according to a State Department cable from last month. Only Guinea-Bissau has not been considered for a travel ban so far.

The meeting on Wednesday also comes weeks after Mr. Trump hosted top diplomats from Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo for the signing of a peace agreement meant to end devastating fighting in eastern Congo. Mr. Trump said at the time that the agreement contained an economic component that would allow the United States to gain access to critical minerals in Congo.

“Our strategy is simple, but it’s ambitious: Make commercial diplomacy a core focus of our diplomatic engagement,” Ambassador Troy D. Fitrell, a senior State Department official, said at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace this year. He added that the administration had helped secure more than 70 commercial deals in infrastructure, clean energy and technology in Africa during Mr. Trump’s second term.