WASHINGTON — The Trump administration announced on Thursday that it would begin talks for a free-trade deal with Kenya, a step partly designed to counter China’s influence in Africa.

The deal, which is likely to require many months of negotiations, would be the United States’ first trade pact with a sub-Saharan African nation and its second with an African country. It signed an agreement with Morocco in 2004.

While the agreement could help some farmers and other industries sell into and invest in Kenya, it is unlikely to have much influence on the American economy overall. Kenya is the United States’ 98th-largest trading partner in goods, with $1 billion in two-way trade in 2018, according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative. Kenya’s biggest American imports include aircraft, machinery and agricultural goods; the United States buys Kenyan apparel, tree nuts and coffee.

But the Trump administration and other officials in Washington see the move partly in geopolitical terms, believing it could provide a model for other trade deals with African countries and be a step toward countering China’s growing influence on the continent.