Washington, DC — U.S.-African Partnerships: Advancing Common Interests
Let me just take a couple of minutes to talk about the United States, and what we're doing to prepare for new challenges over the next four years, and reaffirming, and encouraging you that things are going well, and in a good direction. I'm very humbled that I was asked to come back. I was at the National Defense University, teaching our future leaders…so I feel very good about that.
With USAID, OSD, the CIA, and the NSC, we've all worked together for years and years, and so we know exactly what it is that has come before, what we need to achieve now, and what to move forward on. The other thing, too, that is really striking and remarkable, is that looking at Africa, is not to keep Africa in isolation, but to see it in a context of other issues, globally, and also the trend lines. So when we talk about Africa, we're going to talk about all the issues that are confronting the United States, and also the world. And I want to say that we're going to take some new initiatives, but what we also want to do is an affirmation of what has been done before. We want to do expansion on areas which have been highly successful, and which are critical not only to our national strategic interests, but also to the future of Africa, and then also to focus on areas where we can make a difference.
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