Washington — A two-day meeting involving major U.S. funding organizations and a cross section of African leaders opens Wednesday to explore the concept that Africa is undergoing a radical transformation that needs and deserves outside support.
The idea of an "African renaissance," first promoted in speeches last year by South African Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, was a major theme of President's Clinton's 12-day African tour that ended at the beginning of this month.
"We hope to raise the profile of Africa on the funding agenda," said Dr. Michael Sinclair, who is coordinating the event for a group of 55 private U.S. foundations and corporate donor programs known as the Southern African Grantmakers' Affinity Group. The conference follows this week's annual meeting in Washington of the Council on Foundations, an umbrella association of grantmaking foundations and corporations.
A drop in donations to African programs by private contributors, coinciding with the reduction in U.S. development assistance to the continent, would have "serious implications" for Africa, according to Sinclair, who is senior vice president of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. The donors group wants to promote African Renaissance as a "new vehicle" through which "all Americans can re-engage in Africa," Sinclair said.
The event, co-hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus, will include keynote addresses by two former African president's with strong democratic credentials, Ketumile Masire, whose tenure as president of Botswana in southern Africa ended late last month, and Nicephore Soglo, who led the west African nation of Benin from 1991 to 1996. Another keynote will be presented by the president of Africa's newest independent nation, Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea, who will speak during a Wednesday evening dinner at the Kennedy Center. Senior administration officials scheduled to address the conference include Jesse Jackson, who is serving as the President's special envoy for democracy, Susan Rice, U.S. assistance secretary of State for Africa, and Brian Atwood, who heads the U.S. Agency for International Development.
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Panelists and experts taking part in the various sessions include government officials, business leaders and academics from the United States and forty resource persons from a more than a dozen African countries. "We've made sure that this is a forum where the African perspective will predominate," Sinclair said. Wednesday afternoon policy dialogues will be chaired by Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Africa correspondent for National Public Radio, and Salih Booker, senior fellow for Africa at the Council on Foreign Relations.
A program and additional conference information is available on the Web at: www.kff.org/archive/south_africa/renaiss/renaiss.html.
