Washington, DC — For C. Payne Lucas, the path to take in the aftermath of the National Summit on Africa is clear Asked about the future of a process he was central to initiating, the president of Africare, the largest private development organization focused on Africa, leans forward intently. "It's a tragedy that there is one Africare for a continent of more than 800 million.
"And why rely on the Council on Foreign Relations to have a conversation about Africa every six months or so?" Payne asks. "This Summit is the most serious conversation about Africa by a large group of people in the history of this country. Some kind of institution that keeps this network going is necessary. A new institution has to be born and it will make existing institutions stronger."
Salih Booker of the Council on Foreign Relations, who resigned from the Summit's Board of Directors after serving on it for two years, has sent an equally intense memorandum to his former colleagues in response to proposals for continuing the Summit organization. "The National Summit on Africa has not demonstrated that it has any significant capabilities or comparative advantage in any of the areas it proposes to continue its work," Booker wrote. Summit leadership, he said, had failed to seriously consider the desirability of ending the NSA, following its intended closure, in favor of strengthening the organizations that have a proven record of far more productive and cost- effective work on African affairs."
A January 8th memo to the Summit Board from CEO Leonard Robinson helped fuel the unease of critics of the process. Robinson proposed creating a "new entity" with a smaller board to continue the Summit as an institution. He also warned that "the new board cannot afford to be perceived as being other than corporate friendly."
When it was founded three years ago, the Summit had a single purpose, according to Booker. Citing an unreleased 1993 study he conducted for the Carnegie and Ford Foundations, Booker said he found that rather than there being no constituency for Africa in the United States, "there were multiple constituencies" - but there was need for greater cooperation among them. The Summit was originally conceived as a vehicle to help build such cooperation, not to establish a separate organizational entity.
As the Summit draws to a close, however, how to continue rather than whether to continue appears to be a common thread of discussion. Summit co-chair Andrew Young seemed to reflect this sentiment, telling reporters, during a Friday briefing, "The NAACP and the civil rights community is going to be more involved with African issues. And we're going to continue one way or another, although the paid [Summit] staff may or may not continue. The 5,000 delegates are going to go home and multiply." .
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"I don't hear any great clamor for a 'Summit organization," said New Jersey delegate Robert Browne, "although that need may be felt 'inside the beltway' among people with a more vested interest in such an organization." Standing beneath huge banners preponderant with corporate sponsors, another delegate dryly commented, "Well, they paid for something." A number of Summit participants have expressed doubt about the priorities of any continuing entity that would be dependent on corporate funding. Africare's C. Payne Lucas counters that concern with an appeal to realism among the community of people who care about Africa. "Ten billion dollars is needed just to fight AIDS in Africa. How're you going to deal with that? What one group is going to solve all of Africa's problems? I could use Africare's entire fifty million dollar budget in Lagos state [of Nigeria] alone."
There is general agreement that the Summit has brought new voices to the discussion of Africa. Renewed energy seemed evident as delegates worked late into the night on complex resolutions. A burgeoning constituency for Africa in the United States was inevitable, says Lucas, noting the tens of thousands of African immigrants in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area alone. "I call them African African-Americans. All these folk, Africans, African-Americans, African African-Americans, whoever, can create all sorts of organizations - Architects for Africa - some folks can start 503C tax-exempt corporations. Do we need CARE to do that for us?" In the hallway of the Washington, D.C. convention center where much of the Summit is taking place, one delegate cracked, "Maybe we need a Summit on whether to continue the Summit." ?
