Washington, DC — Education has always been the key concern of the Africa-America Institute (AAI) and it remains the key concern, says AAI President Mora McLean, on the eve of the organizations's 17th Annual Awards Dinner, where the countries of Ghana and Senegal will be honored. Also among the AAI awardees are Reed Kramer and Tamela Hultman, founders of allAfrica.com who earlier founded Africa News Service. They will receive the AAI Award of Special Recognition for Lifetime Achievement in Media. Others receiving awards include Rosa Whitaker, the first person in U.S. history to be Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Africa and National Public Radio's Africa Bureau Chief, Kenneth Walker.
AAI is the oldest of the Africa interest organizations in the United States. It was founded to promote dialogue and engagement between Africans and Americans. AllAfrica.com's Charles Cobb Jr. spoke with AAI President Mora McLean. Excerpts:
Is it fair to characterize the Africa-America Institute as essentially an educational institution? Education is the main thrust of AAI's work?
Yes, that is fair; education defined in the traditional sense and in the broad, public sense.
Would you elaborate on both?
The main thrust of what we've done for the past 50 years has been to expand access to higher education and professional training for Africans. That remains the heft of our programming. However in addition to that, and reinforced by that work, has been the work that we've done over the years to educate the American public about Africa, particularly key decision-makers.
For example?
For many years we conducted study tours for congressional staffers and members of Congress. Many members of Congress now in the House and Senate, got their first introduction to Africa on an AAI study tour. We also took American teachers and American businessmen. Currently, one of our flagship programs is the Congressional seminar series called "Africa Thursday" which we actually hold on Capitol Hill. It is co-sponsored on the Democratic side by Congressman [Donald] Payne and on the Republican side by Congressman [Ed] Royce, chair of the House Subcommittee on Africa. And we have speakers come in periodically to speak on topical issues relative to Africa that either are of immediate interest or are of potential interest to members. The members themselves actually attend, partly because we make it more accessible to them, but also because the selection of topics and speakers are ones that have proven to be useful to them in their deliberations on various pieces of legislation, whether it has to do with security or with increasing trade linkages. That's one example.
An additional example is our "Africa Perspectives" program which involves online discussions, focus groups, other kinds of gatherings which bring together Africans to articulate their views on emerging issues. And then we make that information available to the broader American public, including, particularly, decision-makers.
I think the AAI was founded in 1953; does that make the AAI the oldest of the Africa-interested U.S. organizations?
Yes. Exclusively Africa, yes. There is Phelps Stokes but they are focused on a broader variety of issues and geographical regions. AAI is the oldest U.S.-based, not-for-profit organisation involved in African higher education.
How does an organization like AAI get founded in the 1950s when African countries are still colonies?
Well, interestingly, that was a period in which there were Africans in the United States already attending universities - mainly attending what we know of as historically Black institutions. So a group consisting of academics, university presidents, and others with an interest in Africa, got together. Included in that group were people like Leo Hansberry, the noted Howard University historian, Horace Mann Bond. Their exposure to African students was within the institutions they led. What they were seeking to do, at the time, was really to establish a safety net for these students, to assist them with anything from getting a ticket home if there was an emergency, to navigating segregated Washington, DC. This was, after all, 1953 - "Where can I get a haircut?" And so the inspiration behind the organization came from this handful of individuals who wanted to do something worthwhile to assist these African students who had come so far away from home to advance their training.
Is there any single person or founding father or founding mother who is key, or is it just this group you have just described?
Everything that we have been able to glean about the history suggests that it really was a group. Now, doubtless there was one individual who, in a conversation, had the spark. We haven't been able to uncover that yet. We're hoping to do that. One of our life trustees who just turned 100 - [theatrical star] Etta Moten Barnet - was also someone who was involved in the early years. But we have not been able to uncover a single individual who was the inspiration. It was this collective. In fact, James Grant, who later went on to head Unicef, was involved in the early group as well. So it appears that from a very early stage there was some inter-racial involvement as well; Horace Mann Bond and Leo Hansberry, their names appear in all of the history.
Tell me a little something about yourself and how you get to the Africa-America Institute, and what you have in mind for the institute.
It certainly wasn't a predetermined path, I can tell you that. I grew up in what I like to refer to as a "mixed" household. My mother is African-American and my father, who has passed, was West Indian. I grew up in the West Indies. His family emigrated to New York. He would tell me stories about his father, my paternal grandfather, taking him to Marcus Garvey parades. So at a very early age I had a sense of the breadth and depth and richness of the African Diaspora. When I was growing up in the U.S. Virgin Islands, women came from the countryside with produce on their heads to the early morning market. I didn't know it at the time but my environment had a very rich African flavor to it. And I guess I caught the Africa bug as an undergraduate at Wesleyan University. But it was not until after I had gone to law school and did traditional legal practice and worked on Capitol Hill that I found my way to the Ford Foundation. I went from having responsibility for a domestic civil rights portfolio to heading the Foundation's Nigeria office and ultimately the West Africa office.
My first trip to Africa was under AAI's auspices. This was before I had any notion that I would end up joining the organization. AAI used to have a program called "Educators to Africa." They would charter PanAm flights to different African countries. I decided that for my law school graduation presentation to myself I was going to go to Ghana. I couldn't get any of my friends to go with me. They thought I was crazy. A woman at AAI encouraged me - I wish I could remember her name. She said that I shouldn't be concerned at all about being a single woman traveling on the continent. I went and it was love immediately. Ghana then - this was 1980 - was in very difficult circumstances politically and economically. But you could not find a more generous people.
When I joined AAI, the organization was at a crossroads. We had come many decades from 1953 when we were the only game in town. Now we were operating in an environment where there were many, many competitors. None of them have the track record that we do, but to use the for-profit terminology, they were all better-positioned in the market. We didn't do well at blowing our own horn. We were very generous with our resources and time and our contacts. So what we had to do was undergo a thorough-going self-evaluation to determine what were our strengths in the market in which we were operating. We determined that our emphasis on education was where we needed to be, first and foremost. And hence the restatement of our mission, coming out of a board retreat last February, "To promote enlightened U.S.-Africa engagement through education, training and dialogue." So we continue to expand Africans' access to higher education and professional training.
Our new emphasis is on workforce development and on assisting African countries' policy-makers in ensuring that labor supply is consistent with market demand. There are far too many African PhDs and academics who are driving taxi-cabs. We want to do what we can to help Africans fulfill their own vision to become linked to the global economy and to be able, again, to generate the resources they need in order improve peoples lives.
In Ghana, for example, the environment is privatizing. The state is no longer the principal employer in the formal sector and there either isn't sufficient absorptive capacity in the private sector or people don't have the appropriate skills. So, in at nutshell, the focus on workforce development and transferable managerial and other skills is what our training is increasingly focused on.
Moving into another kind of arena, the AAI dinner itself was postponed because of September 11, and Africa itself has been greatly impacted by terrorism before September 11 and even now. What do you expect to be the impact on Africa of this aggressive anti-terrorist campaign?
It is probably too early to tell what the impact is going to be. Understandably, virtually all attention in this country is focused on what is at hand. September 11 had a profound impact globally and right here in New York city and the rest of the country. The impact on the economy and in so many other realms is readily apparent.
But, interestingly, I do not get a sense from Africans I talk to or from American policymakers who have been in the lead on policy in Africa especially,that the African development agenda is going to be abandoned. I think that we're going to have to continue to work to ensure that we remain on the radar screen and to make the case that poverty and underdevelopment are conditions that certainly breed the kind of disaffection that can lead to terrorism.
So there is all the more reason to engage, not less. Africa has a significant Muslim population. In fact we saw the potential for it to be a soft target with the bombings in Tanzania and Kenya. There are some 18 countries in Africa where more than 50 percent of the population is Islamic.
The discussion about global terrorism necessarily has to include Africa, and Africans are stepping to the fore. In Dakar, President Wade gathered together a group early last month to issue a declaration against terrorism.
He'll be attending the dinner?
Well, our plan is to honor the people of Senegal and the people of Ghana. Those awards were to have been bestowed on Presidents Wade and Kufuor. Now it appears that the Foreign Ministers, who will be here in New York for the General Assembly debates, will be receiving awards instead.
In any case, in Africa, at one level, there are things that Africa has to come to grips with internally, in the sense of being on a religious fault line, if you will, and vulnerable to, let me say, "radical" Islam; at another level, there was distinct worry, both at the AGOA forum here in Washington, and the Corporate Council on Africa's business summit in Philadelphia, that the pressures and necessities of the war on terrorism would steer interest and resources away from Africa. I think the Bush Administration has been working hard to assuage those kinds of concerns but what is your reading of the Administration's commitment?
I think the very fact that the administration has felt the need to address those concerns is a good sign. Just last week, President Bush gave an address before the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act Forum and on the podium with him were four cabinet members - there was U.S. Trade Representative, Ambassador Zoelick, Commerce Secretary Evans, there was Secretary of State Colin Powell and Treasury Secretary O'Neill. He was quite forceful in stating his support for whatever measures are available to the United States government to increase its trade linkages with African countries. So that's one indication.
Not long ago, I was at a gathering with Senator [William] Frist [R-TN] and the new Ugandan head of the Global Fund transitional working group and Senator Frist, as well, gave assurances that he understood clearly the importance of continuing to pay attention to some basic development concerns. The AIDS pandemic has not gone away because of September 11. Neglect will only exacerbate the crisis.
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Senator [Joseph] Biden [D-DE] as well, at a recent gathering, indicated that there were no plans afoot to reduce development assistance. Now those of us in the NGO community and in the policy advocacy community - it's going to be up to us to keep people's feet to the fire, to ensure that those commitments are kept. It's not going to be easy. I don't mean to beautify the situation. But I've been heartened by what I have heard so far. We, as well, were concerned that there would be a waning of already tenuous relations between the United States and African countries. We've not seen any firm indication of that yet. I think it may be a little too early to determine that we are in any more trouble than we were before September 11.
What you characterized as "tenuous relations" brings up another point. Many people have been surprised by this Administration's interest in Africa which seems far greater than anyone anticipated. Is this your impression? And to what do you attribute it?
I won't say 'surprised' because I think that any informed American leader has to appreciate the importance of continuing to engage. I'll say I'm heartened. I think that Secretary of State Powell has to be credited with coming out very early on with strong statements of support for stronger U.S.- Africa relations. That set a tone.
Interestingly, I think it may be that the path that development theory is taking is consistent with a Republican Administration. The conventional wisdom about what African countries needed to develop - I hate that term actually, because it suggests that there's some linear path existing for all development - but in any case, to achieve widespread material and social progress - the conventional wisdom has shifted emphasis from democratization and human rights to a greater focus on economic growth.
I want to hasten to say that democratization and human rights remain important and in fact I think in a way it is fair to say that the shift in emphasis has come about precisely because of the progress that has been made. After all, the end of de jure apartheid in South Africa is probably the greatest human rights achievement of the 20th century.
The attention of the previous administration was focused on the need for rapid economic growth in order to generate the wherewithal that will support many of the improvements that are going to be needed in order to improve peoples' lives on the continent. So that you have African leadership, including leaders that have been in office long enough to have been freedom fighters and to have eschewed the market economy in a previous era, now articulating their major national challenges in terms of economic growth.
So, what you have is this administration embracing legislation to increase trade linkages that was passed in the previous administration. So apart from the vocal and vigorous support that a very prominent member of the cabinet has given to "the cause", the path of development in Africa may also be encouraging the attention we are seeing from the Bush administration.
