Africa: What's Working? What's Not? - U.S. Policy

14 October 2008
allAfrica.com
document By Frances D. Cook

Washington, DC — Opening remarks by Ambassador Frances D. Cook at the October 7th plenary session, "U.S. Policy in Africa: What's working? What's Not? - Creating stronger partnerships while promoting stability and growth" of the U.S.-Africa Infrastructure Conference sponsored by the Corporate Council on Africa.

Good afternoon! I am honored to co-chair this panel with my friend Admiral Harry Ulrich, former Commander of the U.S. 6th fleet (including Africa). We have a very distinguished panel of experts to lead our discussions this afternoon.

Last evening, at the National Museum of African Art, we celebrated the Fiftieth Anniversary of State's Africa Bureau - a time to reflect on how far America has come in her policies toward Africa. Today our panel's task is to propose what we think Africa policy should look like in the new U.S. administration, which takes office in three months. But to get there, we need to reflect on our short, shared history with Africa.

One of my favorite writers has written that trying to plan a future, without understanding the past, is like trying to "plant cut flowers". So, I'll start with a brief survey of that history, to set the stage for our discussions, and to give us some "roots".

Fifty years - the blink of an eye in the history of this ancient continent and its peoples. But it was during this very time that Africa's peoples rediscovered their independence, with the beginning of the end of the colonial period. It left the new states weak and divided, and with transport links and trading patterns, which do a disservice to African development, to this day.

As the geo-strategic realities of the Cold War asserted themselves, America and the Soviet Union sought allies in the battle for dominant influence - both on the continent, and on the global scene. U.S. policy in (for example) in Zaire and later in Angola were the result of this great power rivalry. So to, was our surprising quiescence in the significant matter of APARTHEID in southern Africa. Africa was the "proxy" continent - and we are still living with results, the mistakes, of that time.

All was not totally misguided in America's uneven commitment to Africa, even during this period, however. For example, we also had some great - worthy of America - initiatives that showed that we cared about Africa's future. The Peace Corps was launched by a young President, John F. Kennedy. While it remains a success, even a global success, the Peace Corps' most lasting impact, I would posit, was in Africa - both in what these young Americans brought to their village-level engagement, and in their enduring commitment to Africa, after they came home. I am sure that, in a room of this size, if I asked ex-PCVs to stand, there would be many dozens of you.

Even earlier, USAID launched very imaginative and courageous (for the time) scholarship programs for southern Africans living under apartheid, or in its neighboring states (often in camps of the region's various liberation movements). I played a small role in the negotiations for Rhodesian independence, and well remember Andy Young telling me that the first Zimbabwe cabinet - thanks to this scholarship program - had 13 American PhDs. in it! (I can tell you that my own government has never equaled that African record )

At the end of this period, the Jimmy Carter administration ushered in a focus on human rights that led directly to U.S. (indeed Western) preoccupation with democratization for the continent's many single-party ruled states, states. Most of these states not only had human rights issues, but considerable economic stagnation, as well.

It was really in the 1980 and 1990s that the majority of Africa's states, with help, started taking the oft-times bitter medicine of structural economic reform, moving from being foreign assistance-dependent, to growth. What happened? As the Financial Times editorialized this year, "at the heart it is a better policy environment. Governments have ceased financing themselves by printing money and have privatized many state enterprises. Most central banks target inflation, which as a result, has fallen to global norms ... (we have seen) a resurgence of private – sector investment, both domestic and foreign.... (Domestic investment has risen sharply, as a proportion of GDP approaching 30 percent of GDP in most countries). In some, such as Ghana and Madagascar, it has passed into the mid-30s ... reducing the dead hand of the state and has created a supportive environment so ... African entrepreneurs can thrive."

"Ignoring Africa today," the FT concluded, "is like failing to invest in emerging markets in the 1990s, in SE Asia in the 1970s, and 1980s, or in Japan in the 1950s." That's what I'd call an 'endorsement' from Fleet Street!

Political transformation has been occurring at the same time - more than 30 states have now abandoned single party rule, for some variety of multiparty electoral systems. And Africa's large numbers of conflicts have been reduced to 5 or so - each, unfortunately, very brutal and long-lived, but each with a peace process that is trying to bring resolution. I personally think that the Carter-era, Congressionally-mandated annual human rights reports, by the United States - while often a bone of contention in bilateral relations - also played a role in Africa's rebirth.

African leaders, previously with little electoral, or other, checks on how they led their nations, now must endure the various "grades" that NGOs provide to their performance in office - knowing that many of their citizens (thanks to the power of the internet) are seeing their marks at the same time. Whether Transparency International; or the World Bank's series, "Doing business in " (which compares and grades each state's business environment); or the new entrant, last year, Mo Ibrahim's governance rankings. His rankings for 2007 (as judged by professors at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, my alma mater) were released yesterday, and showed encouraging results: 31 of 48 sub-Saharan nations recorded higher scores than in the first survey. Mauritius is still number one in governance - but Africans no longer view democracy and good governance as an unreachable goal for their continent.

It was during this same time that Africa's 'light sweet crude', from the Gulf of Guinea, was making itself invaluable to the United States - first during the Arab embargo, and then growing to 17% of our supplies currently - and expected to climb to 25% in coming years. On the other side of the continent, some weak states, as well as some coastal areas, ominously saw a dramatic increase in basing operations for international terrorist organizations. The bombs at U.S. embassies in East Africa - before 9/11 - were a harbinger of very hard days ahead for our country.

Confronted with all these developments in 2000, the new U.S. administration of President Bush eventually presided over the most generous loosening of American assistance purse strings we have ever seen: debt relief, the launch of the MCC (Millennium Challenge Corporation) grants, which reward good governance), PEPFAR (HIV-Aids), as well as the anti-malaria initiative - and, importantly, a sharp increase in the kind, quality, and amounts of our security/military assistance to the continent.

For example, the FY-09 budget request asserted that there never has been "a more auspicious time to consolidate the progress, and the promise of Africa . . . with growth of around 6% overall in 2007, economic growth - while still uneven - is at its highest in 20 years; mortality of children under 5 has fallen by 14% since 1990; there have been large increases (27% rise from 1990 to 1999) of African children in primary school."

At the same time, the United States has trained and equipped 80% of all Africans who participate in peace-keeping globally (most in Africa), while providing generous assistance to states threatened with global terrorism (especially in the Sahel and in the Horn).

Finally, we need to honor the extraordinary engagement - financial and quite personal - of the various private sector efforts, which have reached a crescendo during this period - whether Bono, or Bill and Melinda Gates, deploying both their beneficence, and Warren Buffet's! There has been, I would posit, an unprecedented outpouring of both commitment AND funds to Africa in recent years.

The new administration will, I firmly believe, maintain the high levels of official, targeted American engagement with the continent. It is in our national interest to do so . But the next American administration is also inheriting some very challenging times on the continent.

  • Sudan (2 million dead; 4 million displaced) remains as a major challenge: a sitting president, who has been indicted (he is the first) by the International Criminal Court; Darfur, and the challenge of consolidating a wobbly peace in the South;
  • Consolidation of peace in Liberia and Sierra Leone;
  • Helping fulfill the promise of the Democratic Republic of the Congo's first elections in 10 years, where peace was the major vote- getter, in this long-suffering nation (but where an outrageous number of armed thugs, under various banners, continue to roam the eastern part of this huge state - which, as Zaire, was one of the policy victims of America's Cold War struggle);
  • Nigeria's strategic Delta - seemingly unsolvable by Nigeria's government - as the anarchy spreads to neighboring states, while having a significant impact on global oil prices. There is will, by friendly states, to help, but Abuja must extend its hand, and acknowledge that the problem has metastasized and requires outside help, both from littoral states in the Gulf of Guinea, and by Nigeria's oil-producing partners;
  • Angola, with one of the Cold War's saddest histories, is emerging from its long night of horror, to claim one of the highest growth rates in the world, and even held very respectable elections in the past month - we need to be more engaged here, as we are permitted.
  • Finally, and important for any policy, or development initiative, to succeed, is the huge matter of Africa's decayed (when not destroyed, or not yet extant) infrastructure of all kinds. That is the reason for this conference, organized so brilliantly by CCA's Vivienne Sequeira. There is work enough, in this critical area, for everyone – the West, the East, and the private sector. With so much promise, Africa will not be able to "take –off" economically, until she has the infrastructure, and the power, needed for development.

So, much awaits the new U.S. Administration - including (I'd stress) winning the understanding, and the support, of the American people, on WHY Africa matters so very much to the future of us all.

Frances D. Cook, a member of the Corporate Council on Africa board of directors, is a former U.S. ambassador to Burundi, Cameroon and Oman. She is founder and chair of the Ballard Group LLC, an international business consulting firm, and a non-executive director of Lonrho and Arlington Associates.

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