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The politics of Africa on the world stage

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The obvious theme of this week’s column could be and maybe should be the vicissitudes of the Michael Brown killing. But I’m not an obvious kind of writer.

During August 4-6, 2014, President Barack Obama hosted the largest gathering of African leaders ever assembled together in the U.S. It was a major risk, diplomatically, to hold such a gathering with all the security concerns and emotions involved. President Obama’s international reputation could have taken a major, unrecoverable blow if things had gone sideways during this gathering. And there were plenty of preliminary signs that things would not go well. Fortunately, the president, his staff, and several congressional representatives persisted in their efforts, and by virtually all reports, the event was hugely successful in a great number of ways and that success needs to be written about and discussed.

For more than five days, Washington, D.C., which has its own population of Chocolate City dwellers, was virtually overwhelmed with hundreds of African dignitaries and their 10-30-member entourages, freely spending money and expanding the district’s economy. That was a very good thing. During the actual three days of the summit, and several days prior to it, more than 200 American business firms met with African counterparts and many worked out future investment deals which are to benefit both sides. There were several meaningful behind-the-scenes diplomatic gatherings that laid the groundwork for future talks on restricting, if not eliminating, human trafficking, reducing tensions over the Great Lakes region and other major issues.

Some called the gathering, which brought together 47 African heads of state and Dr. Nkozasana Dlamini Zuma, the head of the African Union “transformational.”  This was a confident Africa and its leaders on display in the U.S. capital. For some U.S. Chamber of Commerce types, they were able to recognize that “Ebola isn’t in every African country, and there aren’t armed insurgents in every nook and cranny of Africa.” Africa is not the “heart of darkness’ of some stereotypical past. As one official put it, ‘Africa can no more be characterized by HIV, Ebola and Boko Haram, than the U.S. can be by citing rising Black homicides in Chicago.’

President Obama summarized the gathering as extraordinary and promised to try to have such gatherings as an annual event in the U.S.

Earlier, President Obama had declared, in a break with U.S. tradition of the last 50 years, “Africa is more important than ever to the security and prosperity of the international community, and to the United States in particular.” The European union has for years hosted summits of African heads of state to shore up Europe’s continuing access to Africa’s vast resources, so has Japan and China, in recognition of Africa’s importance. The U.S. entry into this game of ‘summit diplomacy’ is rather late, but very much needed. And in spite of President Obama not meeting with each head of state individually, as the Japanese prime minister and the Chinese head of state regularly do, the event went very well indeed.

President Obama announced an additional $300 million annually in public funding for the Power Africa Initiative which is focused on doubling Africa’s electrical grid capacity as quickly as possible. He articulated $7 billion in new financing to promote U.S. exports and investments in Africa as part of his Doing Business in Africa campaign. He ordered $110 million for a new African Peacekeeping Rapid Response Partnership to help build African states’ capacities to handle emerging military conflicts. The president also reemphasized his continuing support for YAHLI, the Young African Leaders Initiative Network that he began in 2010.

Among other things, President Obama also took the opportunity to urge Congress to renew the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), and to expand it to focus on more small and medium-sized African businesses. AGOA is a pact signed during the Clinton administration, and renewed during the Bush presidency. It is highly favored by most African embassies and ambassadors, and has been a substantial benefit to Africa. It is also strongly championed by California Congresswomen Karen Bass and Maxine Waters.

In 1884-85, Germany, the dominant economic power in the world at the time, hosted an extraordinary gathering called the Berlin Conference. At that gathering, the 15 member states present, including the U.S.A., carved African territory up and parceled it out to European countries to do with as they pleased. This initiated the bulk of the balkanization of Africa project that still exists. No African representatives were invited or allowed to participate in that long gathering.

Symbolically, in August 2014, President Barack Obama ended that era by calling together another large gathering to discuss the future of Africa, and Africans themselves were the participant decision-makers, not Europeans. A change, indeed, has come.

Professor David L. Horne is founder and executive director of PAPPEI, the Pan African Public Policy and Ethical Institute, which is a new 501(c)(3) pending community-based organization or non-governmental organization (NGO). It is the stepparent organization for the California Black Think Tank which still operates and which meets every fourth Friday.

DISCLAIMER: The beliefs and viewpoints expressed in opinion pieces, letters to the editor, by columnists and/or contributing writers are not necessarily those of OurWeekly.

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