Africa Rising 21st Century

            I have been blessed in my life to know Africans from a young age and have strong, longstanding friendships with African men and women.   From them, I have learned a lot about how African people think and how they behave.   This has been invaluable for me in figuring out what to recommend to the policymakers for whom I’ve worked.             However, some of the Africans I have known for quite a while still don’t understand how U.S. government policy on Africa is developed nor what role the United States has played and should play in Africa.   That role is often overestimated as well as underestimated.   Let me humbly attempt to put things in perspective. First of all, the United States was not a colonial power like the United Kingdom, France,   Belgium, Spain or Portugal.   That means our country didn’t shape the circumstances in African countries like the colonial powers did.   Our people are not widely embedded in African countries with relationships that span generat

              Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country, with an estimated 219,463,862 inhabitants.   There are more than 250 ethnic groups.   Muslims comprise 53.5 percent of the Nigerian people, and Christians of all sects comprise 45.9 percent.   One would think that such a nearly balanced religious mix would be less fractious, but you would be wrong.   There is now, and has been for some time, an active jihad against Nigerian Christians that has never been given the effective attention and action it deserves from our government despite Congressional hearings, State Department cautionary statements and many articles and broadcast reports in various media in the United States and elsewhere.             According to a recent Christian Solidarity International (CSI) report, persecution of Christians has been unabated over the past few years: “ From January 2012 to June 2015, Boko Haram and other extremists murdered over 5,000 Christians in Nigeria. Hundreds of thousands of Christia

              I have had the honor of working on the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) since it was introduced in the House of Representatives in the late 1990s.   In those early days, Members of Congress such as the late Donald Payne were focused on ensuring that the duty-free, quota free access to the American market was not extended to countries in which human rights were disrespected, and a layer of protection against that was added to what already existed in the Generalized System of Preferences program, of which AGOA is an extension.             However, this prohibition of AGOA benefits for participation by human rights violating governments, while justified on the surface, ended up hurting companies that played no role in what the government was doing.   Zimbabwe, for example, was clearly a human rights violator under former President Robert Mugabe.   Proof of these abuses were spread over a number of years and had been certified by the U.S. Department of State in its

              When Alpha Condé won his first election in 2010, it was the first time since Guinea-Conakry’s independence in 1958 since then that there had been a democratic election, and it caused at least some optimism about the country moving in the right direction, but now, after two reelections – the third one very controversial – Guinea has seen another military takeover of the government.             Guinea’s first president, Sekou Touré, was an autocrat whose regime rampantly violated human rights and failed to serve the needs of his people.   Shortly after his death in 1984, Lieutenant Colonel Lansana Conté led a military coup.   Conté held power until his death in 2008, after which there was another military dictatorship led by Moussa Dadis Camara, who held power for nearly a year until a counter-coup wounded his so seriously that he had to step down and seek medical attention in Morocco.   Camara was replaced by his deputy, Sékouba Conaté, who refused to allow Camara to res

            I read an article recently that discussed the antagonism many Africans experience from African-Americans and vice versa.   I have witnessed this my entire life.   I have seen it in operation within my family and among friends and colleagues.   We are natural allies, but we too often see “others” who are different and to be criticized rather than members of our extended family to be honored and cared for.             It has been a blessing to me to know Africans as friends and neighbors early in my life.   I saw that while we looked similar, we don’t think in similar ways.   My late father-in-law looked a lot like the late former President of Guinea-Conakry, Lansana Conté (at least in His Excellency’s better photographs), but they thought and acted very differently. Those of us brought up in America think like Americans.   That doesn’t mean we think wholly like white people because America is an amalgamation of cultures, including African and Caribbean cultures.