Africa Rising 21st Century

  The Biden Administration is about to release its Africa policy within days of this writing. Most U.S. Administrations do this at some point, but it usually turns out to be a rehash of what is already being done. There are few new initiatives and usually scant personal involvement by U.S. presidents on Africa issues. Two advisory firms – Africa Practice in conjunction with Mercury LLC – got a jump on the anticipated presentation by Secretary of State Antony Blinken. They made several recommendations, but I want to focus on one point they made that has not gotten sufficient attention over the years. “The U.S-Africa relationship depends too heavily on who occupies the White House, in a way that U.S-EU and U.S-Asia relations do not. The value at stake for US policymakers is seen predominantly through the lens of competition with China and national security, rather than an exercise in improving investment flows or trade relations,” their report stated. “African policymakers should...

            I’ve written previously about Nigeria being the “essential nation” in Africa.   According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), successive U.S. Administrations have described the U.S. partnership with Nigeria as among the most important bilateral relationships on the continent: Nigeria is the United States’ second-largest trade partner and third-largest destination for U.S. foreign direct investment in Africa, and it routinely ranks among the top annual recipients of U.S. foreign assistance globally.   CRS estimates that Nigeria is poised to overtake the United States as the third most populous country in the world by 2050, with a population expected to exceed 400 million. Its population of 219 million is ethnically, linguistically and religiously diverse. When I visited during President Bill Clinton’s visit there in August 2000, I suggested to several Nigerian officials and civil society representatives that the continen...

               I count myself blessed to have been involved in the creation of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and nearly a dozen years later the Prosper Africa initiative.   These are America’s primary tools to enhance U.S.-Africa trade, and I was able to be a part of the birth of both.   However, some U.S. government officials may see AGOA as a thing of the past in the last few years of its current iteration rather than realizing that AGOA and Prosper Africa are complementary programs.   It’s just that neither is yet fully understood by those that may benefit from them nor even by some of those who administer them.             AGOA was a response to the lack of attention to U.S.-Africa trade in overall U.S. government trade documents.   Not having been as colonial power, the United States doesn’t have a cadre of officials or businesspeople with longstandin...

            In its current Global Trends report, published this June, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that by the end of last year, the number of people displaced by persecution, war, violence and human rights abuses had reached 89.3 million, representing a rise of 8% over 2020 – more than double the number from a decade ago. Whether you refer to them as forced migrants or refugees, that means one in every 78 persons on Earth is displaced, and with the results of the Ukraine war since May, that number has risen to more than 100 million, with the related impact of the war threatening an even high number. As troubling as that is, there is another report that demonstrates that forced migration is even worse for Africa. The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) annually publishes a list of the ten most neglected displacement crises in the world. Their stated purpose is to focus on the plight of people whose suffering rarely ma...

            As with most things in today’s global economy, services have become increasingly important. In fact, if you look at the Fortune 500 largest companies, there are more service companies and fewer manufacturers than in previous decades.  As more and more corporations add value to their core corporate offerings through services, this sector is relying on shifts from purchase to subscription models.  Many products are being transformed into services.  For example, IBM treats its business as a service business. Although it still manufactures computers, it sees the physical goods as a small part of the "business solutions" industry. Rather than just receiving a single payment for a piece of manufactured equipment, IBM and many other manufacturers are now receiving a steady stream of revenue for ongoing contracts.  The same is true for products like televisions or radios.  They are not useful without content,...