 Welcome everybody. My name is Jennifer Cook. I'm the Director of the Africa Program here at CSIS. We're very pleased and frankly relieved to see the launch of the final version of our report, Africa Policy Beyond the Bush Years, Critical Choices for the Obama Administration. You can't hear me. Okay. It is on. Can you hear me now? Okay. Nari. This is an effort that began last April. It's been a fairly comprehensive and very participatory process to put this book together. It entailed a great deal of effort, first and foremost from our authors here, a lot of time and focus, but also from a broad swath of Africa policy experts here in the room. First and foremost, I want to say a big thanks to our authors. Jared Barkin, who did the Peace on Democracy, retired now a senior associate with CSIS. Mark Bellamy, who's the Director of ACSS now in an excellent chapter on security engagement. David Goldwyn, of Goldwyn International Strategies, a piece on energy security. Ambassador Princeton Lyman of the CFR, everybody knows, chapter on trade and assistance. Phil Nyberg and Steve Morrison, a chapter on health, global health policy. Michelle Gavin, who I don't believe is here tonight, did a very good chapter on kind of the big looming challenges, environment, demographics and so forth. And finally, an excellent wrap-up summation by Ambassador Chet Crocker. Let me say these authors put a lot of work into this. As I said, it was very collaborative effort. Members of the working group probably are too numerous to thank, but they included congressional staff, corporate representatives, public health experts, advocacy and NGO representatives. Very much a bipartisan effort drawing from a wide swath of expertise, and we're really grateful for the time and insight that everybody gave to this effort. In addition to the working group meetings, we held a series of closed off-the-record meetings with members and former members of the Bush administration. These were tremendously valuable. People gave significant time to this, offered very candid reflections on what the achievements of the Bush administration had been, what the challenges they faced, and some of the limitations of U.S. Africa policy. This was well beyond the call of duty for a number of these folks, and considerable time, as I said, dedicated this. These included former Assistant Secretary, Jen Dye Fraser and Walter Kahnsteiner, Theresa Whalen at the DOD, Flores El-Lizir, Bobby Pittman at the NSC, Todd Moss and Phil Carter, David Gordon, Tim Shortley, all at State Department, Maureen Harrington and Malik Shaka at the MCC, Mark Dible at Ogac, Senator John Danforth, who shared his reflections on the Sudan peace process, our own Ambassador Johnny Carson, who at the time was a National Intelligence Officer for Africa, is more on that later. And a number of other key people from the administration over the years, we wanted to say thank you to those members of the Bush administration. Some of them we hear Mark Green, I think it's here, Ambassador Mark Green, Paul Applegarth, First Director of the MCC, Mike Miller. We're really delighted to see you back, and want to thank you for all your engagement over the last eight years. The result of this big effort, I think, is a very balanced, comprehensive report, and we hope it will help the new administration to build on the achievements of the Bush administration, harness the growing constituencies who are interested in and concerned about Africa, and build a smart power approach that is anchored by sustained, robust, diplomatic engagement. Earlier versions of the report were released to the transition team, they're being chapters up online, so I'm not going to go into great detail. You have the books, I think, most of you. I'm not going to go into great detail on the conclusions, but just a few themes that I'd like to pinpoint. U.S. engagement in Africa, obviously over the last eight years, has grown much more expansive and much more complex. It's driven by mounting recognition of U.S. strategic stakes in Africa, new constituencies here, bipartisan support in Africa, and importantly, I think the leadership of President Bush. New resources, new institutions, PEPFAR raised the bar in many ways on development assistance. The MCC, a really innovative model, AFRICOM that pulls together kind of the disparate strands of mill-mill engagement. All of these were new. The new administration, I think, has an opportunity to build on these achievements and I think has the challenge of ensuring that expanded U.S. engagement is appropriately balanced across these various areas. This means HIV versus other health challenges, health versus broader development challenges, humanitarian programs versus programs that invest in trade and investment capacity, military versus non-military security, balancing short-term tactics and crisis management against longer-term ambitions and opportunities. So managing this complexity and getting the balance right requires several things from U.S. policy, three things, I'd say. First and foremost, it requires robust, capable diplomatic engagement. You can't do this with an understaffed Africa Bureau, with a development agency that appears somewhat adrift and with embassies operating with serious deficits in personnel. Second, it means strengthening multilateral diplomacy, coordinating better with the United Nations, the African Union, European partners, the so-called new players in Africa, China, India, some of the Asian players. These are on issues that concern us all on peacekeeping, crisis diplomacy, transnational threats and development challenges. Finally, it requires strong, capable and accountable African partners. I think a reprioritization of the democracy and governance agenda is vital. Governance is at the core of every U.S. interest in Africa. And it's most difficult but most important in those countries in which we have important security or strategic stakes, whether they be energy, conflict or counterterrorism concerns. I think one of the pleasures of working on Africa policy is that it's not victim to deep partisan divides. I think the greater division is between those who recognize that Africa warrants sustained, coherent engagement and those who are not quite there yet. I want to say one thing before turning to Steve. I want to say a very special thanks to our program coordinator, David Hennick. Anyone who's worked with our program over the last two years knows what an incredibly efficient, thoughtful and hardworking professional he is. He's been a tremendous asset to the program and to this particular effort, substantively, logistically and so forth. He's leaving for law school at the end of this summer and so we're all bereft. But thank you, David, for everything you've done for this. I'll turn over to Steve Morrison. Thank you, Jennifer. Good evening. I'm Steve Morrison. I had the pleasure of working with Jennifer in pulling this project together and I want to single her out for the extraordinary effort that she put into, particularly in editing these chapters into what I think is a very, very nice core. I think that Africa is special as a zone of U.S. policy. It's one that we can have a special pride in. And many of you in this room, including many of the civil servants and foreign service officers, should be especially proud because there's such enormous continuity and commitment in this room towards Africa policy. And as Jennifer has said, it's something that crosses many divides and unites us. It has this special aspect and that's part of what I think has attributed to the remarkable achievements of the last several years and the prospects that we're going to see more looking forward. We did enjoy a very generous reception from the Bush team. Jen Dye Fraser, Walter Kahnsteiner, Bobby Pittman, Todd Moss, the list goes on, gave very generously of their time and their thoughtfulness in recounting and reflecting what they had experienced in commenting on some of the drafts that we presented. We also called upon many other people who are here like Mark Green, Mike Miller, and others to help us. I have the pleasure here today of introducing Johnny Carson, our new Assistant Secretary for African Affairs at the Department of State. He's entering a pretty amazing moment, really. It's one in which there's high expectations and hope for the Obama Administration. The Obama Administration's already gotten out of the box in certain very important respects. The President going to Ghana in July, the Secretary of State going to Kenya in August, a new Global Health Initiative, a Food Security Initiative, an Evolving Education Initiative, all of which are going to impact, all of these are going to come together. The fact that we had Morgan Chabongarai here this week, a very telling, very significant indicator as well. Johnny has agreed to come and speak for 10 minutes or so around sharing his thoughts on looking forward in this period on African policy and has kindly agreed also to take a few questions from you at the close of that. He is among the most distinguished American diplomats. He's known to, I'm sure, everyone in this room. His era of service goes back several decades. I first met him in 1987. Shortly after he had been working with my then boss, Howard Wolpe, who's with us today, Howard, in his role as Chair of the House Subcommittee on Africa, Johnny had provided integral input in a very delicate moment in the early 80s and then had gone on to Botswana as the DCM in that late 80s period. And what was clear then and still clear today is that this is a man of boundless energy and passion about Africa and thoughtfulness. He's a very passionate and considerate individual and has remarkable leadership capacity that we've seen through the years in his role as Ambassador to Kenya, to Zimbabwe, as a Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in the late 90s, which was a very turbulent and trying period. We don't need to go into all of the different shocks that we experienced in this period, but Johnny was very much at the helm in that period of the embassy bombings, of the Congo War, some of the one of the darkest and most stressful periods in which I believe our approach is actually hung together to a significant degree because of his determination and commitment in that period. In the last several years, he patiently took on the duties of being the National Intelligence Officer and fulfilled that role brilliantly. And to the Obama Administration, the Obama Campaign and the Obama Administration's credit, they recognized his brilliance and commitment early on and began to rely on him. And this is one of those great success stories in which his passage through Congress to this moment happened without any interruptions or terrible setbacks. So we can welcome him to his post today, so please join me in doing that. Thanks very much, Steve. I don't know if people can hear me or not out there, but what a kind and thoughtful introduction. First of all, let me say how pleased I am to be here at CSIS this evening with all of you as you participate in this book launch. To Jennifer and Steve, you've done a marvelous job here at CSIS serving as the conscience and think tank for much of the thinking that has gone on with respect to Africa policy over the last eight years. It is greatly appreciated and it is also reflected in the quality of the book. It's a little daunting sometimes to be standing up here and talking to this audience, and I see so many faces and friends out there. You've already mentioned Howard and Reed Kramer and others that I've known for many years. But even to be up here next to this panel, and as I look down from Joe Barkin to David to Princeton Lyman and David and Mark and probably the doyan of this group, Chuck Grocker, there's probably no less than probably 225 years worth of African... Take it, take it. Worth of collective African knowledge here at this table. And that is reflected in the quality of the book that has been produced from front to back. When I agreed to come this evening, I told Steve that I would not, in fact, come with any prepared remarks and basically say just a few things. And it's certainly not a time for me to have any retrospective comments or critiques of the past administration. I will say one thing I think that Chet put in his book, chapter, and it said, you know, build off of the past, don't tear it down, look before you jump in and build on what's good. The past administration did leave three important marks, and I think Jennifer referred to several of them. But let me underscore that PEPFAR stands out as an extraordinary political and health initiative. It put us in the forefront of dealing with Africa's most important global health crisis, HIV-AIDS. It is up to any new administration to build on that, not to let it flag, because health care remains an important issue throughout the African continent. Second, I think that MCC is critical and important as well. It's a new way of putting development assistance money into the hands of important and needy African states. We need to look at that, support it, and build upon it. I will put an asterisk here and say that the creation of MCC should not be used as an excuse to eliminate USAID. Both serve a very important purpose and fill important development gap niches around the continent. There is a need for an MCC, but in my opinion there's also a need for a good old-fashioned USAID. And I hope that both will continue. I think that the other important aspect is AFRICOM as well. It is an important new element, and it's not going to go away, but must in fact be used effectively as a part of the U.S. foreign policy, not the lead role in U.S. foreign policy. It is an element of what we do on the continent. That's a little bit of looking back, but let me look ahead just a little bit. Some things need to be done and are starting to be done. One is engagement by the new administration. The president is engaged, involved, and I think Michelle Gavin was intending to come. I spoke to her a couple of hours ago, but she's actually a lot busier than I am sometimes. Michelle, are you here? She said she was coming, but Michelle can also testify that the administration is engaged just in the last several weeks, and including this week today, for example, to give you an indication of what the secretary is doing. Two hours ago, she met with the Senegalese foreign minister, Gadio, for about 35 or 40 minutes, talked to him at length about his efforts on going to resolve the problems of return to democracy that we're wishing and hoping for in Mauritania. She also discussed with him a number of other issues about regional concerns and also about Senegal's effort to get an MCC compact. Democracy was also on the table. But earlier in the day, she spent a good 35, 40 minutes with Morgan Changarai, who will be meeting tomorrow at the White House with President Obama. Again, a wide-ranging discussion. But these are not just one-off occasions. In the last several weeks, probably under the radar, it shouldn't be, but it mostly is. There has been the first meeting by the president with African head of state, President Kaquetti was here. The secretary met with President Kaquetti. She's met with former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to discuss issues related to Zimbabwe, to Sudan, and also Kenya, where he played a very important role. She's met with the Angolan foreign minister and had very good talks. And she has called a number of other counterparts in Africa. There is, in fact, a lot of movement. Steve mentioned that the visits that are coming up mention that the president is going out to Ghana. It's the first time that we have seen an American president engage so early in an overseas visit to an African country. And hopefully these kinds of visits will become more routine. It does not have to be the annual grand tour. It can be a visit like the one going into Russia, one off, visit a country, going to or from someplace else. It should be integrated as a part of what we do. I think in his chapter said that Africa policy should be mainstream. It should be a part of our daily thinking, not just the preserve of simply thinking it is the responsibility of the Africa Bureau. But the other bureaus ought to also be concerned about our African issues as we talk to diplomats in Latin America, the Middle East, and Europe. But we do see the president going and he's setting up the agenda. But we will see the secretary travel to Agoa first week in August. And she has committed herself to making several other stops as well. I won't say where they are at this point, but she is committed to doing so. But even beyond that, if the secretary is getting out early, the deputy secretary of state probably will get to the continent before either of those two senior level visitors. So we not only have visited by the president, the secretary, but we've also got a trip teed up with countries identified with the deputy secretary traveling to the continent. Diplomatic engagement also extends to the fact of Special Envoy Scott Gratian getting out of the blocks quite rapidly. Several three trips already out and around the region working on the Sudan policy. There is energy, there is dynamism, and it's not just travel. If there are any African diplomats in the audience, they will know that yesterday they were convoked to the State Department to get the first indication of what will be, we hope, one of the administration's signature initiatives on food security. An extensive briefing held over a two-hour period to talk about where the administration wants to go in dealing with the issue of food security and agriculture and agro-business. Some of you probably heard me talk probably too much about this, but of course I believe this is one of the lacuna, not just from the past administration, but from many administrations sometime back. Agriculture is important. Some 70% of all African households depend either as a primary or a secondary source of income on agriculture. Some 40% of the GDP of every African country is based on agriculture. It is a thing that employs today as it has 20, 30, 40 years ago the most Africans around and many women as well. But the green revolution that helped to transform Asia and Latin America has not yet come to Africa. And if Africa is going to make progress, it has to deal with the whole spectrum. At the bottom, we have to reduce poverty by increasing agricultural production, and we have to use agricultural production as a way of generating greater export earnings and greater business enterprise. It's very important, and I think that the initiative that the administration is working on will roll out more formally in the days and weeks ahead will be one of those important new areas. I think there's also a strong commitment to dealing with issues of energy and environment on the part of the administration. That is a global issue. There are winners and losers in the environmental situation that prevails around the world, and Africa is ill-prepared to deal with some of the environmental problems that confront us all. And I think the issues in that area may also be forthcoming. And thirdly, one thing that there will be certainly a great deal of stress on is the issue of conflict and conflict prevention, conflict mitigation, very important issues. There's no doubt that while conflict around the continent has decreased rather substantially in a number of areas, we see in several parts of the continent persistence of conflict. Conflict in the eastern Congo, conflict in Somalia, conflict in Darfur. These conflicts undermine the ability of states to do the things that states are supposed to do, and that is provide security and opportunity for all of their citizens. But we find that conflicts are pernicious, and they generally are largely things that can spread across border and generate real problems. I think you'll see a commitment by the administration to try to do early prevention to get in, try to stop them before they occur, if they occur to mitigate them, and if they do happen, come in and support them or support the resolution in an equitable fashion of what's out there. One of the early signs of this I think is a visit that both Michelle and I made shortly after I was sworn in. I took off immediately for Africa. Second stop was Nairobi, Kenya. Michelle joined me out in Nairobi, carrying a special message from the president. We went and we met with all of the senior officials, all parties, civil society, cross basis folks, and expressed our concern about the problems that we saw that remained unresolved since the flawed elections and the violence that occurred in January and February of 2008. We did it because we could see things sliding down. They had not yet reached crisis point and they had not moved from crisis to political violence and instability. But the only way that you can prevent the worst things from happening is by getting in early. I think we will continue to do that. I think the efforts of Scott Gration on Sudan are illustrative. I know myself that I've been very, very seized and involved in Mauritania. Foreign Minister Gadio's visit here today from Senegal is an extension of the work certainly that I've been doing and others in the department over the last three or four weeks trying to help him resolve that situation. I certainly have been on the phone to most of the senior leadership in Mauritania, including some that I will not name, but we hope that our actions will help in this regard. And certainly on the issue of Somalia, which is of major concern to us, I have certainly been active out here. Let me conclude by doing quickly two final quick notes and then I'll stop, Steve. People ask what are we going to focus on? Some of it is, a lot of it is a little bit of the same things that you've heard before, but they remain important. Strong effort at promoting democracy, rule of law, and good governance. Got to be critical, absolutely critical. Second is crisis prevention. As I said, doing as much as we possibly can to prevent and mitigate and resolve conflicts. Third one will clearly be an effort to focus on strengthening economic development and fighting poverty throughout Africa. And a fourth issue clearly out there helping Africa deal with a whole host of transnational issues that the continent faces. New ones and old ones. Some of the new ones clearly are climate change. Some of the new ones are the spread, the rapid spread of narco-trafficking. We have a situation today in Guinea-Bissau. People were saying that it probably was first Africa's first narco-trafficking state. If you've been watching the news, we've seen a president, an army chief of staff, and just this past weekend two senior former government ministers, including a presidential candidate, all gunned down. It is possible, I'll make the statement that it's possible that in the next several years Guinea-Bissau could easily become the West African version of Somalia. It is a situation where drugs and drug trafficking have become a major problem. But it's not just there. It's all up and down the West African coast. And in fact, drugs are increasingly a problem in places like East Africa and also South Africa. And one can get into that in some detail. But these are the kinds of transnational issues that have to be dealt with because they will serve as a cancer and eat away at African society. One of the things that is also very, very important moving beyond the transnational issues, as we deal with issues related to Africa, we must, we must, we must, we must not forget that Africa has enormous, and I stress that, enormous untapped potential. While we are dealing with some of the small brush fires that are out there, we have to carve out time and effort and energy to plant trees to help Africa achieve its enormous potential. And we've got to make sure that we don't only deal with the negative parts. We've got to be active and supportive of all the good things, of all the good things that are happening on the continent. And we have to do it all over the continent and stress that as a major factor. Good things are happening. We've got to find them, endorse them, support them, and promote them. And I'm going to stop, and that's my quick spiel. We're running a little behind schedule. I apologize for that. We'll run a panel, a roundtable, which follows immediately till about seven. Let's take one round of questions here. Three questions right here. We have microphones. John. And right here, this gentleman here. And this gentleman here. Go right ahead. Who's first? Hello, Ambassador Cochran. I'm David Sheffron. I'm right now working with the partnership in Africa. I'm just wondering, you know, I heard that just recently I read that Kofi Annan plans to meet with the Kenyan government to try to pressure them to become more forthright with instituting the necessary accountability in the post that they had agreed to in the post-election environment. And he said if not, he was prepared to forward names to the International Criminal Court. And already you have Bashir, who's, you know, gotten an indictment on that. I'm just wondering whether these instances might sidetrack the U.S. policy from dealing with, you know, the major, you know, governance issues, you know, development issues, health issues, crisis issues. Whether this new attempt of trying to indict political leaders in Africa might result in some sidetracking on the part of U.S. policy on what really counts, in other words, on what really matters to the public at large. I can answer that one quickly. No, it will not sidetrack us. And I think that those individuals who do things illegally should, in fact, face justice and prosecution for them. Mr. Carson, thank you for your comments. I wanted to ask you, I applaud that you have focused on agriculture, but I want to push you a bit further in terms of land tenure issues. Countries I know best in Eastern Horn and even in Ghana, land tenure issues are a total mess and the core of local politics. And I don't understand how democracies can survive with that ticking time bomb. So I hope that your administration will focus on those issues. John, good point. Well taken. And certainly we'll pass it back. Hi, Delosman from the Voice of America, Somali Service. Ambassador, I just wanted to ask you, you went to the IGC Italy meeting recently in Somalia. So I wanted to ask what was the resolution that had come out of that. And also Italy has decided to open up the agency in Somalia. Is the U.S. going to follow suit? I did not go to the meeting. My deputy, Phil Carter, went to the meeting and were active participants. A number of countries pledged money to support development initiatives in Somalia whenever those initiatives can get off the ground. Currently it's difficult as you realize to do things like that. We continue to support the Djibouti process. We support the government of Sheikh Sharif. We encourage IGAD countries to support them. And we're encouraging those countries who have a way of preventing assistance from going into the Al-Shabaab to do so. But we think that Somalia is at a critical stage. The government of President Sharif needs all the assistance that it can receive. And I must stop because I'm interrupting the program. Are we on? Yeah, we're on. We have a lot to talk about. The book actually covers a great deal of ground. I am not going to attempt to introduce the speakers because their bios are there. So what I will do, my name is Chet Crocker and I'm a part of the book but I just did a few things at the very end. These are the guys and others who are here and gals who wrote in this book and made it the book that it is. We have two basic questions to kick around and I'm going to ask our panel to spend about five minutes on the first question each, five minutes each, and then we have a second question. The first question is one that Johnny touched upon which has to do with Jennifer and I kicked these questions around a bit over the past few days and I hope the panelists all got them but the first set of questions is how do we keep Africa on the radar given what's going on in the world today given the legacy that President Obama has inherited? It's an easy question. That one we know you'll have no trouble with. How do we keep Africa on the radar? How does it fit? Related to that, what new initiatives are possible and Johnny has already answered this question in part but what new initiatives are possible given the crowded foreign policy agenda that we have and then the third related part of that question is how do we avoid just playing defense? How do we actually have initiatives and not just react to things that come along and deadlines that are set for example an election that's taking place how do we actually take initiatives and not just be waiting for things to happen so that's the first set of issues. The second question is one that's I think in the minds of many people as they look at Africa right now when this book was conceptualized it was fair to say that Africa was a much more competitive playing field than it had been historically a much more active zone of engagement and competition by various leaders around the world, various countries various economies, various companies we now have a global financial and economic crisis how is that impacting things? How is that impacting the competitive playing field that Africa represents from the standpoint of American policy? So I'm not going to say anything more I'm going to try and play traffic top here and let me just give you the order of speakers who will address these questions and if there's any time left after the wine if the wine holds up we'll go on but I'm going to first ask Dave Shin if he would say a few words and then I'm going to go to Mark Bellamy and then to Joel Barkin and then to David Goldwyn and then to Princeton Lyman to play clean up. Dave, thank you very much Chad I'm just going to try to take a couple of discreet elements of that question because there's so much expertise at the table here and I'm going to start with the first part of the first question I want to start with a new initiative and one that has not yet been mentioned by Johnny in the initiatives that he outlined are excellent ones but there's another one out there that I think has been very frustrating over the years I spent 37 years in the Foreign Service I saw various administrations try to tackle it none of them really succeeded at it in my view but I think it deserves another effort and that is how do you engage the American private sector in Africa particularly in investing in Africa now this is perhaps the most miserable time in the world about investing in Africa in one sense and the fact that so many American companies have their own difficulties now but the fact is that Africa is doing relatively better than North America or Europe is doing at the moment and there are a lot of opportunities out there the banking system is sound they didn't do all of these silly things that American banks did this is actually a good time to be thinking about investing in Africa but for whatever reason it has always been hard irrespective of the administration Democratic or Republican to somehow get a critical mass together that can really energize the U.S. private sector and it is private and that means it will make up its own mind as to whether it's going to engage or not but I think there are ways in which the administration can try to energize the private sector to do more than it has done certainly the last couple of decades because it's been a pretty spotty performance in the last several decades that's point number one point number two that I want to talk about and I will stop the issue that Chet raised about how do you get ahead of the problem rather than just reacting to difficulties in Africa and that has been the tendency certainly in my 37 years in the Foreign Service where we're mainly reacting not too many examples of where I can identify areas where we tried to get ahead of it Chet perhaps was at the head of one of those principal efforts in dealing with the issue of Namibia and Angola in South Africa and coming up with a really constructive end result but the number of times that happened in the last 37 years you can probably count on a couple of hands there's one effort that I think merits going back and looking at and trying to draw lessons from even though it really didn't succeed it was an effort that was designed to do exactly this to get ahead of the problems called the Greater Horn of Africa initiative a long since been forgotten came out of the Clinton administration was an effort to deal with two essential problems in what we called the Greater Horn the Greater Horn included Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya and the five main countries of the horn it was to do two things by the time we finally boiled it down one was to start getting a better handle on preventing conflict in that region where there was an enormous amount of conflict and two, doing a better job of mitigating the existing conflict the other principal element was focusing on food security so that the countries of these ten countries would not be in the position of having to import more and more food just to keep their people alive it was a very well intentioned policy it failed for a whole bunch of reasons not the least of which is that new conflicts tended to steamroll whatever efforts were being made to deal with them maybe this is too ambitious maybe one needs to prune it back a bit this kind of a concept but I think there's a lot to be learned from this effort to deal with the Greater Horn of Africa from the standpoint of getting ahead of the curve rather than simply reacting and I hope that the new administration will learn some of those lessons how do you keep Africa or how do we ensure that Africa stays on the radar screen this year, next year for this administration and I'm not sure that's going to be all together easy when I think back over my generation I can think of two ways in which Africa has remained reliably on our radar screen and one is as a theater of competition with the Soviet Union during the Cold War told us where Africa's place was in the constellation of our foreign policy concerns it imposed a certain set of priorities for better or for worse and the other case is post-911 post-911 Africa became battle space or prospective battle space it's not in a kinetic sense at least the sense that we felt that we needed to compete to defuse extremism to combat radicalism to win hearts and minds in fact I think much of the surge in assistance that we've seen in Africa over the past eight years has to do with that competition in Africa but the logic imposed by those two situations is probably no longer applicable and in the absence of those two compelling situations I'm not sure how we can ensure that Africa retains the attention of policy makers and commands the resources it needs I made a few notes before coming here and I was interested to see to hear that Johnny mentioned food security food security is at the top of my list if there are two issues I think that that will be particularly salient in the short term food security and the impact of climate change on African populations are likely to be the two if you consider that these are vulnerable governments for the most part fragile governments that are dealing with or trying to deal with persistent underdevelopment and questions of poverty and disease and institutional weaknesses and so forth and you add food insecurity and the enormously disruptive effects on already marginalized populations of climate change I think you can envision a situation where these governments could be seriously destabilized and so initiatives to address those two specific issues I think would certainly have some chance of ensuring that Africa got the attention it deserved just one other point before I conclude I was interested in the idea of mainstreaming Africa I think that mainstreaming is not only a question of making sure that Africa is on the agenda when we talk to the governments but it's also ensuring that we talk to Africa about the rest of the world if there's going to be a new if there's going to be global agreement on what to do about climate change if we're going to sustain and extend the idea of promoting democracy promoting the rule of law promoting better governance worldwide if we're going to have a new world trade agreement Africa's going to have a role in that Africa's going to have 50 voices and we're going to wait and speak with a single voice Chinese are certainly aware of this others are certainly aware of this our tendency unfortunately in the past has been to wait until we've got an important vote coming up in the Security Council send instructions to embassies to go find somebody in the foreign ministry to march with a set of talking points that neither side really fully understands you know we probably would do well to consider how are we going to engage on these global issues where they are increasingly going to speak and have a voice that is important and I think that might be a worthwhile project for a new administration okay thank you I wrote the chapter on democracy and governance I'm going to focus mainly on that and begin by simply echoing what Secretary Carson said governance, governance, governance now that said the challenge here is to really meld in with what I sense is already an articulated policy by the Obama administration generally and that is first of all to be pragmatic and to calibrate the initiatives to what is on the ground you do not try to push down democratization in countries where conditions are not right we have to make a strategic choice I think between democratic consolidation on the one hand and spreading democracy on the other I opt for the first and then you adopt other policies that are more in tune with the conditions in the particular countries and a big challenge that we have conflict has been mentioned on the one hand and democracy on the other what do we do about these countries in the gray zones the semi-authoritarian states the Uganda's for example the Ethiopia's these present enormous challenges and one way we get out of in front of the curve on this to turn to the second part of Chet's question and to not play defense is to get back to basics and to respects first of all the rebuilding of the Africa Bureau itself this is a Bureau that has taken real hits in the last eight years notwithstanding the prominence of Africa by the Bush administration various initiatives that were articulated in the summary the Africa Bureau itself needs to be rebuilt and likewise USAID USAID is a shadow of its former self but there is good news I was over at USA the other day at a forum on democracy and governance and learned that first of all 350 new officers are going to be hired in each of the next five years 50 of them focusing on governance so rebuilding a basic capacity here if you're going to implement these programs and finally in respect to aid to turn to the issue of food security USAID used to run one of the flagship programs of the year the world in respect to agriculture in aid itself and in respect to the support of an alternative group of agricultural research stations it's a long-term project it's whittled to some extent and pushed aside by PEPFAR and that is a real conundrum that we face here because as good and as PEPFAR is it has also to some extent taken us off of some key programs that we used to run and that were very effective and perhaps more than ever particularly in this food security area we need to be readdressed I'm David Goldwyn I wrote the energy chapter I have Savin I think the government is blessed to have Johnny Carson as assistant secretary because he's wise and he's going to be a terrific leader but I guess after listening to him I think it's going to be hard for the non-crisis countries in Africa to get to the top of the US foreign policy agenda because there are so many areas where there's important concern like the Horn, like Smiley, like DRC like Zimbabwe, like Kenya we didn't hear Angola we didn't hear Nigeria we didn't hear a whole lot about West Africa and I think the reality for Africa is still that some 80% of export revenues come from the extractive industry oil and gas are still going to matter to the economy and the countries that produce them don't get much diplomatic attention are going to need to I think the economic crisis provides opportunity because with prices are low leakage or theft becomes a lot more visible budgets are under enormous pressure in most of the producing countries and so it is an opportunity to show those governments that are willing to engage that transparency can pay efficiency can pay, productivity can pay, you can get a lot more of what you've got you can get a lot more competition for what you're doing if you conduct your business in a more transparent way and I think that's the path forward and I think when prices are low and there's not so much vibration about where the next barrel is coming from it's a chance for the US to have an energy security policy to formulate what the approach is to the countries in Africa that produce I think to take a new approach towards governance which has been step one building civil society and that needs to continue but step two is improving the quality of government to govern and the fact is that finance ministries have to do and the job they have to do is enormous and important they don't have to deal with a lot of the major companies they can't do more than one deal at a time so the US government with USAID and others can engage in the MCC model with countries that are willing to engage but I think in a different way to try and improve sector governance to work on maritime security and I think the trick will be that that will happen at the sub-cabinet and it will happen with the Africa Bureau partners with others because I think it will be hard to get that to happen at the top the real unspoken question is what happens with the Niger Delta it's not an area of great opportunity the government is weak not very easy to deal with not much prospect of success but impossible to avoid too important to the entire continent too important to the region too important to the transnational issues so I think the real question is going to be is there an intelligent path forward can the US make a difference and then will there be enough of a consensus within the leadership to make an approach on the Niger Delta even if it has a low probability of success but at least to put the US on the map as saying this problem has gone as far as it should without external support guidance assistance leadership suggestion pick a word that's acceptable to Nigeria but it's enough to let Nigeria take care of it for itself to be helpful and I think the question is will that make the agenda and I think that chapter remains to be written Princeton you have a clean up and there's no one who has done more to keep Africa on the radar of this city and many other cities in this country over recent years and Princeton so that's why I asked you to go last and a lot of things have been said Princeton but you probably found one or two things that haven't been thank you very much to the organization of CSIS for this whole project let me start off with something we haven't said today which is that the United States is not in a position to solve Africa's problems we're talking as if it's all in our hands and that isn't true not only that we don't have the capability but much of this rests 90% of it in Africa and with Africa and we've got to start there I didn't hear any mention today of collaboration with other countries either with our allies in Europe or with other countries that's got to be part of our our mindset as well as our collaboration with the Africans in terms of how you keep Africa on the foreign policy of course one way is the calamities and crisis which is of course the worst way but you know you get narcotrafficking now as well as the other things those are real crises and they do lead people to think more seriously about Africa but shifting that emphasis is difficult I want to pick up on Mark's point about Africa in the world and there again we need a strategy that brings together a lot of different elements of policy to address with Africa where they are in the world we're not on the same page with Africa in the Doha round we're probably not on the same page and the question is why is that the case what is it that we haven't engaged in we didn't hear anything today about trade my friends from Manchester trade who tutor me regularly on this issue would note that we haven't said anything about trade today now I like initiatives like food security I think agricultural development has been neglected for a long time but I hope it's agricultural development and not food security as if Africans only eat they produce for the market they produce industrial products they have to move in that direction farmers need to sell to buy shoes etc and it goes to a lot of complicated issues John mentioned land etc now when I worry about an initiative like that I hear David talking about the food security issue in the greater Horn of Africa and it sort of dissipated about three years ago I read a report of the International Food Policy Research Institute on what are the problems in agricultural development in Africa and something was very familiar about it and I realized when I was in AID in 1976 we said the same things so the question is can we start an initiative of this kind and maintain it long enough with enough resources with enough cooperation 10 years, 15 years to have a real impact because somebody comes up with another initiative or a competing initiative that gets in the way that's the real challenge in taking on something like that finally it has to link to governance you can't tackle agricultural development without getting it problems of governance who controls the grain reserves who sells them on the side who controls marketing who controls land tenure so you can't separate from the governance issue so it seems to me that for Africa policy all these initiatives ideas are good but they have to be brought together in a more comprehensive way that deals with Africa on the global scene and packages are trade and development elements together in that kind of a strategy it needs to say how do you deal with governance what are you going to say to countries that govern badly to help on agricultural development I think we have to be fairly clear on that two other comments Johnny didn't say today what he said on other occasions which is the key states emphasis Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa but then up pops Guinea-Bissau and that's one of the lessons of Africa you love to concentrate on the big and important countries but it's the little ones that often bite you in the ankle and that's just one of the management issues one of the great problems and one of the great tasks and why you need a bureau that is built and strengthened enough to deal with that the final thing is where is the initiative where is the signature initiative of this administration if you look at the 2010 budget request it's like a holding place put more for MCC more for PEPFAR, more for USAID etc it's all the Bush initiatives and let's keep them going which is fine but you say where is Obama's legacy what's going to stand out and it seems to me what ought to stand out and this trip to Ghana is the perfect opportunity is to say it's nothing is going to work unless we see responsible good leadership in Africa and I'm pushing that at home telling the governors they got to spend the stimulus money responsibly I'm saying that to families in the United States and now I'm saying it to you and he's got the credibility to do it and then he packages programs accordingly going to Ghana sent that message there are a lot of countries just gnashing their teeth over the fact that he picked Ghana but it hasn't come out yet it hasn't been the signature emphasis that Obama says this is what I'm going to do for eight years I'm going to encourage good leaders I'm going to inspire people in Africa to take up the cudgels of good governance that's going to be my signature emphasis and all these other programs come in behind it thank you very much to all of the panel I don't know if the wine has run out yet but I think we probably have time for maybe five or ten minutes of questions which we would probably do and then see which panelists might want to respond as I listened to this very very good set of presentations I heard some common themes that emerged obviously governance did the problem of focusing on big relationships came out of the discussion but so did the problem of the Mauritanias and the Guinea-Bissau's no offense to anybody the issue of prevention came out in all the different commentaries that were made of thinking ahead of the crisis rather than waiting for the crisis capacity building right here at home vitally important mainstreaming Africa, burden sharing and not pretending that somehow Africa's future is in American hands and then finally a theme that was mentioned briefly which I think needs a little more attention is the whole issue of private sector engagement because the private sector in Africa is a very exciting story and there are people here in this room who know it far better than I are there any microphones around for those who might have a question or two if so raise your hand and we will get a microphone and we'll take two or three questions and then we'll go back to the panel so right here go ahead Paul Mutter, Bridging Nations you had mentioned that Obama's first visit was to Ghana in the past few years the People's Republic of China leadership has made a lot of high profile projects in other parts of Africa so all we had talked about the potentials for economic development and to bringing Africa into global dialogue with other countries specifically the new energy policies of countries like China so my question is in terms of energy policy and also governance where do you see the possibility for cooperation with the People's Republic of China and where do you see our interest being at odds and there needs to be more dialogue in specific African countries yes we talked a little bit about capacity building in the United States I was wondering what your thoughts were on capacity building efforts in Africa particularly with respect to trade capacity strengthening financial institutions and I also wondered as a follow up what initiatives you feel have been most helpful in that regard, thanks Steve Landy I shouldn't say this in public but Chit Cracker and I graduated from John Hopkins together with Kendall who just got his name in his paper being a Cuban spy but we're looking at Kendall Miles I've got his name but seriously a quick comment we very much appreciate all of those I brought his house so we're going to check it out but seriously Prince and we very much appreciate your comment about Manchester trade you're tutoring us in Africa but I do believe that the best thing that can happen if anybody who knows Africa want tutoring on trade please come to Tony Calan and I in Manchester trade because the one thing that hasn't been mentioned and absolutely blows my mind because it's an African initiative it's the steps that are being taken for regional integration regional integration there's no way 48 countries can develop regional integration now is so close it can be an Obama success in East Africa there are three regional economic communities East Africa community and SATIC they now have a chart pod group in West Africa Nigeria is what we say is two teleconcessions away from joining the friend speaking countries and echo us one of the things that are missing is a U.S. approach what Prince does in his book and it deserves compliments is he says you know the U.S. doesn't support regional integration because in Africa when we go to the WTO we don't say oh there are some WTO rules that actually make regional integration harder to achieve the European Union is trying to screw things up with a little mercantilist economic partnership agreements so the way I would simply stop and say because you can't go on on this and so on but the way I would simply stop is say I would hope we give some attention to having another initiative along with food security and the other ones mentioned that really focuses on how we can help really promote the integration of very possible accomplishment during the eight years of President Obama's administration. I don't have to teach you guys anything it's great. Thank you Steve the panel who would like to pick up on some of these questions the floor is open let me address the issue of China U.S. cooperation in Africa I wrote the section in the book on that and if for those of you who haven't yet seen the book and if you have an interest in this topic about half of what I wrote is actually recommendations for how U.S. and China cooperate so I won't regurgitate all of those for you they're easily read I would simply note that the Chinese effort in Africa in recent years has been absolutely astounding it has quite frankly and some at many levels surpassed that of the U.S. effort in Africa and in some countries at least a half a dozen maybe up to a dozen I would argue today that Chinese influence is greater than American influence now admittedly some of these are countries like Guinea-Bissau that maybe we don't want to have that much influence in but some of them are not and they're not all the pariahs I mean Sudan and Zimbabwe certainly fall in this category but there are other countries where clearly the Chinese have equaled or surpassed U.S. influence and I would say they're gaining ground rather than losing ground on the issue of regional integration there's a Chinese element there too the Chinese are beginning to take this seriously they are dealing with not only the echo wasses and the sadaks of the world but with the South African Customs Union and the commesses of the world they they've got it they understand it the Chinese were the ones who hosted the Asian Development Bank meeting in Shanghai in 2007 they get it we haven't quite gotten it yet in some respects there as I say there are a lot of areas where we could cooperate with China in Africa but rather than I regurgitate them read them in the book I think just on the energy side I think there's a tremendous opportunity for cooperation with China because we really have the same interest in stable prices security of supply and international market they have access to China has learned that the oil for infrastructure deals were a mistake none of them actually produced a transaction they produced a huge backlash for the foreign ministry now they're trying to buy supply in the open market so I think there's a lot of potential there we have to talk to them about their need which is energy security and not not just about what's problematic in terms of standards they have a different view and on EITI in particular they don't buy it they don't buy a development model didn't think it worked think theirs deserves a try but because their own policy is changing I think there is a chance to have a conversation about the politics and about stability in the region and I think we haven't actually had that dialogue on that subject yet it's all been about climate and other things so I think there's an opportunity to forge some cooperation there I just say one more thing in respect to China and the governance dimension and that is the official line is this one of mutual respect and we're not pushing democracy and you people are meaning the US and it appears like a divide but the counter is and again to pick up on David's point and the opportunity for cooperation is that many of their deals are not going to be sustainable unless there is viable states and good governance in this region so if we segue slightly off of the democratization dimension of governance when dealing specifically with the Chinese but emphasize state capacity rule of law in particular then there may be common ground here where our mutual interests are advanced just a quick word on this question of regional integration I'm not a trade expert but it occurs to me that we have no reason certainly to oppose regional integration and no reason not to work to remove obstacles if they exist within the WTO but just as with other forms of regional integration whether it's trade or whether it's security assistance impetus really has to come from the Africans themselves it really has to be a determination that they want these things to happen we cannot substitute our enthusiasm for greater regional cooperation for maybe ambivalence or reluctance on the part of African states I think part of the problem we're seeing is not so much the external obstacles but it's also the ambivalence on the part of certain governments and a little bit of uncertainty in that regard if you have any questions or questions please join me in thanking our panel