 Well, welcome to the Center for Strategic International Studies this morning. We've got a terrific briefing. Some of you are just back from your last trip, and so thanks for being able to do this this morning. We have a terrific briefing, and in addition, I hope you got copies of Jennifer Cook and Richard Downey's commentary. If not, we can pass them around. It's called President Obama's Africa Trip, Making the Business Case. We're going to start off with my colleague, Jennifer Cook, who is the director of our Africa program, and then we'll go to Richard, who is deputy director of the Africa program here at CSIS. Then we'll finish up with Steve Morrison, who started our Africa program at CSIS, which then morphed into our very well-known Global Health Policy Center that Steve launched a few years ago on the heels of our Smart Power Initiative. And it's been an incredible success and just an amazing set of things that he's been studying over the years. So with that, I'd like to turn to my colleague, Jennifer. Thanks so much, Andrew, and thanks all for joining us today. We thought we'd keep it fairly short so that we can turn this quickly as possible to questions and hear kind of the specifics of what you're interested in. But I thought I would start out with the big objectives of the President's trip, putting it in the context of his Africa policy more generally. Then Richard will talk a little bit about some of the more difficult challenges that may not get highlighted overtly, explicitly in a presidential trip. These tend to be very upbeat kind of good news trips, but there are a lot of underlying challenges there as well. And then Steve talked to the big US assistance programs in food security and health, but also looking back a little bit at the significance of these presidential trips generally. Steve has lived through a number of them over the years. So first and foremost, I think this trip is intended to signal to African governments and to African citizens that the US is prepared to re-engage with Africa, that it remains an important and committed partner, and to overcome a perception that US Africa policy has kind of been in maintenance mode over the last, over the President's first term. Obviously President Obama came to office with big expectations. There was euphoria in Africa over his election as the first African-American president who had traveled to Africa, who had African ancestry. It came on the heels of a decade of really accelerating momentum on Africa policy, beginning with the Clinton administration's high-profile trips, the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act. President Bush exceeding all expectations and making Sudan an immediate priority when he came into office. Then launching the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, PEPFAR, $15 billion initiative, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, which focused mostly in Africa. The Africa Command, two high-profile trips. So really you had this major funding, major attention, major initiatives going to Africa. And then President Obama came in and there was a sense of stall in a way. And there were understandable reasons for that. He came in the midst of a global economic crisis, a domestic economic meltdown, a Congress that was much more inward-looking, that had generally been very supportive of Africa initiatives in a bipartisan way prior. Domestic gridlock on big issues and then wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the proliferation of global crises. And Africa just seemed to fall away in terms of excitement, in terms of energy and momentum. The U.S. hasn't been entirely idle in this time. There were big sustaining commitments on the big global health initiatives. There were some diplomatic successes early on in Cote d'Ivoire, in Guinea, in getting Sudan to the referendum for the Southern Sudanese independence. But those were kind of collaborative efforts done in concert with African governments and regional bodies that didn't, the U.S. wasn't gonna take full credit for them. And they weren't big, splashy initiatives that got people's attention, either in Africa or here at home. And no big money and no big ideas that really helped define what Obama was about in Africa. Meanwhile, I think the African context has been changing fairly dramatically. The economic growth story, probably many of you know, five to 6% average growth rates over the last decade. Africa weathered the economic crisis far better than anyone anticipated. High commodity prices sustained high demand from China and others. Growth in new industries, telecommunications and construction and transportation and banking, those actually drove, in wholesale and retail, those actually drove some of the big growth rates that we saw. The rise of a consumer class, I wouldn't say necessarily a full-fledged middle class, but a consuming class at least. Better economic management by a number of governments. Now Africa sits on the edge of a front edge of a hydrocarbons boom with big new natural gas finds, world-class sized natural gas finds off the coast of Mozambique, Tanzania. New oil exploration in the East Coast and in new oil producers in the West Coast, Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Mauritania. And new technologies that are expanding the reserves of the big producers, Angola, Nigeria, Gabon, and so forth. Other countries have been taking note of this. China, Malaysia, India, Brazil, Turkey, they are all there very actively seeking out investment opportunities. So Africa's become a much more competitive playing field, commercially, and along with that diplomatically as well in terms of the big ideas on growth, on human rights norms, and democracy norms, climate change, and the big global issues, they play a more important role in international fora on those. So this Africa rising narrative is taking increasing hold, and I think the President will speak to those opportunities. I think he'll also speak, and it's worth challenging the Africa rising narrative a little bit because not all countries will benefit from this. Some countries are not part of that rise, and there's a danger that without accountable governments, without strategic vision, without sound revenue management, that that growth does not translate into sustained economic development that drives manufacturing, that drives diversification of economies that leads to beneficiation of raw commodities, employment, or service delivery. So in this context, I think the big themes of the trip will be first and foremost, the big new theme will be elevating US economic engagement with Africa, getting a broader swath of the US private sector interested and educated on the opportunities on the continent. Right now, the companies active in Africa tend to be the big extractive energy industry and some of the major corporate giants, GE, IBM, Boeing, and so forth. But I think the President is trying to mobilize a much broader swath of US smaller and small and medium sized enterprises to come into Africa and getting strengthening agencies like the Exim Bank, OPIC, USTDA, to play a big role. Second will be targeting some of the big obstacles to investment and sustained growth on the continent. So strengthening institutions will be a big theme, accountable governments, technical capacities, and a major announcement is expected in Tanzania on strengthening, on partnerships for power generation and distribution. Electrification in Africa has been one of the primary stumbling blocks to investment and to sustained economic growth. And it's probably the number one obstacle that investors face when they go in is that they can't get enough electrical power and have to pay huge amounts in terms of generation, generators and diesel costs. A third will be making the case of the US comparative advantage in this arena. I don't think he'll mention China explicitly because you don't want to define US engagement in terms of China, but he will want to make a case of why US makes a good partner in this, in investment. US firms tend to bring technology transfer, knowledge transfer, training, maintenance packages, quality brand recognition, a whole slew of things that other international competitors don't necessarily bring. China has a mixed record in Africa but gets criticized for lack of transparency, bringing its own workers, bringing its own materials, not engaging with the communities around them. And I think the president will want to make that distinction of why the US is a good partner in this regard. And finally, the democracy and governance, institution building, and again, engagement beyond the government, which the US tends to do better than some of these other new partners. This won't be entirely a commercial trip and I think the US will want to emphasize that democratic principle, democratic consolidation remains a core value of the United States and a core foreign policy objective. And this choice of countries, Senegal, which came through, we can talk a little bit more in Q and A on the specific countries. Senegal came through what may have been an electoral, what was heading towards an electoral crisis last year, came through kind of a real demonstration of how embedded democratic principles can keep the process on track. Tanzania, January well governed, they're actually experiencing some interesting political tensions right now that will be worth exploring. And South Africa, messy, but democratic, having gone through obviously the historic transformation. I'll stop there and we can get into more detail in the Q and A. But Richard, why don't you talk a little bit about the security aspect? Yes, Jennifer's done the upside opportunity side of the trip. I'm, as a European, more comfortable talking in gloomy terms about downside things. So let's talk about security, first of all, then I'll kind of highlight one of the big policy challenges that the US has in Africa. So security, it's no secret that US security interests are on the rise in Africa, largely due to the threat of violent extremist organizations and their sort of expansion into regions that were previously unaffected. US security stakes, I guess, have been rising for quite a while in Africa. Think back to the early 90s, when Osama bin Laden took up residence in Sudan and really Al Qaeda became a household name over here on the back of the big US embassy attacks in Kenya and Tanzania, all the way back in 1998. But, as I say, the terrorist threat has expanded a little bit of late. The big area of expansion really is the Sahel region, this sort of band of very weak, under-governed and poorly-governed states. US-Africa command, AFRICOM, has been warning for quite a while now of growing links between these extremist organizations such as AQIM, Al Qaeda and the Islamic Maghreb, and Boko Haram, this group in northern Nigeria. And documents found recently in Mali in the aftermath of the conflict there seem to back up these claims, although we shouldn't overstate them and present these groups as sort of one part, you know, some part of a massive networked arc of instability that sort of sweeps across Africa, I think. There's also concern, and again, not that much substantial evidence, but certainly some concern that these extremist groups are colluding with some of the transnational organized crime networks that smuggle illicit and illicit goods through the Sahel region have done for sort of time immemorial. And a lot of these groups, AQIM being one example, it's actually often quite hard to separate the criminal from the terrorist activities that these groups engage with. So anyway, these rising threats combined with the drawdown in Afghanistan and elsewhere has led to sort of speculation that Africa is becoming a theater of expansion for the U.S. military. And certainly in recent months, we've seen some evidence of increased activity, the newly established drone base in Niger, for example, next door to Mali, for unarmed at the moment, predator drones. And certainly, really beginning with the Libya intervention in 2011, AFRICOM has sort of shed some of its earlier activities, which were very focused on soft power and development type work, and they've become much more of a sort of traditional competent command focused on the operational side of things. So as I say, the threat level has risen, but we have to put it into perspective. You know, groups like AQIM, Mujaw, Boko Haram, they certainly undermine U.S. development and governance objectives in Africa, but I think it's highly debatable whether they pose a direct threat to the U.S. homeland right now. That's because they have pretty limited capacity. And some, in fact, most are primarily focused on other enemies, enemies closer to home, and Boko Haram would be a prime example of that. So I think it will take a serious sort of threat escalation to overcome U.S. reluctance to commit combat troops, for example, in Africa, and that's a stance that's been pretty constant since the intervention in Somalia back in 93. So really if you look at this year's military campaign by the French in Mali, the U.S. role sort of fits that pattern, that historical pattern. It was a non-combat role. It was a support role. And really that was despite a lot of countries in the region directly appealing for the United States to play more of a robust military role. So the strong desire, I think, is low profile, avoid putting boots on the ground. That said, there is, I think, a slight danger of mission creep in Africa as you get sort of drone bases and drone activity, for example, cranking up. Perhaps a bigger problem as well is this sort of tendency or concern that the U.S. might begin to sort of favor security solutions or military solutions over problems which at their root cause are down to sort of development challenges and political challenges. So what would, for example, if Niger fell to some of the armed groups who caused so much chaos in Mali, which is not that far-fetched a scenario, what would the U.S. feel obliged to step in is an open question. In the rare events where offensive operations are considered necessary, where U.S. citizens are at threat, the preference, I think, will be for these sort of light, it's kind of light footprint operations using special forces, special operations forces, acting on intelligence provided by drones. The Benghazi attack obviously focused minds on this issue, particularly the need to improve response times to attacks and threats against U.S. citizens so that you've had this rapid reaction capability that's now going to be provided by Marines stationed in southern Spain. That said, I think the overall mission of AFRICOM will be on the sort of building up capacity of African militaries because the end goal here is that Africans really will be dealing with their own security problems in the long term rather than relying on the U.S. or more recently France to come in and bail them out. How best to do that military engagement is a big question that's worth asking, I think, and there's been a degree of soul-searching about the approach that was taken in Mali, for example. Mali's military was formerly a big recipient of U.S. training programs, but when the original Tuareg-led MNLA uprising began in the north, the Mali military collapsed, a lot of the soldiers defected, and one of its members led a coup which sort of tipped Mali into this even bigger crisis, and this was a guy who received U.S. military training. So, I mean, there's no easy answers to how you prevent these sort of rogue elements, but I think it appears that this training-equipped model is not sustainable without meaningful institutional reform as well. And the previous commander of AFRICOM emphasized that the need to sort of do more work on human rights and ethics to sort of drum home the message in its training to militaries that they should be subordinate to civil authority, that message clearly isn't sticking in some countries in Africa right now. Onto a different policy challenge, I think a broader policy challenge that the U.S. faces in Africa, and that's the difficulty it faces in terms of operationalizing what publicly it states as its number one objective in Africa, and that's promoting good governance and democracy. All the way back, it seems a long time ago, in 2009 when President Obama set foot in Sub-Saharan Africa, the last time he made a speech in the Ghanaian Parliament and a nice speech, the big sort of takeaway line was Africa doesn't need strong men, it needs strong institutions. I think he hit on the correct issue that's holding Africa back, poor governance. But there's a danger, I think, in placing essentially a values-based democracy and governance agenda at the pinnacle of Africa policy because you're setting yourself pretty tough goals to attain there. There are multiple fairly obvious challenges, but perhaps one of the main ones is how you put together a coherent policy for this incredibly diverse continent, 54 countries, and strung across a very wide spectrum in terms of governance from pretty good performers on the one end to complete out and out dictatorships on the other. There's also, of course, the risk, U.S. policy has not made a vacuum, particularly in Africa and other external actors, maybe China, may undercut your policy. It's all very well and good, the U.S. putting conditions on its engagement with sort of backsliding governments but to encourage reform, but if China just goes in and offers business, no strings attached, then the U.S. is left sort of standing on the sidelines feeling a bit frustrated. Then you have the sort of the clash, the dilemmas that happen when sort of policy principles rub up against sort of real world realities, and that leaves the U.S. open to accusations of double standards, for example, in places like Uganda and Rwanda and Ethiopia even where you have very close relationships, the U.S. is sustaining with authoritarian leaders but who are leaders that are deemed useful in other areas such as security cooperation or development, achieving development goals. And then finally, there's the challenge of how the U.S. engages effectively with this sort of fairly large group still of Africa's very poorly governed authoritarian states. Do you stand back and lose any leverage that you might have enjoyed, such as in Sudan? Or do you try and engage in the hope, even though nothing ever seems to get any better, such as in the Congo, for example? The administration's still grappling with this, I think. The emerging strategy seems to be one that it doesn't de-emphasize democracy, but it maybe adopts a more overt focus on governance and the technical sides and aspects of governance, favoring working with African governments to improve efficiency and competence and building institutions. So I think you're here during the trip, perhaps some announcements on new initiatives to strengthen some of the most failing of African institutions, the judiciary, police in Africa, to give you two examples. And then the other approach, I think, is perhaps to appeal over the heads of some of the more unreceptive governments and seek engagement, as Jennifer mentioned before, with a sort of broader set of constituencies, whether it's young people and women, which are always sort of buzzwords in U.S. approach to Africa, but also sort of entrepreneurs, business people and a real attempt to sort of identify the next generation of African leaders. So I think I'll leave it there and pass over to Steve. Thank you very much and thank you all for coming this morning. I'm gonna say a few words about some of the past travel, presidential and also Obama's own personal travel, and then I'm gonna offer a few comments on the trip itself and what the trip may mean. President Obama, just to remind you, when he was newly elected to the Senate, went to Africa in August of 2006, visited Kenya, Djibouti, which was a counter-terrorism trip, visit South Africa and Chad, which was largely around Darfur. And during that trip, he was pretty aggressive and pretty vocal about corruption and ethnic divisions in Kenya. He and Michelle took a public HIV test while there to counter stigma, visited Kibera, the largest slum in Nairobi. This was part of his gaining his foreign policy credibility. It was a early trip. Jennifer briefed him before and after that trip. Many of his key people like Dennis McDonough and Mark Lippert were involved in that. I think it was an important trip. He jumped forward to July of 2009, the Ghana Accra speech, which was a drop-in after the G8. The speech was meant to be, I think, a companion to the Cairo speech. And it was very broad and it was very much about good governance and it was very much a message of Africa needs to take charge of its own future and get out of a dependency mentality. Important of strong democratic institutions. We were not talking about strong men and new leadership were talking about getting your act together as a basis for stability and prosperity. It was a, again, it was a fairly, in some level, it was a fairly bland speech, but it had some pretty strong points to it. In looking back at some of the earlier presidential trips, certainly in the Clinton era, the trips the folks who were involved in organizing, conceptualizing those trips, some of those same people are involved in this trip. The first big one was in March, April, 1998. It was a six-country trip. The large concept around the trip was that Africa has a renaissance underway under new leadership. That proved to be a somewhat misbegotten concept for that because shortly after that, Eritrea and Ethiopia went to war with one another. DRC began to fall apart in armed conflict. There was also in that trip a quick, unexpected, or unprogrammed visit to Rwanda that was not on the official schedule where President Clinton landed on the tarmac and did his grand apology around having been passive in the face of the genocide. So I was marked the beginning of trying to come to terms with what happened in 94, 95, the genocide. So it was a trip that started out as a very happy trip, but it had a very unhappy component added into it. The next trip that Clinton did, which was in August of 2000, so it was at the end of his tenure, was largely Nigeria. It was Nigeria, Tanzania, and Egypt. This was in a period when Obasanjo had come back, democracy had returned to Nigeria. Obasanjo was asserting himself as a continental leader. There was hope, yet again, that we had some serious leadership that we could ally ourselves with, and that was really the central trip along with recognizing AIDS. In the 98 trip, AIDS didn't figure whatsoever. By 2000, it surfaced as a big issue. Jump forward to Bush's 2003, July 2003, shortly after the beginning of the Iraq War, shortly as the PEPFAR program, which had been announced in the State of the Union address in January 2003. This was a very tense trip. There was a lot of talk about counter-terrorism. Liberia was lurking out there. Liberia was in the midst of crisis. There was this grand debate. Are we gonna jump in or not? And we're gonna jump in small or jump in big. There was all this tension around Zimbabwe. When Bush got to South Africa, he decided to punt on confronting the South Africans around Zimbabwe and simply be deferential. It was a new era and a different one. In 2008, February 2008, Bush returns for a second trip to Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana, and Liberia in the midst of the Kenyan crisis. And in that period, I think that trip was conceptualized as a celebration trip, as one that the President could go to these places and engage in a dialogue around the many achievements of his tenure, but it occurred in the midst of the Kenyan crisis. So it became both a happy trip and a crisis trip. And Condoleezza Rice hived off from that trip to meet up with Kofi Annan in Nairobi and attempt to negotiate an end to the internal crisis in Kenya while the President continued on. And when the President came back, President Bush came back, he invited 200 people over to the White House for a slideshow in which it was very clear just how exuberant and engaged and personal this was in terms of his achievements. So those are all by way of background around these trips. There is a tendency on these trips to reach for a positive narrative as the overarching theme. There's also a tendency for reality to crash that. And in this trip, I think it's less vulnerable to being crashed for reasons that I'll explain. But we've heard this kind of familiar theme that Africa is on the edge of transformation, it's on the edge of liftoff, it's gonna be economic growth that moves it, it's not leadership, it's economic growth. The trip follows from the President's policy directive on development. If you go, I would urge you all to go read that PDD because much of the trip's thematics grow directly from that. It's trying to reposition in the public mind that Africa is a different place in the world and that we should be optimistic, yet we should also control our expectations. In other words, the President is not going to, I think, launch any particularly new major initiatives or visions. It's more a matter of stewardship and re-engagement and signaling that, yes, we care and we're coming back. The expectation from Clinton and Bush is that you do get two trips in your tenure to Africa. So this is in some degree a check-the-box trip, but I think it's more than that. I wouldn't be so cynical as to say that is it. There's been, they've chosen three safe places to go, Senegal, Tanzania and South Africa. Those are good, solid, safe choices. They don't have the edge you might get if you've chosen a few other alternatives. There's a little twist that was added in the announcement that former Senator Feingold is going to be the envoy to DRC. I think that was timed deliberately in order to say, yes, we have not forgotten that in fact there are some cruel and difficult crises in this continent and we're not completely disengaged. It's yet to be determined or defined what that means, but it's an interesting signal that someone as prominent as Senator Feingold has chosen to take this on right before the trip. DRC, does that mean that we as an administration, as a government are going to confront Kagami in a new and deliberate way at a time when some of Kagami's major backers, Susan Rice most notably, are in prominent positions in this government? It's a good question. I don't think it's going to be answered during this trip. It's a nice touch that they've added that Michelle Obama has committed to join the First Ladies meeting in Tanzania on July 2nd or 3rd with Laura Bush and with Sherry Blair and an assembly of very impressive First Ladies from key African countries. I think that's a nice, very nice signal. Is anything going to crash the party? I don't think you're going to have, you've got the same vulnerabilities. Obviously, former President Mandela is very, very ill. We have continued Shabab attacks in Somalia demonstrating that in fact the gains made in U.S. support over half a billion dollars of support towards peacekeeping in Somalia remain very, very fragile. Overall, I would agree with Richard, security, U.S. security commitments in this continent in East Africa and West Africa have grown substantially and that's the lead dominant element of U.S. foreign policy on the continent. But what's interesting is it's a fairly quiet and up to now uncontroversial. In other words, the fact that we have two drone bases on this continent doesn't figure too much in the public debate. The fact that AFRICOM five years ago was a source of enormous consternation and contestation within the continent, that's disappeared for the most part. I would also say that the competition with China has moved beyond where it was a few years ago. A few years ago, there was all of these claims that we were in a great clash in competition with China and that has subsided dramatically. China and Africa did not figure at all, as best I know, during the Sunnylands dialogue between the president and Xi Jinping. Another thing on terms of security, our oil dependency upon Africa is dropping precipitously as we become much more internally dependent. 10 years ago, we were saying we were heading towards 25 to 30% dependence upon Africa for energy. That's now in reverse. So that in some ways on the energy, global energy dependence side of things lessens the degree to which we are really looking to the continent as a source of diversified energy support. A few quick things on health. In South Africa, you're gonna hear a lot about shared responsibility, about ownership, about AIDS-free generation. We just had the 10th anniversary this week of the PEPFAR program. There was a celebration at the State Department, Secretary Kerry delivered a very eloquent speech. Senator Cardin, Senator Enzi, the Namibian Minister of Health. So this is a big moment in looking back 10 years on the achievements, and I think you'll hear a lot during the trip about the achievements in Tanzania and in South Africa. South Africa's leaning the farthest forward in terms of putting its arms around and making major budgetary commitments on HIV-AIDS and other things. And that's where US has made its biggest play. It's put over $4 billion into HIV-AIDS. In South Africa, it's the single largest investment anywhere in the world outside the United States. In health is in South Africa. So please look carefully at that. Polio, I wanna just briefly mention, you know, we have had polio outbreaks now in southern and central Somalia that seem to be circulating. We've had reports coming out of the massive Dadaab camp in northeastern Kenya. And we have reports that samples are appearing in Egypt and Israel. So there's a concern mounting around the spread. The cases in Somalia and Kenya are traced back to, we think, to Nigerian trainers, military trainers. So as you have breakdown in controls in Nigeria and elsewhere, as you have chaos in no immunizations in Somalia, you're seeing this resurgence. Food security, the Feed the Future Initiative has been the administration's single biggest, this administration's single biggest signature new aid initiative. It's reflective of a big shift of consciousness that the food security of the poorest and countries in the least and the most vulnerable populations is a stability and security concern. The Feed the Future Initiative has weathered bad budget cycles. Tanzania is a big partner country in this regard. It's Senegal to some degree also. You'll hear a lot about that. Electric power is fundamental to trying to get to agro-processing in that way. So I'll just close by saying, when you get to South Africa, you'll see also that this is one of the most fundamental bilateral relationships. And it is fraught with tensions and it's a country that's been adrift for some time but there's a lot of politeness, a lot of plight and deferential engagement but it's also prone to considerable prickliness on both sides and it'll be interesting to see where that goes. If the end of life for Mandela is hanging over this, obviously that changes the entire atmosphere and tone. Thank you. With that I'd like to take questions from the audience if you could identify yourself and speak into the microphone so we can get it on the transcript, that'd be great. Let's start with Julie. Thanks, hi, I'm Julie Pace from the AP. I had two questions. One, you said Obama is going to three pretty safe countries, he's obviously not going to Kenya, where he has family ties. I wanted to get your thoughts on why he's not doing that, is it mostly because of the results of the last election and do you expect him to address the political situation in Kenya on his other stops on the trip? And then Stephen, you said that the competitiveness with China has changed over the past few years. I was just curious about why that's happened. On the Kenya piece, Kenya does seem a natural choice in terms of its regional impact and I think there's a couple of countries, I mean Tanzania and Senegal, while they're well-governed, they're not particularly continental superpowers in a way and he's not going to Nigeria, which is the most populous country, has a strong affinity for the United States on many issues, has big security challenges and governance challenges, but is basically democratic. And Kenya, which is something of the East Africa's powerhouse, I think there that the president and the vice president have been indicted by the International Criminal Court makes it just diplomatically very difficult for him to do that. I don't think U.S. engagement with Kenya will change dramatically. I think, first of all, those ICC cases seem to be falling apart a little bit as witnesses either die or disappear or recant. But I think the optics of a presidential trip are not what he wants to be demonstrating right now. Steve, do you want to? On the China piece. A couple of things. I think that the negative impacts that were predicted several years ago were grossly exaggerated and the positive impacts were underestimated. And so some of the more careful analyses like Deborah Brodegun's work, Deborah Johns Hopkins University has brought a much more nuanced sort of appreciation of this. I think the Chinese themselves made adjustments in their approaches to be a little more consultative and more sensitive to the concerns that they heard on the continent because they were beaten up badly, particularly by the South Africans at multiple points. And keep in mind, I mean, the premier and the president in China are making two, three trips a year. I mean, the level of engagement and contact is at a very high tempo and it's been that way for some time. So they've had to learn and listen very carefully and take the criticisms that have come their way. I think that their entry into oil markets didn't displace us. They don't have the technological depth or capacities that we have, but their entry into the markets did help, I think, intensify the playing field and intensify the marketplace. It was not a negative impact. On Sudan, where we had lots of abrasions around Bashir and that regime and the Southern crisis and the movement towards independence for the Southern Sudan, the Darfur crisis, there actually was some movement in terms of finding points of collaboration. It was not a something deep and confrontational. You never really got to the point like you are in the South China Seas where you have states caught in a mashup between themselves and China with the U.S. asking themselves, okay, where do we go and what do we do here? So I think that they become a more normalized presence and we go about doing our business and I think they're part of the wallpaper. I don't think that everybody's running around with their hair on fire about China the way they were five or six years ago. Although, you know, it's worth noting in Hillary Clinton's trip, you know, she kind of took a snipe at China and neo-mercantilist strategies. Secretary of State Kerry, one of the first things he said on Africa in addition to saying something about Joseph Coney was that China is out investing us. So they are, you know, it has kind of spurred the U.S. and I think that still is an undercurrent even if it's subsided somewhat. It's worth looking at some of the African pushback on China's presence. There's a great piece, an interesting piece in the Financial Times by the Nigerian Central Bank president who's a very significant guy talking about kind of a critique of China's engagement and the Chinese president's visit in March, it's worth looking at that text too since he's trying to allay some of the African fears on how China does business in terms of, you know, bringing raw commodities back to China rather than benefiting them onsite. Okay, let's go to Margaret. Thanks, Margaret Talib with Bloomberg. So, Stephen, you had said that if the end of Life for Mandela is hanging over and it obviously changes the atmosphere, could Jennifer and Stephen talk about what you see as the kind of Obama-Mandela narrative part of this trip? Whether you think Obama and Mandela haven't had as strong a connection as Mandela and Clinton primarily because of Mandela's aging and decline or because it's a policy thing and Obama has not been focusing on Africa. So I guess I sort of wanna explore the Obama-Mandela thing. I'm wondering if, Jennifer, you can talk about in 06 when you briefed then Senator Obama whether you guys talked about Mandela then at the time. And if we have time. Richard, do you think that the security stuff really plays directly into this trip? I mean, he'll be in sub-Saharan Africa. He's not really, he's not going to this to hell, you know, all that sort of stuff. Thanks. In many ways, U.S. perceptions of South Africa are kind of hinge on Mandela and Mandela's legacy and the transformation that took place and everything is gauged against that transition. And I think there is a worry here, but also in South Africa, in segments of South Africa that Mandela's legacy is waning. I think the U.S. has been frustrated a number of times at global positions that South Africa has taken, whether on Myanmar, on nuclear proliferation, on a variety of issues, on Zimbabwe, on certain continental issues. I think the expectation in the wake of Mandela's presidency was that South Africa's foreign policy would be based on human rights principles, and that hasn't always proven to be the case. And the levels of corruption and kind of foment within the African National Congress and within South Africa more generally, I think is kind of seeing that legacy waning over time. I think much of the reason is that Mandela has been very ill and fading over the last four years, and he's withdrawn, he made an explicit commitment to withdraw from public life, and I think he's been ill and more secluded than previously. He was very critical of the Bush administration, and so forth, and I think that kind of, as Steve said, that prickly relationship will come up again, and there are talks of protests against Obama, but in terms of the drone policy and so forth, the NSA revelations and so forth, and people are very aware of those things here. Overall, though, I think there remains a large reservoir of goodwill towards Obama in South Africa, whatever the punditry and the internal ANC left-wing feel. Steve. I neglected to mention that Michelle Obama was in South Africa in June of 11 with her mother and her daughters. So they're three generations, and there was a dramatic and very moving session at Regina Mundi, at the church, and the reception, we were in South Africa shortly after that visit, and it was striking how much goodwill and respect this generated across the spectrum of South Africans who, diverse South Africans who might otherwise have taken a kind of harsher to look at American intentions. I mean, it was something that connected, and was seen as genuine and interesting, and I think we entered the post-Mandela phase in South Africa quite a long time ago, and at the time of his passing, I think there'll be an enormous amount of attention and commentary and reflection on the meaning that this man's life has had, and much of it in a great celebration of his achievements and contributions. But I think before the president had even come into office, really, we were in that phase. I mean, and Becky was bounced in 09 in a precipitous and abrupt way, hopes rose that Zuma was gonna be better and then Zuma settled into a kind of chaotic drift, which was very inward-looking, and in foreign policy was completely chaotic. There's been a, in the last party cycle, and there's been some efforts at bringing in some new personalities and a little more order to the way that the place is governed, and it sort of remains to be seen how well that goes. The president did have a back-in, I forget which of the UN General Assembly meetings it was early on, maybe it was in 2009. There was an assembly of half a dozen African heads of state for a luncheon with the president in New York, and Zuma was put at the president's elbow, deliberately as a way of trying to recharge and reset the relationship and get things going, and apparently that went quite well. I don't know what level of communication has happened after that. But I think the relationship is fairly good, is in fairly good condition at the moment. I don't know, Jennifer, do you have any further thoughts? Yeah, I mean, as Steve said, Zuma's been fairly inward-looking, you don't have right now on the African continent the big continental statesmen that you did with Obasanjo, even within Becky, although we disagreed with him on many points, and yeah, I think the US is often frustrated by South Africa's foreign policy, but there is a lot that binds us as well, and the idea that they have capacities and they have the largest economy, they have a military that's among the most competent and capable, I think trying to move them to play a more leadership role on the continent in peacekeeping and peace and security in diplomacy and in continental norms, I think is a big goal. And to your question on the security throne, I think it will be a backdrop to the trip, particularly in Senegal, Senegal is part of the Sahel, it's an important security partner, they've been very vocal in warning about events in Mali and this potential spread of the groups to other countries in the region, although Senegal is a very moderate Muslim country, it does fear the sort of impact that events in the neighborhood might have in terms of increased militancy at home, so I think talking with Senegal about their contribution to the Mali crisis will be important. In South Africa and Tanzania, I don't expect security issues to be a major part of the discussions, but those two countries are the leading contributors to this intervention force, that is taking to the field in DRC, completely new idea, innovation, it will work alongside the UN, but taking offensive operations against the rebel groups in the region. So, as Jennifer said, South Africa is becoming a little bit more assertive in playing a security and peacekeeping role in the region, and that might be part of the discussions there. The other thing, could I just quickly add to that, is that the Obama administration doesn't want the military engagement and the drone spaces to be the takeaway legacy that they have in Africa, and without kind of a countervailing message of economic engagement, democratic engagement, that becomes the most visible and the most visible focus of U.S. engagement, and I think part of this whole trip by focusing on other issues is to say our engagement is much larger than the security engagement, and a subtext is we need to be cultivating partners who will be friendly to us, whether it's in the commercial side, the diplomatic side, or ultimately the security side as well. Hi, I'm Colleen Nelson with the Wall Street Journal, and I wondered if you could talk a little bit about how you think Africans will view Obama or view him at this point. You mentioned kind of the reservoir of Goodwill in South Africa, but also mentioned that the relationship has stalled in some ways, it kind of been in maintenance mode, and I wondered with the high expectations for him, whether you thought that there was frustration that he hadn't engaged more, especially from just kind of on the street. I think there's basically still a lot of goodwill around him. I mean, he's a very engaging personality. I mean, Ghana was very well received. If you look back at Moe Ibrahim's speech at the Africa dinner, it was kind of like, brother, come back, we want you, where are you? Why have you abandoned us? And I think that tends to be kind of a common narrative on the street, and look out, the Chinese are coming. I don't think there's not a great deal of resentment behind it, kind of at a popular level, but a sense of where have you been? And I think Nigeria feels very snubbed that he's not visiting. Kenya feels very snubbed that he's not visiting them. So I mean, that speaks to a certain affection in some ways. That said, I think there is this euphoria of what this might mean for Africa has died down, and the gradual recognition that he is, after all, an American president with American interests at first and foremost on his mind. The South Africans, those who focus on foreign policy and foreign alignments, they continue to believe that the American relationship is the first or second most important relationship. And it may have some problematic things that need to be worked, but I don't think that has changed. I think there's more disappointment in attention to Africa among US-based constituencies, I think than there is within South African-based constituencies. I don't think you're gonna hear a lot of people in South Africa saying where you been, I don't know, maybe, you know, I just think that there's gonna be an enthusiasm and interest in having the visit come. It's not gonna be the Bush in 2003 where people were just angry and edgy. I think, and what the messages are going to be and what happens in the bilateral, what, if anything, happens in the bilateral relationship will be, I think, the thing to watch. Is this largely a courtesy call or is there some interesting business that gets transacted in the course of it? If it's seen as kind of a drive-by or a courtesy call, then that might leave people feeling like, yeah, it's kind of interesting, but there wasn't a whole lot of substance to this stop. As you were saying, it's a relationship that's terribly important relationship, it's kind of stalled, but it's not in crisis by any means, and this sort of shores it up and gives it a little bit more vitality, but is there gonna be some other things that flow out of it? My guess is there will be some modest initiatives that will trail on afterwards, and you could see more travel at cabinet and sub-cabinet level to South Africa and other places in Africa that follow from this because oftentimes these trips do stimulate in the following 12, 18 months, a trail of cabinet and sub-cabinet initiatives that are quite important, can be quite important. So asking, okay, who's gonna get the instructions to sort of come back and follow up is very important, I think. I just made one general point that maybe, can't really talk of Africans because Africans are just so many different types of people, but perhaps a lot of people are looking for the US to sort of reflect the changing narrative. So much of US policy has been directed towards crisis issues and towards the developments, issues helping poor and the most needy in Africa, and that's help that's been very important and it's valued, but it's also, there's a ton of resentment, perhaps when you talk to some Africans that hang on a second, things are changing here and maybe the US has not made a pitch or it hasn't been so relevant to the many other Africans who aren't in abject poverty or suffering from warfare and abuse so that the aspiring middle classes, the consumer class, the urban dwellers, the educated and so on. So perhaps those are constituencies that are waiting for the US and President Obama to say something that appeals to them and is relevant to their lives. Can I just add one additional point to Colleen's question which is the generation of A and C leadership that was in exile or those that were the inziles who partnered up, and those folks are many of them still in power, but many of them going into retirement and seeing a next generation come forward. That A and C slash Communist Party leadership from the era of struggle and transition harbored very deep resentment of the United States. We backed the wrong side, they remembered vividly and it took a lot of effort to overcome that. If you recall during the Clinton administration, there was the Gorin-Becky commission, right? There were four high level bilateral commissions established in the Clinton administration to try it and to adjudicate very important, bumpy bilateral relations. It was Ukraine, Russia, South Africa and I forget what the fourth was, but that was to try and deal with these problems. Where does Obama sit? Obama was a child when he will not be held to account for any of these mistakes that were made in U.S. policy in those periods. He's free of that just by virtue of his age and where he was and when he was growing up and that's important, I think. I don't think people see him as carrying any of that legacy at all and so that's a positive thing too. Thank you, Jeff Mason with Reuters. Just speaking very broadly, how would you compare Obama's policies on Africa to Bush? And secondly, Jennifer, you mentioned some of the business initiatives. Are you aware of any particular companies or CEOs who are coming along and do you have any other specific ideas of what business initiatives may come? The Bush administration, first of all, had kind of a surge of momentum behind it from the Clinton administration, from Congress and leaders like Senator Feingold, Senator Kerry, Senator Frist who were the constituencies on Sudan who were all pushing for a much more activist U.S. role in Africa, whether on debt, whether on Sudan, whether on HIV AIDS. He also had more financial wherewithal to launch these big initiatives. So the $15 billion PEPFAR initiative, the 15 billion MCC made, as I said, made a very early commitment on Sudan. So came out of the blocks much faster and with big new ideas and new initiatives. President Obama hasn't had that financial and fiscal space to launch big, big issues. Feed the Future was his signature initiative so far. By its very nature, it's a much longer term process to build agricultural development and food security and get policies right, versus HIV AIDS where you're giving life-saving treatment to people, bringing them essentially back from the brink of death. That's something that gets Congress excited, it gets the American public excited. Food security, agricultural productivity, agribusiness, that's not quite as sexy as an exciting and it takes a lot longer time to yield results. Global Health Initiative, President Obama tried to take the PEPFAR initiative and kind of use that as a platform to integrate other health challenges, maternal child health, tuberculosis and so forth. Never quite parlayed in something big and exciting, although that's happening and that's an important thing to happen. So there just hasn't been the money, there hasn't been the excitement, and I don't think there's been the real creative thinking about big new initiatives. And as I said, there are reasons for that. We were in an economic crisis. There were two hot wars going on at the time. Congress was not gonna be up for big new initiatives in Africa and to his credit, Obama was able to sustain those big legacy issues throughout a very difficult time in US domestic scene. So it doesn't have the same sense of energy or profile or even rhetorical commitment from the president. President Bush actually, as Steve said, you could actually sense a real enthusiasm when he talked about Africa and his Africa trips and his Africa initiatives. And you don't quite get that now. And I think this is President Obama's opportunity to kind of reignite not only himself, but Africans and the US bureaucracy and the US various US agencies, cabinet and Congress. One of the great things of this trip is bringing a lot of business leaders will be accompanying him at various spots. Cabinet, well, we don't know the full list. It's a huge, at various points, he'll be met by they say 500 leaders. I think some of the big ones on it, on the power initiative will be GE, Symbian, Contour Global. Those are big power generation partners. You know, the energy companies perhaps as well. And I think a swath of smaller scale businesses. I don't think we don't have a list of any kind. But particularly in Tanzania, I think Symbian has been very big there. GE has a number of power projects there as well. Can I just say one thing about on the health and HIV Aids front? The amount of investment in Africa under PEPFAR is over $40 billion in the last decade. And it's an extraordinary achievement. And what President Obama did in terms of building upon what President Bush did was he moved the program from being an emergency program to being a sustainable one. Under Eric Goosby, there were massive efficiencies created by reallocating and redirecting and putting greater scrutiny on how dollars were spent. So that under, and he actively, President Obama, actively preserved the bipartisan support within Congress so that the funding levels have remained very robust through these very difficult periods. But they haven't been rising, but we have. He made the commitment to go from four million persons on treatment, on antiretroviral treatments to six million by the end of this year. And we are on track to hit that target without. So simply by achieving new efficiencies in the use of the dollars. So that is a massive achievement. The other thing that's happened in elaborating upon the Bush legacy was to partner up much more profoundly with the Global Fund, move it through its crisis, and step up our engagement, which is now running at about 1.65 billion per year. There's a transition that's underway where our bilateral program will slowly begin to phase down very slowly as we move the Global Fund up. The other thing that Obama has done is enter into these active negotiations around transitions towards the countries assuming much greater responsibilities budgetarily and managerial and the like. And in South Africa is the most advanced dialogue and planning around how that's gonna happen. Right now, we're putting $480 million a year in South Africa into HIV AIDS programs. We're slated to drop that by 50% in about 30 months. It's up, and the planning is very, very active right now on how is the government gonna be in a position to fill that gap, take that responsibility, and move forward without any disruptions in services for the people who are dependent upon those life-sustaining therapies. So there's some sensitive, complicated things that Obama administration has moved forward as the logical next phase of a program. So a lot of continuity, but a lot of elaboration and improvement upon what President Bush put in place as an emergency program, and then it's morphed in these various ways. Morning, David Ivanovich with Argus Media. I think all of you have mentioned Sudan this morning. Do you expect the recent flare up between Sudan and South Sudan to be much of the part of the conversation during this trip? And if so, is there something new the President can or should say about that? I don't think it'll be a big part of the trip, just mainly because of the three countries that he's visiting. I don't think it's just gonna come up as one of the big issues. And I don't really see much of an opportunity for the U.S. either in trying to resolve the latest disputes there. I think the approach will have to be continuing to work through the African Union High-Level Commission that's been engaged in trying to get the two sides to sit around the table and work through some of their terms of their divorce. Tabor and Becky was due to finish as the head of that commission. He's been persuaded to stay on, only on the condition that he gets to tackle some of the internal political and governance issues in both countries that are really at the heart of the problem here. But in terms of U.S. engagement, I don't see much opportunity, particularly with Khartoum. We still have an ambassador there because the sanctions is just really not much leverage that we have with the regime. And it's going through this period of complete internal flux at the moment and it's very hard to know exactly who's in charge and what they're saying. I see that the invitation to Nafi Ali Nafi, the presidential advisor who's seen as one of the sort of potential successors to Bashir who had been invited over here has now been uninvited because of the latest flare up between North and South. He's one of the people that is potentially a successor to Bashir. In fact, the ruling party having their short counsel to talk about who they're going to nominate for the next election. I just think these internal processes will carry on and we don't have much influence over them, frankly. Just to add, in the first Obama administration, Princeton Lion, Ambassador Princeton Lyman was our envoy and was indefatigable in working that circuit and stayed on much longer than he had hoped or planned, stepped down sometime in the early part of this year, February or March, has not been replaced. The envoy has a replacement. There's the constituents here clamoring for that, but it has, no decisions been taken. Instead, what you see is the fine gold thing that I referenced, which is part of the Great Lakes. The other thing I'd point out is that Secretary Kerry during the first Obama administration while in the Senate and as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee played a very integral role during the referendum process and the transition and the negotiations over these, when the oils got stopped and things got ugly, he was in the region recurrently at playing a facilitative role. And it was very important role because statutorily our envoy could not engage because of sanctions directly with the Bush year government. So he had to do workarounds and it was Secretary Kerry, then Senator Kerry, who played a very important role. So you have considerable expertise and knowledge within the Secretary of State's office himself around all of this and Shannon Smith who's now a DAS in the Africa Bureau. But I agree with what Richard said. I don't think this is gonna figure much in the trip. It's a problem area, it's where we have U.S. interests where our level of engagement is just sort of slowly kind of diminishing. Air is going a little bit out of the constituencies on the issue because it's gotten a lot more complicated than the old narrative of an evil cartoon and a victim South and the Southern government is having, is mirroring a lot of the behaviors of the North right now and there's internal problems in the South, corruption issues, transparency issues, governance issues and it's just become a much more thorny issue that doesn't lend itself to big public and congressional attention. And it looks like a lot of that advocacy focus is moving towards Eastern DRC at this point. Nedra. Hi, it's Nedra Pickler with the AP. We've talked a little bit about what to expect in his stops in Tanzania and in South Africa but I wonder if you can talk a little bit more about Senegal, what the challenges are there and the issues and anything that you might expect that he'll be talking about there. I think Senegal would be a natural place to speak to the democracy and institution building agenda. Senegal, as I said at the start, came through something of an electoral crisis last year. President Wadd, who had been in power for quite a while, tried to extend his term, worked through the constitutional court to get them allowed, to get them to allow him to extend his term. There's a lot of controversy over that, whether that was constitutional or not. His son had been appointed minister of the three major, major ministries at Transport Interior and Energy, I think, was accused of corruption. There was also allegations that he was setting his son up to be his successor. Despite all that, there was a major public outcry from opposition groups who came together in an umbrella group, youth movements, a hip hop scene, the Yanomar, kind of a youth movement. So it was peaceful ultimately, but it was a real public mobilization and I think an illustration that a leader is not as powerful as his people. So I think he'll speak to that. He'll speak to the youth issues and the power of youth and social media and public participation in these issues, the consolidation of democratic norms and principles, and I think that's where he will probably make that speech. Now also Senegal, as Richard said, is vulnerable to spillover from the conflict in the Sahel. Senegal has one of the more professional and competent militaries in Africa, even though it's a small country. They've played a critical diplomatic role within ECOWAS, the West African Regional Grouping, whether it's on diplomatic crises in Côte d'Ivoire, in Liberia, in Mali now. And that may be a stop also to kind of give kudos to ECOWAS as having, you know, still building, but as having played this vital regional role in diplomacy and now in peacekeeping in Mali. That's kind of in stark contrast to SADEC, which has been on and off in terms of its activism in dealing with Zimbabwe, for example. And I think the idea of African regional groupings kind of taking fuller responsibility for both security and democracy and governance will be a theme there as well, because it's a place where there's some good examples to point to. I think you said it old Jennifer. You know, the Gore historical dimension is very important. I mean, Clinton went there, Bush went there, Obama's going there. It's a touchdown, it's a safe place. There's, when you look at West Africa and you ask yourself, what are the alternatives? There's a couple of, there's maybe one or two other places you might consider seriously, but. And they did actually commit, didn't they commit a contingent battalion to the First Gulf War? There was, if you go back and look at the relation security relationship with the Senegalese, stretches back two decades in terms of collaboration and our training and equip relationships been fairly strong. The IMET program, it's been a pretty strong collaborative on the security grounds, on peacekeeping relationship going back two decades. And in fact, both Tanzania and Senegal are big millennium challenge account recipients. Tanzania has the biggest compact and is up now for a second tranche. Senegal, there were some problems with the implementation of MCC early on, having to do in part with Karim Wad, the corrupt son of the president. But that would be something to look at as well there. My worry is less about China's behavior than about the leaders with whom it engages. And I think something that we tend to miss in our lectures to China and our fears about China is that ultimately it's up to the African governments to set the terms of the engagement and whether it's on environmental due diligence, whether it's on transparency, whether it's on a level playing field for various actors, employment standards, safety regulations in mines in Zambia, those are for the partner governments to set and to enforce. So China, at various times, it's being pushed back by African governments. In South Africa, after the unions protested, the influx of cheap manufactured goods and textiles, the unions protested, and the government ultimately imposed two year quota on Chinese imported goods. In Gabon, environmental protestors protesting the lack of due diligence on some of the Chinese oil companies exploration in a national park got a moratorium put until the actual due diligence was done. In Zambia, the mining accidents and safety regulations became a major political issue, and the president in Zambia right now, a big part of his platform was in saying we have to harness how the Chinese do business here. So in case after case, where governance push, China will go along. I mean, it will play by the rules of the game. It's just that in those cases of a Democratic Republic of Congo or Guinea or a certain other places where the governance is not focused on transparency and the national good, it can be problematic. And it's problematic whether it's China or whether it's any other international investor that's not gonna want to abide by the regulations. I mean, the United States does have fairly stringent foreign corrupt practices act that has been much more active now in pursuing cases in Africa over the last years. I mean, so there's some constraints that US companies have that Chinese companies may not have, but ultimately, and I think Africans are realizing this, African governments and African publics and African entrepreneurs are realizing it's really up to us, we have the minerals, we have the thing, we have the goods that China wants, how do we structure that to our benefit? And you'll hear in the central bank in Nigeria and others saying this whole issue of processing and getting some value added while the goods are in the country, so the beneficiation in country is an increasing kind of chorus in Africa rather than seeing goods, whether it's to China, India, Malaysia, or anywhere else, just leave the continent in raw form and get processed someplace else. One thing to think about is the impact of Chinese influence in places like the Security Council and other deliberations and how its influence plays out with respect to votes by the African members on things that really matter to us like Syria or Iran or North Korea. Keep in mind, the Chinese entry into the UN in the early 70s was largely driven forward by their success at luring a very strong African vote in their favor, and that went back to all sorts of solidarity ties forged in the 60s between China and various variety of movements seeking to move into post-colonial world, and so there's a long tradition of seeing the engagement in Africa as very effective, as working to promote Chinese interest and a fairly cheap date, and it works, and it's still a very important dimension when you look at some of the, any of the most sensitive votes that are decisions that come before the Security Council to look, if we're in opposition with the Chinese, you can bet we're spending a lot of time sweating over whether we can deliver the African votes with us. Great, I wanted to ask one final question. Jennifer, you alluded earlier to some awareness of the NSA data surveillance issues in Africa. You all just got back from Europe and the G8 where some of those issues were front and center. Do you expect that to be part of this trip? I think in, I tend to think particular in South Africa that will come up where kind of the level of awareness of that is high where there is a tendency to view the United States through the prism of great imperial power. That is true in other parts of Africa, but in South Africa in particular, I think it's particularly strong. Same with criticism of drone policies and so forth. I think some of that is less controversial in the Sahel, in West Africa, in East Africa where actually the terror threat is a much more direct threat to those countries themselves. As South Africa is somewhat removed and insulated from that, but there also is this slightly knee-jerk reaction to US unilateralism, US imperial power, and these kinds of programs. So I think it will come up in public debate in South Africa in a big way. Well, thank you all for coming today. We will have a transcript out later today by close of business that'll go out by email. It'll also be posted on the CSIS website. Thank you so much for joining us here at CSIS this morning.