The State Department Talks about 50 Years of African Unity

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African democracy, AU Golden Jubilee, good governance in Africa, John Kerry Africa, PEPFAR, Reuben Brigety, Teresa Heinz Kerry

The transcript of Secretary John Kerry’s remarks at the AU’s 50th anniversary dinner is quite interesting, especially when contrasted to the similar sentiments mirrored by the Bureau of African Affairs Deputy Assistant Secretary, Reuben Brigety, a few days earlier, to commemorate the same occasion at the Washington Hilton (alas, no one invited me to cover the event).

Kerry speaks of his wife’s childhood in colonial Mozambique and her education in South Africa.  He uses the political changes in southern Africa since that time to highlight Africa’s steady march toward good governance.  Brigety invokes the American civil rights movement in his remarks to show the common strides that both regions have made over the past 50 years.  Both mention PEPFAR, address Africa’s youthful demographics, and reference the statistic that six of the ten fastest growing world economies are in Africa (amazingly no mention of AGOA by Kerry!).

There must be a concerted effort to get all parties on the same playbook in the aftermath of the Benghazi incident.  Hopefully more studious attention to the democracy promotion playbook will lead to a shift in US policy that currently supports regimes obviously undeserving of the democratic mantle (Uganda, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, etc.).

 

 

John Kerry’s First Africa Visit as Sec. of State

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Africa Union, AU Golden Jubilee, Boko Haram, John Kerry Africa, Johnnie Carson, Sudan - South Sudan relatons

John Kerry has just completed his first trip to Africa as Secretary of State.  He briefly touched down in Ethiopia to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the founding of the Organization of African Unity (now known as the African Union).  Kerry’s time in Ethiopia appears to have passed relatively unremarkably and the African part of the trip itself appears to be an afterthought, sandwiched between travels in the Middle East (he also met with the Egyptian president while in Ethiopia).

The press that Kerry did receive has focused on two issues.

• The Secretary met with key players from both Sudan and South Sudan.   Kerry has been engaged in Sudanese affairs for a while now, so this indicates a willingness to become involved in situations in which there is a preexisting comfort level (this probably bodes ill for high-level US engagement in countries like Zimbabwe, the Central African Republic, Guinea, etc.)

• The Secretary apparently cautioned Nigerian security forces on the need to refrain from human rights abuses while combatting Boko Haram militants.  While this isn’t as bad as Johnnie Carson’s ‘choices have consequences’ meddling comment, I do think it was unadvised.  Nigeria’s excesses may indeed be fueling Boko Haram’s insurgency, but the AU’s Golden Jubilee is not the proper forum in which to deliver these remarks.  High level US engagement in Africa has been traditionally sparse.  Why criticize a strong ally, one of Africa’s most powerful nations, at a forum that has convened the whole continent?  I’d rather see strong remarks directed to Togo, Chad, Burkina Faso, Gabon, Cameroon or other nations with major governance issues and more explicit authoritarianism.

Do any readers know when Kerry first visited Africa?