Africa Policy Breakfast #2: AGOA and Obama in Africa

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Ade Adefuye, AGOA, ECOWAS, Florie Liser, Grant T. Harris, Karen Bass, Microsoft Africa, Power Africa, Somduth Soborun, Stephanie Peters, Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders, YALI

As I have previously mentioned, AGOA is not a mechanism for American engagement in Africa that I find particularly compelling.  However, the glowing DC discourse on AGOA is probably indicative of a need for me to brush up on its provisions.

Yesterday I attended my second Africa Policy Breakfast (per my usual disclaimer I departed 30 minutes early), an 8am gathering of DC African power brokers in a very rectangular room in the main Library of Congress building.  I missed the full list of

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AllAfrica.com’s Premium Advertisers

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African Capacity Building Foundation, African Development Bank, allafrica.com, ECOWAS

Observation of the day: I’m sure I’ve scrolled over it many times before, but I just noticed that several African international organizations are premium advertiser’s on AllAfrica.com (which has a DC office).

I find it particularly interesting that ECOWAS, which received significant criticism for it’s inability to engage the situation in Mali prior to the French intervention, is one of these sponsors.

The sponsorship of the African Capacity Building Foundation and African Development Bank are also intriguing, but make a bit more sense to me.

All in all, I think this is an interesting way for these organizations to spend money, particularly in light of repeated requests by the continent’s premier regional organization, the African Union, for United Nations funding of it’s participation in various peacekeeping missions.

African Heads of State in DC: Criticism of Obama’s African Policy

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Blaise Compaoré, ECOWAS, Ernest Bai Koroma, Idriss Déby, Joyce Banda, Macky Sall, Obama Africa Policy

Africa is a Country (a highly recommended blog) has a very interesting piece (with videos) on Obama’s recent hosting of the Heads of State of Cape Verde, Malawi, Sierra Leone, and Senegal (which I wrote about in advance).

Find a transcript of the meeting here.

While I think the author does make a valid critical point about Obama meeting with all of the leaders simultaneously (not a common approach  with leaders perceived as being more important), I do believe that there is some value in putting leaders together in small groups, particularly those from west Africa, who belong to the same sub-regional bloc, ECOWAS.

As for the pictures of Obama and Michelle with some of Africa’s more dictatorial leaders, that reflects , in my opinion, a huge lapse in African policy that has been existent since 1960 and continues, even in this day where the rhetoric of democracy is sung at all turns.

Notable Examples:

In Chad, the former rebel leader, President Idriss Deby, has shown his usefulness to the West in pursuing Mali’s Islamic militants and the putschist Compaore in Burkina Faso is regularly celebrated for his role as a regional mediator (despite strong indications of his role in many of those conflicts).  Washington is still a long way from matching policy with rhetoric.

As Obama asks himself, “number one, how do we continue to build on strong democracies?”

Monday at SAIS Part I: Nigerian Governance (and Foreign Relations)

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ECOWAS, Ike Nwachukwu, Nigeria, Nigeria foreign policy, Peter Lewis

Ike Nwachukwu, Director General of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, discussed ‘Political Prospects and Democratic Challenges in Nigeria’ at SAIS yesterday.  Nwachukwu has had a distinguished career as a general in the Nigerian army, a military governor, later as a democratically elected senator, and at the pinnacle of his career, served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs under the military regime of Ibrahim Babangida.