The Foreign Service Journal, May 2004

shocked USAID Administrator Peter McPherson, just back from his first visit to the feeding camps, insisting that the U.S. would act immediately and massively to ease the suffering. In the early 1990s we missed a good chance to help speed Africa’s political and economic progress. Instead of for- mulating a new development strategy after the Soviet Union’s demise, we found it more expedient to simply reduce — or eliminate — assistance levels in those coun- tries whose dictators’ political support was no longer needed. Togolese President Gnassingbe Eyadema, for example, must still ask himself why he went from being America’s “friend” to a target of criticism in a matter of months. And it was easy to criticize African dictators because there was no geopolitical risk to the U.S. I recall a discussion I had with the Reverend Jesse Jackson in Cameroon in 1993, when he asked why the U.S. was so quick to condemn African states’ undemocratic practices while tolerating similar behavior from certain Arab states; there was no easy response. In addition to sanctioning former allies for authoritar- ian practices, there was the open question of how much democracy we should expect in Africa. A lively debate on this topic had ensued in 1990 among U.S. diplomats in the field and within the department, and continued to some extent throughout much of the decade. Several pioneering ambassadors recognized how important polit- ical liberalization was to the overall development process and went beyond Washington’s mandate of pushing democratization, usually in the face of active hostility from their host country governments. For example, in the early 1990s Ambassador Frances Cook became anathema to the Cameroonian regime, even as her pop- ularity soared among ordinary citizens, because she pub- licly challenged President Paul Biya’s autocratic practices. As the decade progressed, Washington eventually caught up with the field in democratic fervor. By the mid-1990s, when U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria Walter Carrington was confronting the brutal and corrupt Abacha regime, he did so withWashington’s enthusiastic support. Other Western donors had also evolved toward the view that for Africa to truly develop, economic and political liberalization would have to move in tandem. Now, the only missing ingredient was the African lead- ership itself, a fact that African human rights and community activists, intel- lectuals, and oppositionists had long understood. An opportunity arrived with the emergence of a “new genera- tion” of African heads of state — such as Alpha Konare (Mali), Meles Zenawi (Ethiopia) and Isaias Afworki (Eritrea) — leaders President Bill Clinton was quick to acknowledge as the vanguard for a “new” Africa. Unfortunately, the early promise never materialized, as a series of new dis- asters — the Rwandan genocide, the Ethio-Eritrean War, chaos in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), and the deepening HIV/AIDS pandemic — joined those still ongoing, such as the wars in Sudan, Somalia and the Mano River states. Despite the set- backs, Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Susan Rice and National Security Council Africa Director Gayle Smith persisted, to the end of their tenures, in trying to resolve the crises and advancing Africa’s interests. Consequently, the Clinton administration can claim one of the major historic achievements in U.S.-Africa rela- tions: passage — over significant domestic opposition — of the African Growth and Opportunity Act in 2000. Current Policy The arrival of the Bush administration three years ago worried many Africans, who assumed that they, and their problems, would now largely be forgotten by the U.S. These initial concerns, however, were mitigated as President Bush, Secretary Colin Powell, and Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Walter Kansteiner all made clear that the administration would remain active vis-à-vis Africa. In addition, President Bush’s team forcefully advanced part of the Clinton agenda (such as enthusiasti- cally supporting AGOA and advocating increased resources to fight HIV/AIDS). Assistant Secretary Kansteiner’s strong belief that Africa must strengthen its private sector and market-oriented mechanisms to truly develop was a timely complement to the continuing focus on political liberalization. This term has also evolved over the years from an initial focus on replacing long-term incumbents through “free and fair” elections to encom- passing the full range of “governance” issues: e.g., corrup- tion, judicial and civil service reform, political decentral- ization, telecom and Internet liberalization, etc. And F O C U S 20 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A Y 2 0 0 4 The Clinton administration can claim one of the major historic achievements in U.S.-Africa relations.