The Foreign Service Journal, June 2023

30 JUNE 2023 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Ambassador Herman J. Cohen, a retired FSO, directed the State Department’s Office of Central African Affairs from 1967 to 1974. After three years as political counselor in Paris (1974-1977), he was named ambas- sador to Senegal and The Gambia, based in Dakar, where he served from 1977 to 1980. He then returned to Washington to serve as principal deputy assistant secretary of State (PDAS) for intelligence and research (1980-1984) and PDAS for personnel (1984- 1987). In 1987 he was appointed as special assistant to the president and senior director for Africa at the National Security Council, a posi- tion he held for two years. Amb. Cohen is the author of three books: Intervening in Africa: Superpower Peacemaking in a Troubled Continent (Macmillan, 2000), The Mind of the African Strong Man: Conversations with Dictators, Statesmen, and Father Figures (New Academia, 2015), and U.S. Policy Toward Africa: Eight Decades of Realpolitik (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2020). He is the 2019 recipient of AFSA’s award for Lifetime Contributions to American Diplomacy. The energy sector, broadly defined, offers enormous scope for investment and economic development as U.S. constructive engagement in Africa deepens. As always, however, the proof will be in the pudding. BY HERMAN J . COHEN T he second U.S.-Africa Leaders Sum- mit took place in Washington, D.C., in December 2022 after nearly a decade. The Biden administration’s policy statement emphasized human rights, good governance, food security, peace, and a favorable environment for private sector investments. The summit’s focus was on extending and deepening the partnership between the U.S. and Africa. The first summit, hosted by President Barack Obama in 2014 and themed “Investing in the Next Generation,” had focused on trade and investment in Africa and highlighted America’s com- mitment to Africa’s security, its democratic development, and its people. Representing the U.S. Corporate Council on Africa there, I attended the session in which African leaders met with representatives of the American business community and have a vivid memory of President Obama scolding the Africans with statements like, “You must get rid of corruption.” Yet despite the tough rhetoric, in the following years U.S.- Africa relations continued much as before, with annual foreign aid budgets around $7 billion. Although the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which had been enacted in the year 2000, continued to give African countries duty-free entry for their manufactured products, only the Republics of South Africa and Senegal and the Kingdom of Lesotho have been able to take advantage of it. At the same time, however, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) established in 2004 and USAID’s ON U.S. & AFRICA: TOWARD PARTNERSHIPS FOCUS DEEPENING WORKING RELATIONSHIPS IN AFRICA