By VOA News
U.S. President Donald Trump says the United States will remove Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism after the country follows through on an agreement to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to U.S. terror victims and families.
Continue reading “Trump tweets that US will Remove Sudan from Terror List”
by Kyle Murphy | Just Security
U.S. democracy is facing its greatest challenge in a generation, simultaneously confronting an authoritarian leader, a global pandemic, and the consequences of centuries of systemic racism and inequality. Americans tend to think of our country as democracy’s exemplar, and the United States has a long history of pointing out governance problems abroad, suggesting steps to solve them, and often devoting resources to various forms of intervention.
Continue reading “We the People: Lessons from Africa for Defeating Authoritarianism in 2020 U.S. Election”
By Reuben E. Brigety II | Foreign Affairs
In April 2013, when I was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, I accompanied former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and Mayor of Atlanta Andrew Young to a meeting with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe. Then Secretary of State John Kerry had dispatched us to Harare to convince Mugabe to allow free and fair elections later that summer.
Continue reading “If America Were in Africa, U.S. Diplomats Would Be Ringing the Alarm Bells”
By Judd Devermont and Aubrey Hruby | Bloomberg
Against a backdrop of rising tensions with the Soviets in 1959, President John F. Kennedy delivered a speech in New York that presented a new strategic approach toward African nations and U.S. global leadership in a world defined by great-power competition.
Continue reading “Trump Student Visa Plan Will Hurt Africa — and the U.S.”
Buoyed by bipartisan commitment and a new government agency, the United States has taken new and significant steps to help drive investment in Africa, strengthen the region’s dynamic economies, create lucrative opportunities for US and African businesses, and advance US foreign-policy goals in the region.
Continue reading “The US government makes its big push for investment in Africa”
By John Campbell | Foreign Affairs
Continue reading “U.S. Africa Policy Needs a Reset”
By Naunihal Singh | Africa Report
Regardless of who wins the US elections in November, analysts have argued that a process of updating and revitalising US policy towards Africa is overdue. New data from Afrobarometer’s latest round of public attitude surveys conducted across 18 African countries during 2019/2020 provide several guideposts for US policy makers.
Continue reading “US/Africa policy must have voices of ordinary people from across the continent”
By Gracelin Baskaran | Brookings Institution
In recent months, the U.S. began negotiations for a bilateral free trade agreement with Kenya. These negotiations are aligned with the current administration’s vision for trade reciprocity rather than unilateral trade preference programs. Although these negotiations could produce the first bilateral trade agreement between the U.S. and a sub-Saharan African country, a shift from regional preferential trade agreements to bilateral free trade agreements could undermine the growth of smaller countries, who may not be of enough economic interest to the United States.
Continue reading “US-Africa trade relations: Why is AGOA better than a bilateral free trade agreement?”
Zineb Jammeh, the wife of Gambia’s former president, Yahya Jammeh, has been hit with U.S. sanctions for her role in the economic plunder of the tiny West African county during her husband’s 22-year rule, the U.S. Treasury said on Tuesday.
Continue reading “Zineb Jammeh | US sanctions ex-Gambian First Lady”
By Yahia Hatim | MoroccoWorldNews
The Diversity in National Security Network, a US coalition of security and foreign policy professionals, has selected Moroccan-American Ph.D. student Sarah Alaoui among 30 “next generation leaders.”
Continue reading “Moroccan-American Sarah Alaoui Among Rising MENA Foreign Policy Leaders”
By Stephen Ndegwa | CGTN
That U.S. President Donald Trump does not have an iota of respect for black people is not debatable. Trump has not even shied away from going on record about it, unofficially of course, openly expressing his utter disgust for Africans, both in Africa and the diaspora.
Continue reading “Trump hates black people. Period !”
By Casey Riddle and Richard Roth | CNN
The US imposed new sanctions on ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced sanctions against two International Criminal Court officials — the Trump administration’s most aggressive move yet to try to deter an ICC investigation into possible war crimes by US military and intelligence officials.
By Jesse Samasuwo | Atlantic Sentinel
Donald Trump has never been to Africa. At least not as president. Not for six decades, since John F. Kennedy, has an American president even met with fewer African leaders than Trump. During JFK’s time, of course, most African states were still colonial territories. His attitude toward the continent appears to be mired in either indifference or outright hostility, as his “shithole countries” comment and repeated (but unsuccessful) efforts to cut foreign aid demonstrate.
Continue reading “After November: Can US-Africa Ties Be Rebuilt?”
By Emmanuel Onwubiko | The Nigerian Voice
Before the end of the year, it will become clearer who between the Republican Party and Democratic Party of the United States of America will occupy the White House for another four years. For a fact whoever occupies the White House becomes the leader of the free world and indeed the policies espoused by such a person significantly affects the human populace globally with Nigeria and Africa not being an exception.
Continue reading “Trump Versus Biden | Who would Favor Africa?”
BY ROBBIE GRAMER | Foreign Policy
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has approved a plan to halt U.S. foreign assistance to Ethiopia as the Trump administration attempts to mediate a dispute with Egypt and Sudan over the East African country’s construction of a massive dam on the Nile River.
Continue reading “U.S. Halts Some Foreign Assistance Funding to Ethiopia Over Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam Dispute with Egypt, Sudan”
The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation is a new, modernised agency that will support investments in developing countries to drive economic growth, support stability, and improve livelihoods. In this briefing to launch the programme, Overseas Private Investment Corporation Acting President and Chief Executive Officer David Bohigian give insight into the initiative. Excerpts:
By Dave Boyer
Money for a “Green New Deal in Africa” and a solar panel project for Central Asia are among the targets for the Trump White House as it aims to slash what it sees as a bloated U.S. foreign aid budget.
Continue reading “‘Green New Deal in Africa’ on Trump’s list of foreign aid cuts”
By Rainer Zitelmann
In 1990, the UN made a commitment to reduce global poverty by 50% within 25 years. That this ambitious goal has been achieved is largely due to China’s success. Within the same period, the percentage of the population living below the poverty line decreased from 56.8% to 42.7% across the continent of Africa. However, with 20% of Africans living under the specter of starvation – a higher percentage than anywhere else in the world – there is still a long way to go.
Continue reading “Africa Doesn’t Need More Development Aid, It Needs More Capitalism”
Washington DC – May 1, 2017: The 115th Congress of the United States of America passes a Resolution (‘HR 1242’) establishing the “400 Years African American History Commission” to carry out activities to commemorate the anniversary.
Washington DC – Friday, Sept 28, 2018: President Akufo Addo launches ‘Year of Return’
Nick J. Danby
After two nefarious scrambles for Africa during the colonialism of the nineteenth-century and the Cold War in the twentieth century, another surge in foreign activity—another scramble—has affected Africa. With its exponential population and economic potential, governments and corporations from outside Africa have strengthened their relationships on the continent.
Continue reading “More than Just Investment: Why America Was Once So Popular in Africa”
By Howard W. French
Earlier this month, The New York Times created a mini furor on the internet with a job listing for someone to lead its coverage of East Africa. The announcement described it as an opportunity “to dive into news and enterprise across a wide range of countries, from the deserts of Sudan and the pirate seas of the Horn of Africa, down through the forests of Congo and shores of Tanzania.” It went on to speak of the region’s “many vital story lines, including terrorism, the scramble for resources, the global contest with China,” among others.
Continue reading “How to Fix America’s Absentee Diplomacy in Africa”
By Edwin Naidu
Senior United States diplomat Tibor Nagy, assistant secretary of state for African affairs, said his country is committed to strengthening ties on the African continent through stronger trade links and investment in higher education.
Nagy, the former vice-provost for international affairs at Texas Tech University in the US, spoke glowingly of the “enduring partnership between the United States and South Africa”.
Read more from source
By Landry Signé and Eric Olander
The official launch of the Trump Administration’s Prosper Africa program at the Corporate Council on Africa’s U.S.-Africa Business Summit in Mozambique on June 19 comes after months of policy talk about ramping up trade and investment between the United States and African countries. Prosper Africa aligns with the Trump administration’s Africa strategy, introduced by National Security Adviser John Bolton last December, which aims to promote prosperity, security, and stability in U.S.-Africa relations, and confirms the administration’s prioritization of trade and investment to reach those three objectives.
By Chris Harmse
US deputy Secretary of Commerce Karen on Wednesday announced at the opening ceremony of the U.S.-Africa Business Summit on Wednesday in Maputo, that the Trump administration message to Africa is simple and blunt:”
Choose the United States over China and Russia.”
If the United States imports its low-value goods from Africa, rather than producing them domestically, then the U.S. economy can focus on what it best produces: high-value specialized goods and services.
By Alexander C. R. Hammond
Africa is about to lend a hand to the United States. Last week, Africa implemented the world’s largest free-trade area, and that’s great news for American foreign policy.
Continue reading “Africa’s New Free-Trade Area is Great News for America”
By Nick Westcott
Does President Donald Trump have a policy on Africa, and if so what? The answer to this question is both interesting and revealing.
President Trump does not seem to pay much attention to Africa. Apart from his well-publicised comments to a group of senators in January 2018 dismissing the whole of Africa as “shithole countries,” he has not said much about the continent.
Continue reading “The Trump administration’s Africa policy”
By Shobana Shankar
To consider that Nigeria, infamous for anti-vaxx campaigns leading to polio outbreaks, has any lessons for Americans may be shocking. But as measles cases in the U.S. climb to an all-time high after the disease was declared eliminated in 2000, U.S. public health officials have been looking for ways to address the problem.
Continue reading “What the US could learn about vaccination from Nigeria”
By Ed Royce and Robin Renee Sanders
Since the U.S. BUILD Act was signed into law last October, many people across Africa as well as members of the Africa Diaspora have been asking what this global initiative might do to help revitalize American engagement with the continent. The answer is: quite a lot!
The goal of BUILD or the — “Better Utilization of Investments Leading to Development Act” – is exactly what the American private sector has long sought. BUILD does a number of positive things to boost the U.S.-Africa economic, business, and development relationship.
Continue reading “HOW THE BUILD ACT CAN INVIGORATE U.S. ECONOMIC TIES IN AFRICA”
A number of top US officials recently visited South Africa at the request of President Donald Trump as part of an investigation into the country’s land expropriation process.
The delegation, which included US Deputy Foreign Secretary John J. Sullivan, met with AgriSA, Grain SA, and ANC officials on Friday (15 March) to discuss how the land expropriation process may impact property rights in the country.
In a statement released on Monday, AgriSA outlined what was discussed in the meeting and the issues that were raised.
Continue reading “4 things discussed during the US land expropriation talks in South Africa”
Former American slaves were moved to Liberia in the 1800s to solve the “problem” of black and white people living alongside each other. Their descendants are facing the same journey.
Afomu Kelley was just 11 years old when she left Liberia with her mother in the early days of a civil war in 1990. She remembers standing in a crowd jostling to board an airplane to the United States for what she thought would be a six-week vacation.
Instead, the war in Liberia escalated and Kelley, now 40, never returned to the West African country. She grew up in Northern Virginia, where she finished high school early, and attended the University of Maryland. She has an American accent. Sometimes she doesn
But at the end of this month, she may be forced to return to a homeland she barely remembers.
On March 31, the program that has allowed Kelley and more than 800 other Liberian immigrants to live legally in the United States for decades will end, the result of President Trump’s decision to terminate a protection against deportation that has been in place for nearly 28 years.
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