Clinton in Africa 2009

Hillary: “Women are driving positive change”

On Sunday, an op-ed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared in the South African newspaper City Press. The article was written in honor of National Women’s Day, a holiday established to recognize the 20,000 South African women who marched in Pretoria on August 9, 1956 to protest apartheid laws.

In her op-ed, Clinton explained that she was traveling across Africa to highlight the continent’s promise and possibility. But as she noted, “empowering women is key to global progress and prosperity.”

Be sure to read the full op-ed here and stay tuned to the ONE blog for updates on the final days of Secretary Clinton’s Africa trip—visits to Nigeria, Liberia and Cape Verde.

-Pooja Gupta

A new era for PEPFAR in Angola

Earlier today, Secretary Clinton signed a landmark agreement with Angola aimed at combating HIV/AIDS. This new “partnership framework” emphasizes a ground-up approach and lays out a five-year plan in which the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) will support health priorities laid out in Angola’s HIV National Strategic Plan.

Here are a few key excerpts from Secretary Clinton’s remarks on the agreement:

“This framework represents a new approach to our government’s fight against HIV/AIDS. It emphasizes a bottoms-up approach tailored for and by the country we are assisting. It represents an expansion of local capacity and health care systems that can last over time. It represents long-term planning and more intensive pursuit of prevention. It represents the use of measurements to assure effectiveness and accountability. It will allow for greater coordination among the many parties involved in preventing and treating HIV/AIDS. And finally, it will place greater attention of the affect of HIV/AIDS on women.”

“I am pleased that, thanks to the very swift work between the minister of health and the global AIDS coordinator, we are going to more than double funding for PEPFAR in Angola.”

While Angola is already a PEPFAR focus country, through this new agreement, the U.S. and Angola will work together to strengthen health systems; improve monitoring and evaluation; bolster HIV prevention activities (particularly mother-to-child transmission); address TV/HIV co-infection; address discrimination issues; encourage testing; and promote the people living with HIV/AIDS in all levels of planning and implementation.
Funding will reportedly increase from $7 million to $17 million.

-Lisa Fleisher

Tony Fratto: Clinton delivering the right message in Africa

Tony Fratto, who recently joined ONE on a trip to Ghana and Ethiopia wrote the below on Secretary Clinton’s visit to Africa. Cross-posted from the Roosevelt Room

Secretary of State Clinton would have been forgiven if she had to cut short or postpone her eleven-day, seven nation visit to Africa. With foreign policy flare-ups in Iraq, North Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and a North American summit this week, few would have blamed her — in fact few would have noticed.

Instead, she is in the midst of visiting African nations that rarely warrant attention from American media unless accompanied by photos of conflict or acute human suffering: Kenya, South Africa, Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Liberia, and Cape Verde.

So Clinton’s visit to these diverse countries — following President Obama’s visit to Ghana last month — sends an important signal about America’s strong commitment to the fate of the continent.

Clinton’s message, supporting the theme President Obama addressed in Ghana, is balanced and it’s the right one: America will partner with and support those African nations that take responsibility to fight corruption, invest in the health, education and well-being of their citizens, cooperate in countering security threats, and promote democracy, human rights and economic freedom.

As David Lane, CEO of the Africa advocacy organization, the ONE Campaign, described Clinton’s message, “It’s a two-way street and African leaders have to be responsive to their people. They have to govern justly and invest in their people. And that’s an implicit bargain as the U.S. Provides resources for development.”
Standing in counterpoint to that message of reform and responsibility is China, promising cash with no questions asked in exchange for access to Africa’s vast energy and mineral wealth.

There’s a myopic view that the U.S. strategy of engagement with Africa puts U.S. firms at a disadvantage.

In fact, it’s likely this year China will overtake the United States as the largest external investor in Africa, so the belief is that U.S firms are losing out.

They’re wrong. In an Africa dominated by strong-man kleptocrats, China’s strategy might work for time. But that’s not the Africa of today where nations across the continent are increasingly embracing free and fair elections, building strong institutions and markets, enjoying a free press and a robust civil society.

China’s blind-eye efforts to “buy” Africa threaten to slow and disrupt this transformation in Africa, but China’s strategy is ultimately destined to fail. As citizens become greater equity stake holders in their governments — through democracy, the social contract, and liberal economic freedoms — they increase their ability to demand accountability.

By continuing to support this transformation the U.S is making an investment that will, over time, reap far greater rewards both for America’s interests and for Africa’s citizens.

The Obama/Clinton message isn’t new: for decades U.S. talking points expressed much the same commitment. After the tragedies of Somalia and Rwanda, President Clinton began to give life to the rhetoric with the historic trade pact, the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).

President Bush expanded AGOA, and then went further by revolutionizing America’s economic assistance programs for Africa through the Millennium Challenge Corporation, tripling the amount of aid, demanding verifiable results from the international institutions, and creating transformative programs to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases.

The Obama Administration is building on the bipartisan momentum by reinforcing the emphasis on responsibility and accountability, and adding new, specific commitments, as with its focus on long-term investments in agriculture.

With her visit to Africa, Secretary Clinton is rightly reinforcing a stronger, more mature and what will ultimately be a more successful partnership with Africa.

-Tony Fratto

Progress in the DRC

As Secretary Clinton continues her visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), FORGE is grateful that her trip is calling the world’s attention to the millions of lives lost due to the horrific conflict occurring in the country. And yet, having worked with over 50,000 Congolese refugees for the past six years, FORGE’s true hope for the Secretary’s visit is that it will advance the public’s understanding of modern DRC far beyond the prevailing perceptions of violence and shattered lives. We are optimistic that the trip will spotlight the tremendous opportunities for peace and development in one of Africa’s most populous countries and will focus on the inspiring progress being made by the conflict’s courageous survivors.

FORGE works with displaced communities in Africa, educating and empowering refugees to break the cycle of war and poverty through methods that address the underlying causes of poverty and oppression. By re-conceptualizing humanitarian assistance to include practical skill building and human capacity development, FORGE affirms the role of local citizens as empowered agents of peace and development rather than mere beneficiaries of international agencies. Our collaborative, bottom-up approach is both innovative and imperative, but progress towards our ultimate vision of peace and prosperity takes time.

Now in our sixth year of operation, we are proud to see growing examples of the returns on our investments in individuals. Earlier this week, we received a moving email that confirms our results. The following is from Antoine Ngeleka, the former head of one of FORGE’s Computer Training Centers, who is currently getting his B.S. in Computer Science through FORGE’s university scholarship program. He has some exciting news about developments in Congo, preparations for the 2011 elections, and how FORGE’s programming is helping otherwise-ineligible populations join the reconstruction process.

Hi,

I hope all is well with you and everyone near you. I just wanted to share the compliments I received from my former students who repatriated last year and this year. The voter enrollment that officially started early June in Kinshasa to prepare the 2011 elections is starting in the rest of the country this week. The last time it happened in Congo was before the 2006 elections, and most of the people who got jobs with the electoral commission during enrollment were from urban areas. The same thing is happening this time too since it is a computerized enrollment and there are no computer training centers in most rural areas of the DRC.

And yet, I have received so far seven phone calls from former students to inform me that they managed to pass the test and got a job with the electoral commission of DRC! Two of these people are in Mwange (Moba territory), one in Pweto, three in Kirungu and one in Moba port. I believe that many more of my students were selected but haven’t yet informed me for some reasons. One of them said, “I didn’t know whether the knowledge and skills I acquired from Kala Computing Center had any value until I managed to defend your work at the test. I know now that I have an important intellectual property in me, thanks to FORGE and its staff”.

This is a sign that FORGE was not wasting time and resources in its projects but was actually investing in people. The good seeds that FORGE was sowing are now producing.

May FORGE live longer,

Antoine NGELEKA, Bachelor Of Science in Computing, Cavendish University Zambia

This beautiful testimonial is moving evidence of the benefits of FORGE programs in Zambian refugee camps. In order to capitalize on the momentum towards peace, security and reconstruction in DRC, let us all remember that the time to invest in the DRC is now. Just this week, FORGE secured official approval from the Congolese government to launch a base of operations in Katanga Province (southern DRC). FORGE’s collective efforts will help communities design their own unique solutions to local challenges and will play a valuable and unprecedented role in rebuilding civil society in the DRC. As we continue to embrace the tremendous opportunities in Africa, we look forward to sharing many more stories of individuals triumphing over war and adversity in the coming months and years.

For more information about FORGE, visit http://www.FORGEnow.org or email info[at]FORGEnow[dot]org. Please join us in this movement—there are many simple ways for every one of us to contribute.

-Kjerstin Erickson, Vaughn Hester & Abby Speight, FORGE

Take a stand for Congo’s women

A guest post from our friends at Women for Women International, an organization that provides women survivors of war, civil strife and other conflicts with the tools and resources to move from crisis and poverty to stability and self-sufficiency, thereby promoting viable civil societies.

U.S. Secretary of State Clinton’s visit to Goma offers promising signs that the epidemic of rape and sexualized violence directed against the women of Eastern Congo will at last become a central issue in the U.S. foreign policy agenda. It represents hope for the hundreds of thousands of women, like Honorata, who have been raped, tortured, and then rejected by their families. We appeal to Secretary Clinton to end this war on Congo’s women.

When Honorata was captured in 2002 (a 48-year old mother of six), her captors referred to her as “a meal.” Everybody who was hungry for sex could take her. After raping her, they would pick up a rag, put it on the end of their rifle, and insert it into her, saying that they were “wiping her clean.” We see so many women like Honorata in our work in Eastern Congo, women who are taken as sex slaves, subjected to barbaric torture and inconceivable violence, and then cast out by their families and communities due to the powerful stigma of rape.

When I met Honorata last fall, she told me about this stigma for rape survivors in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). After over a year of brutal torture, she managed to escape. But her ordeal was not over. Her husband refused to take her back, calling her “a disgrace to the family.” One day rebels attacked the town and she was taken again, along with two pregnant women. They were gang raped. Her front teeth were knocked out during ‘caresses’ they gave her with rifle butts. Her eyesight was impaired due to the severe beatings she endured, and her ring finger became stiff after they sawed off her wedding band.

But there is reason to hope. Secretary Clinton is visiting Goma to hear the stories of women like Honorata, women who are speaking out against rape and calling for justice. And people around the world are calling for action and taking action themselves, sponsoring women like Honorata and supporting them as they rebuild their lives and communities.

I now call Honorata a colleague. She participated in the Women for Women International program as a sponsored sister, receiving economic assistance and training that helped her rebuild her life, send her children to school and even build a house. She also became a staff member of our DRC chapter upon graduation, becoming a Women for Women International trainer in her own right and a community organizer encouraging fellow rape survivors to break the silence and demand justice.

Together we can bring a lasting peace to Congo. You can sponsor a Congolese woman like Honorata through our program. You can run for Congo Women. You can demand that the international community make a stand for Congo’s women. I think we can all hope that Secretary Clinton’s visit to Goma represents a first step in that direction.

-Lyric Thompson, Women for Women International

Energy in Angola

On Sunday, August 9th, Secretary Clinton arrived in Angola, the third African country on her seven nation tour. Secretary Clinton met with government officials, including Angolan President Eduardo dos Santos, to discuss good governance and greater cooperation with the United States.

With a population of 17 million, Angola is one of the largest oil producers in sub-Saharan Africa, rivaling Nigeria as the largest sub-Saharan African source of crude oil for the United States. Angola has been working with the U.S. government to increase transparency and recently started publishing their oil revenues online. Yet even with these revenues, two-thirds of the Angolan population still lives on less than $2 a day. During her meeting, Secretary Clinton pressed the government to do more to fight corruption and emphasized the importance of the country’s first post-war presidential election. The elections were initially scheduled to take place this year, but it appears that they will be delayed until 2010. The government has said that they would like to approve a new constitution before holding elections, but critics argue that the President is intentionally delaying elections in order to extend his three decade rule. The government held parliamentary elections last year and in a press conference with Secretary Clinton, the Angolan Minister of Foreign Affairs said they needed more time to conduct a presidential election.

It is thought that Secretary Clinton is seeking a strengthened relationship with Angola in order to ensure America’s position in African energy relations. U.S. officials say Clinton’s visit is intended to demonstrate the government’s interest in Angola as a major energy supplier to the U.S.

Secretary Clinton also stated an interest in playing a larger role in Angola’s agriculture sector. Angola was once a major food exporter, but it now imports over half of its food.

Clinton is the first U.S. Secretary of State to visit Angola since Colin Powell’s trip in 2002. A U.S. president has not visited Angola since it became independent in 1975.

-Edith Jibunoh

Clinton on Kenyan Governance

On Thursday, August 6th, Secretary Clinton continued delivering her message of good governance to Kenyans when she spoke at a public forum hosted by the University of Nairobi. She once again expressed dissatisfaction with the progress made by the Kenyan leadership in addressing governance issues, especially after the post-election violence. She focused on corruption and told the audience that the public has a significant role to play in the fight against corruption by being watchdogs and exposing corrupt practices. She used Iran as an example of the use of technology in forcing government reform and encouraged the Kenyan youth to use social tools on the internet, such as Twitter and Facebook, to report cases of corruption. Secretary Clinton was asked for a response to Prime Minister’s Odinga’s statements earlier in the week where he said Kenya did not need a lecture from the west on governance, she said that ignoring Kenya’s internal issues was the easy option but the U.S. government’s criticisms were from a friend to the Kenyan people.

In addressing public concerns that even when corruption is exposed, charges are never acted upon, Clinton insisted that this should not stop the pressure, as the discourse would eventually force change. In this context she said that only Kenyans could figure out what would work for them, once again echoing President Obama’s messages in Ghana about the need for home grown solutions.

Sec. Clinton left Kenya on Thursday and continued her Africa tour in South Africa where on Friday, August 7th, she announced that the U.S. and South Africa would work more closely together to push reforms in Zimbabwe so that the power sharing agreement would be fully implemented. She noted the important role of South Africa on the continent, as well as their sound economic policies which leave them well positioned to propel growth throughout Africa. Because of President Obama’s high prioritization of Africa, the administration recognizes the importance of working with South Africa to tackle the continent’s social and development concerns. Secretary Clinton also had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. From South Africa, Secretary Clinton will proceed on to Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Liberia and Cape Verde.

-Edith Jibunoh