Barack Obama
Clinton rues Africa corruption, trade barriers –Trade barriers, poor infrastructure and corruption are holding back efforts to boost and diversify Africa’s trade, said Secretary Clinton. She stressed the administration’s efforts to “boost trade and aid effectiveness” through their trade and development strategy. (Reuters)
Obama convenes forum of young African leaders – Declaring that “Africa’s future belongs to its young people,” President Obama met with more than 100 young African entrepreneurs from across the continent Tuesday. On the topic of HIV/AIDS, he stressed the need for successful prevention programs to bolster traditional donor funding. (Stephen Kendrick, ABC)
Kenya Stakes Reinvention on Constitution Vote – Kenyans are voting today on a new constitution that hems in Kenya’s imperial-style presidency, devolves more power to local government and creates a bill of rights. Donor nations, including the U.S., are eager to see it pass, having invested in voter drives and civic education campaigns. (Jeffrey Gettleman, The New York Times)
Education key to empowering women – The State Department’s Robert Hormats highlights last week’s African Women’s Entrepreneurship Program, which brought together 34 African women business leaders to connect with peers and U.S. policymakers. He stresses investing in education as critical to empowering more female leaders in the future. (Huffington Post)
Experts roll out malaria map, urge mosquito study – Nearly 3 billion people – two-fifths of the world’s population – were at risk of contracting malaria in 2009 and closer study of the mosquito’s life cycle, including what occurs beyond the blood feeding processes, is needed to combat the disease, maintained researchers in two reports release Tuesday. (Tan Ee Lyn, Reuters)
New literary series views Africa through African eyes – Fourteen African writers have set out to document Africa’s diversity in a series of books and blogs partly inspired by the World Cup, with hopes of highlighting a continent often framed as a monolithic block blighted by conflict, hunger and corruption. (Yinka Ibukun, Washington Post)
President Obama’s three-day Young African Leaders forum officially kicks off today. The effort aims to facilitate good partnerships with Africa and reinforce Obama’s notion that ‘the future of Africa is up to Africans themselves.’
The forum comes at an important time. This year, 17 countries in sub-Saharan Africa will celebrate 50 years of independence.
In order to honor this significant achievement, nearly 115 young leaders from more than 40 African countries have converged in Washington to share and discuss ways to empower the youth demographic, practice good governance and create economic opportunities.
According to AFP, these young leaders will have a chance to participate in a town hall meeting led by the president, meet with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and talk to other government officials and civil society leaders.
It’s events like these that can help Africans take responsibility for their governments and help promote and support accountability, transparency and stability. Read more about the forum and listen to keynote speeches at the U.S. Department of State website — and make sure to watch Obama’s live town hall discussion at 2 PM on the White House website.
On Friday, the Obama Administration unveiled the United States’ plan for meeting the Millennium Development Goals, eight ambitious targets aimed at reducing global poverty and disease by 2015.
Entitled Celebrate, Innovate and Sustain: Towards 2015 and Beyond, the strategy is the first official document to articulate the US approach towards the MDGs. It does so from a unique angle. To underscore the interconnectedness of the MDGs and the need for a comprehensive approach to achieve them, instead of cataloguing inputs to each of the eight individual goals, it lays out four overarching imperatives to guide US development policy broadly – leveraging innovation, investing in sustainability, tracking development outcomes (not just dollars) and enhancing the principle and practice of mutual accountability.
The strategy also outlines the elements critical to achieving these principles, many of which have been tested across a variety of US development programs over the past decade and are included in ONE’s recommendations to all member states ahead of the UN High-Level Meeting to review the MDGs. For example, the plan identifies good governance and broad-based economic growth as critical to achieving sustainable poverty reduction and preserving development gains already achieved. Investing in local capacity to strengthen service delivery is also included as a key component of sustainability, as is the empowerment of women and girls and the mainstreaming of gender into core development efforts. The strategy also has a welcome focus on results and accountability. It calls for a “relentless commitment to impact” through enhanced monitoring and evaluation and strengthened data collection capacity, and acknowledges the gaps between rhetoric and action on donors and partner country efforts to improve aid effectiveness.
With less than two months left before the UN meeting, the US has now taken the first step towards providing leadership in New York. However, a successful outcome in September – with a global, results-oriented action plan for 2010 to 2015 – will require some more details on how this plan will become a reality. The US has now articulated a solid set of principles to guide its efforts to fight poverty – something that has been missing in US development policy to date. To fully deliver on President Obama’s pledge to come to this year’s UN summit with a global plan to make the MDGs a reality, the next step will be to work with partners to turn these principles into a globally agreed strategy.
To do this, the US should first clarify how its four principles – innovation, sustainability, tracking development outcomes and mutual accountability – will complement other countries’ efforts to meet the MDGs and feed into the global plan that is adopted in September. All countries will be coming to the UN in September with their own strategies and commitments to achieve the MDGs. It is critical that these are bound together into a comprehensive package so that all actors can be held accountable to their commitments after September.
Second, the strategy says that across its development agencies the US will “retain, improve, and, when appropriate, also expand development-related activities that further these four imperatives.” Further details on this – including a clear timeline, process, and metrics for success – are critical to ensuring that the strategy is implemented.
Finally, as the Administration begins to develop a plan for implementation, it also needs to provide clarity on how this new strategy will fit into ongoing efforts to reform US development policy – including the Administration’s Presidential Study Directive and Congress’s rewrite of the Foreign Assistance Act. Coordination across the US government will ensure that all US development tools are maximized and that any new strategy is elevated as a cornerstone of US foreign policy for the long-term.
Flynn Coleman is one of this year’s winners for Concern Worldwide’s annual creative writing competition. The following is an excerpt based on her award-winning essay, which urges President Obama to support the Millennium Development Goals for the sake of gender equality.
What if just one of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) — achieving significant progress toward gender equality by 2015 — met its target, and in the process ensured that other MDGs would be realized as well?
In the developing world, women are gatekeepers and influencers in their villages. They have deep knowledge of local eco-systems and are the primary water gatherers, cooks, domestic organizers and healing agents for their families. When a mother is given a malaria bed net or attends a course on sexual education, she shares the net with her babies and an understanding of HIV and AIDS transmission with her partner and her friends.
Armed with a voice in community discussions, political decisions and leadership roles, women will rise above their poverty and pain. Most importantly, they will bring their children, husbands, brothers, mothers and friends with them. Women will apply the skills they learn in business school back to their hometowns and local communities.
Women will teach their children about sustainable living, ensuring environmental protection for the next generation. They will send their children to school, making sure they are wearing shoes and carrying pencils.
What if I told you that I know who holds the key to a future free from the torture of hunger, the lack of schooling, the isolation of discrimination, the grief of infant death, the confusion of sparse pre-natal care, the agony of disease, the devastation of environmental degradation and the pain of systemic injustice in the developing world?
What if I told you, that it was your daughter?
- Flynn Coleman, legal advocate for human, animal and environmental rights
With the ongoing International AIDS Conference in Vienna, the global HIV/AIDS epidemic has been thrust back into the spotlight the last several days. The Guardian has this report of the US response to criticism of recent AIDS funding:
Barack Obama has been personally hurt by claims he reneged on promises to increase US funding to fight Aids, the head of his administration’s efforts to counter the disease has said, rejecting the criticism as unjust.
Eric Goosby, who leads Pepfar, the President’s Emergency Plan For Aids Relief, has himself been targeted by noisy demonstrators at the international Aids conference in Vienna who have invaded the platform, accusing the US of allowing people with HIV to die. The issue of funding in an economic recession – and particularly the US government’s contribution – has been the tense underlying theme of the meeting.
Activists say Obama promised an extra $50bn (£33bn) for Aids by 2013 before he was elected but is now flat-lining Aids funding, with an increase of just 2.5% in 2011. Obama has made HIV/Aids part of a global health initiative that is to get an overall funding increase of 8% – but other initiatives, particularly on cutting the deaths of women in childbirth and their babies, will get a bigger increase.
Goosby said Obama was disturbed by activists’ charges, pointing out that the US is the world’s largest donor towards the fight against HIV/Aids.
“I think it has been frustrating to be presented as a non-contributor. The administration and the president have been hurt by the characterisation that the US has not stepped up to the plate and taken this commitment seriously in all arenas,” Goosby said.
The US provided more than 50% of total global health spending, he said, and in many sub-Saharan African countries Pepfar provided between 40% and 95% of the Aids treatment response. “That really reflects an extraordinary commitment, unmatched and unparalleled by any other country on the planet, not for one year but for the past seven years,” he said.
Before Obama was elected Pepfar had put 1.8 million people in the developing world on treatment, Goosby said. That was now up to 2.5 million and Pepfar was committed to reaching 4 million. “What other country has done anything close to that?” he asked.
This week, President Obama will announce a national AIDS strategy to reduce the number of new infections. Many, including us at ONE, were startled and troubled by the news last year that the District of Columbia had an HIV positive rate that is still higher than many African countries. This pandemic is truly global and needs to be fought everywhere. We’ll keep you posted when the strategy is announced.
Here’s an excerpt from the New York Times report:
President Obama will unveil a new national strategy this week to curb the AIDS epidemic by slashing the number of new infections and increasing the number of people who get care and treatment.
“Annual AIDS deaths have declined, but the number of new infections has been static and the number of people living with H.I.V. is growing,” says a final draft of the report, obtained by The New York Times.
In the report, the administration calls for steps to reduce the annual number of new H.I.V. infections by 25 percent within five years. “Approximately 56,000 people become infected each year, and more than 1.1 million Americans are living with H.I.V.,” the report says.
Mr. Obama plans to announce the strategy, distilled from 15 months of work and discussions with thousands of people around the country, at the White House on Tuesday.
While acknowledging that “increased investments in certain key areas are warranted,” the report does not propose a major increase in federal spending. It says the administration will redirect money to areas with the greatest need and population groups at greatest risk, including gay and bisexual men and African-Americans. The federal government now spends more than $19 billion a year on domestic AIDS programs.
AFP reports:
President Barack Obama lauded the “heroism” of Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf on Thursday, saying her commitment to democracy stood as an example for other troubled African nations.
Obama met Sirleaf in the Oval Office, and pledged the United States would stand with Liberia at every step of the way of its democratic development.
“I have been an extraordinary admirer of her work for many years now…. The United States and Liberia are close friends, longstanding partners, and Liberia is now emerging from a very difficult period,” Obama said.
“Part of the reason it has been able to emerge is because of the heroism and courage of President Sirleaf.”
“She is committed to the rule of law, made strides in reforming the judiciary and in all these endeavors I want to make sure the people of Liberia understand… that the United States is a constant friend and partner.”
Obama said Sirleaf’s example should be taken as inspiration to other African nations including, Guinea, Ivory Coast and Niger.
Sirleaf said her country had made important progress, and she thanked Obama for his and America’s support.
Africa’s first elected female head of state, Sirleaf said that she would not hide the fact that Liberia had challenges, but added that all basic freedoms were alive in her country today.
“We said that we were going to make Liberia rise again. I come today on behalf of the Liberian people to say that we have made a lot of progress,” she said.
