Huffington Post: The United States and Africa: Hopes for the President’s Second Term – As President Obama’s second term begins, African-American Voices for Africa (AAVA), a network of religious and civic leaders formed in partnership with Bread for the World, urges him to ensure that policies toward Africa make justice and equal partnership key principles of engagement. Vital U.S. policies AAVA is pushing for include: effective development assistance and trade for African agriculture, efforts to promote maternal and child nutrition, reduction of the African debt burden and encouraging standards of social responsibility. (Rev. Derrick Boykin)
Guardian: How social entrepreneurs are inspiring change across Africa – A group of 22 emerging leaders recently returned from Archbishop Tutu’s leadership fellowship programme in Johannesburg where young Africans from business, government or development came together to attend seminars, discussions and lectures about leadership, and placed a huge emphasis on social entrepreneurship and ethical business in Africa. The programme which is already bearing considerable fruit and has social enterprise at its very core is defined by an African agenda, and is about finding internal solutions and weaning Africa off aid and philanthropy. (Alastair Sloan)
Foreign Policy: What George W. Bush Did Right – Only a few Americans have ever heard of PEPFAR, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which President Bush announced in his State of the Union address in 2003. Bush paved the way for an era in which global health assistance has become a prominent new instrument of U.S. statecraft. In 2012 alone, PEPFAR directly supported nearly 5.1 million people on antiretroviral, provided antiretroviral drugs to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV to nearly 750,000 pregnant women living with the disease, and enabled more than 46.5 million people to receive testing and counseling. (Christian Caryl)
Reuters: Insurgency threatens food crisis in Central African Republic: WFP — Insecurity in Central African Republic threatens a severe food crisis this year, the U.N. World Food Programme said on Friday, citing a doubling of prices for staples such as corn after a month-long insurgency. Widespread looting had reduced household production as well as stocks of food, seed and animals, and insecurity was preventing farmers from going about their work. Humanitarian access to that area must be ensured to avoid a crisis, WFP said.
