By Jessica Pugliese, Andrew Westbury and Amadou Sy | Brookings
Editor’s Note: The U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit blog series is a collection of posts discussing efforts to strengthen ties between the United States and Africa ahead of the first continent-wide summit. On August 4, Brookings will host “The Game Has Changed: The New Landscape for Innovation and Business in Africa,” at which these themes and more will be explored by prominent experts. Click here to register for the event.
Last year while visiting Cape Town in South Africa, President Obama announced plans for the first continent-wide U.S. African Leaders Summit, scheduled for August 4-6, 2014. The summit provides an opportunity for the Obama administration to open a new chapter in U.S-Africa relations, moving from interaction on the bilateral level to a continent-wide engagement. President Obama has previously been criticized for not reaching the same level of engagement with Africa as Presidents Bush and Clinton, but his second term has coincided with an effort to ramp up U.S.-Africa relations. In June 2012, Obama launched the White House strategy “toward” sub-Saharan Africa, and the president’s budget for 2015 shows his support for the region. The U.S.-Africa summit, however, now affords the United States an unprecedented opportunity to build a strategy “together” with Africa.
Recently, the Africa Growth Initiative (AGI) has reviewed the components—the organization, frame and communications strategies—of three longstanding Africa summits in order to inform the designers of the U.S. version. In this comparison, AGI chose China, the European Union (EU) and Japan; some of Africa’s other key trade and investment partners. Leading up to the summit in August, the Africa Growth Initiative will also compare the position of the United States and these partners in terms of trade, foreign direct investment and other engagement with African countries. Obtaining a maximum level of foreign policy action and results from a two-day summit with nearly all of the African heads of state in attendance is an enormous undertaking. However, the other summits have had plenty of time to work out the kinks. Thus, they provide excellent examples of a successful summit for the U.S. organizers. In this first installment, AGI examines and highlights the features of those summits that could strengthen the U.S.-Africa partnership: frequency, sustainability, inclusivity, transparency and accountability.
Important Summit Design Features and Recommendations
The United States is playing catch-up in terms of using a continent-wide leaders’ summit to frame its strategy with Africa.[1] Japan, China and the European Union have all maintained long-running Africa summits. Japan’s Tokyo International Conference for African Development (TICAD) started in 1993 and has met every five years since. China’s Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) and the EU-Africa summit both started in 2000. FOCAC has met every three years since, while the EU-Africa summit has taken place three times since the first gathering (figure 1). Other countries have held similar summits, including India, Brazil, South Korea, South America and Turkey. While the United States deserves credit for its yearly Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) trade ministerial, which alternates between United States and an AGOA eligible country in Africa, it covers fewer themes than the EU-Africa, FOCAC and TICAD summits. For the first U.S.-Africa Summit, Senior Director of African Affairs at the White House Grant Harris recently announced that the theme will be “Investing in Africa’s Future.”
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