At Summit, Upbeat Rhythms Sound for Africa

By Nora Boustany

The Washington Post

Friday, February 18, 2000

Jembe drums and bow ties blended strikingly at the Washington Convention Center as young men from Mali pounded their colorful cylindrical percussion instruments, enlivening the main hall with haunting rhythms from an Africa beset by warfare, genocide, AIDS, malaria, slavery, child soldiers, female circumcision, illiteracy and poverty. But the message of the gathering, the five-day National Summit on Africa, was upbeat: Africa is not a backwater that is remote, irrelevant and doomed to failure, but a place with potential and a direct impact on Americans.

Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright had just completed an inspiring speech at the meeting's plenary session yesterday, saying the United States cannot be safe as long as there are people "trapped in strife and scarcity," and although the road is long, there are some who recognize the continent's "history, accomplishment and unlimited promise." Congress should enact legislation now to increase funds for foreign policy, she emphasized. Albright recalled her trip to Africa, when she held an armless child from Sierra Leone, not much older than one of her grandchildren. "Who did he threaten; whose enemy was he?" she asked. The images she brought back from Africa, recollections of Rwanda, human rights violations during the civil war in Sudan, slavery and children dragged into conflicts, "did not fill me with despair but with anger to do more."

Accolades for President Clinton

Lest anybody worry whether President Clinton is leaving a legacy, his place in history is ensured in Africa, said Atiku Abubakar, the vice president of Nigeria. Abubakar described the president's speech to the summit's opening session as "fantastic."

"You could see the sincerity in his face when he spoke," Abubakar said of Clinton. "It filled us with tremendous hope for Africa and its problems of conflicts, AIDS and disease. I applaud the Clinton administration because it has the most focused Africa policy in this country's history and has done more than any other to position Africa in its proper place. This is the first time you can say there is an Africa policy in the United States."

This being an election year, he added, the summit will "send a message to the candidates that there is a constituency they cannot ignore and there cannot be a reversal of commitments and of what the president has already achieved."

Abubakar, who signed a trade and investment agreement Wednesday with U.S. representatives, said he and other African officials are here to ensure that everyone understands Africa has a constituency in the United States. Although the gathering was billed as a summit, Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi was the only president besides Clinton.

Seeing a Future in Trade

Amama Mbabazi, Uganda's minister of state for foreign affairs and regional cooperation, said in an interview after Albright's address that two U.S. presidents have made a difference in Africa: Jimmy Carter, who "more or less joined the struggle [against apartheid in South Africa] and supported the people of Uganda against the dictatorship of Idi Amin," and Clinton, the first U.S. president to pay an extended visit to Africa in 1998.

"Clinton has done even better by pushing for this idea of trade," Mbabazi said in reference to Clinton's effort to get Congress to pass a trade bill that would grant more than 70 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and Central America greater duty-free access to U.S. markets.

"We see this trade issue as our only salvation. I can't say we don't like aid, but aid has problems, there is donor fatigue. We can't get enough of it," the minister said. "You heard what Madame Albright said. They are working on another $150 million for AIDS, we need $150 billion. We need $24 billion to combat AIDS in Uganda, while our entire budget is $2 billion. We require much more than aid. So what it is that we have to get out of this drive for trade is to ensure what we need. Africa lacks the necessary skills to comprehensively exploit its resources."

Albright said that out of every federal dollar, 1 cent goes to foreign policy objectives. She has banned the term foreign aid because it is all "aid to America," she said. Mbabazi said every time Africa suffered a natural or other type of disaster, the pattern was to look to the outside world for help, but now African states are looking to develop their own security potential.

Finding Ways to Help Women

Diakite Adam, president of the Association for Socio-Economic Integration of Women, a nongovernmental group based in Bamako, Mali, said she came to network, exchange ideas and seek funds to fight illiteracy so "women can learn how to defend their rights." She said co-workers go to villages to teach women how to read and write. "We sensitize them to sexually transmitted diseases. Now, we have much more awareness. People are learning to protect themselves. We are also fighting against female circumcision," she said. What is needed is more than attitude, however. "We should roll up our sleeves, not throw up our hands," Albright said.