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January 13, 2000: Assistant Secretary of State Susan Rice's Address to the CCA Annual meeting Corporate Council on AfricaSusan E. Rice, Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Corporate Council on Africa (CCA) Army/Navy Club Annual Meeting Washington, DC, January 13, 2000

Thank you, very much Maurice. Let me take this opportunity to wish everyone here--CCA members, excellencies and colleagues--a happy and productive new year. I am pleased to address your annual meeting today. This is the beginning of the last year of the Clinton Administration. It also is the beginning of a revitalized Corporate Council under the leadership of your new Chair Maurice Tempelsman and Executive Director Steve Hayes--long-term friends of Africa. I congratulate new Board and other members and look forward to working with all of you this year. Since its inception in 1992, the Corporate Council on Africa and the United States Government have worked well together. We have sought to forge a constructive partnership to achieve common goals based on our shared interest in Africa's success. We have not agreed on every issue or even every objective. But I am certain that our respective efforts have been enhanced by our cooperation in a spirit of mutual respect. Both CCA and the U.S. Government have come far in a relatively short period of time. CCA has grown from five founding members to over 200, and has been the driving force in placing Africa nearer the forefront of the U.S. commercial and policy agenda. American companies, your members, and others have begun to edge out the competition in Africa in important sectors.

Who predicted a decade ago that Enron would be investing $2.5 billion in war-torn Mozambique? Or that when post-apartheid South Africa was ready to privatize its telecommunications industry, an American company, SBC, would be instrumental in the $1.3 billion deal.

The United States Government too has come far. First, in 1994, at the White House Conference on Africa, President Clinton challenged his Administration "to develop a policy toward Africa that would unleash the potential of the African people in ways that would lead to a safer and prosperous world, a better life for them, and a better life for us." At that time, Africa was nearly the exclusive domain of two understaffed bureaus in Foggy Bottom--one at State and the other at USAID. Now virtually every government agency is implementing creative new initiatives to strengthen our partnership with Africa.

Just look at the Export-Import Bank. Some 3 years ago, I recall numerous conversations with CCA members venting your extreme frustration with EXIM and the ICRAS process. And 2 years ago, EXIM financed only $50 million in trade with Africa. Today, it's up to $600 million. And Jim Harmon's goal is to pass the $1 billion mark this year.

Look at the Department of Transportation with its visionary Safe Skies for Africa Initiative and its Atlanta Ministerial. Secretary Richardson has put Africa high on his agenda with his own African Energy initiative, and TDA has funded numerous new feasibility studies throughout the continent. Almost every member of the President's cabinet has traveled to Africa--some like Secretaries Daley and Albright--four, five, or six times. Many of our Cabinet secretaries play vital roles in our U.S.-South Africa Binational Commission. The U.S. Attorney General, for the first time in history, heads a committee on crime and law enforcement with South Africa. She also has been instrumental in helping the State Department craft a comprehensive counter-crime and counter-terrorism strategy for Africa.

Second, we have sharpened our focus on two key policy goals in Africa: first integrating its nations into the global economy through trade, economic development, democratization, and conflict resolution; and second combating transnational threats to our mutual security. At the same time, we have funded and implemented innovative strategies to achieve these objectives.

Third, with the crucial support of many companies in this room, and many in Congress, we have revolutionized U.S. economic policy toward Africa. In 1997, President Clinton launched his Partnership for Economic Growth and Opportunity. It called for OPIC funds to spur U.S. private sector investment and increased technical assistance. It gave us an Assistant United States Trade Representative for Africa--Rosa Whitaker--who has been a very effective one at that. It established a senior advisor on Africa at EXIM. It encouraged debt relief and increased U.S.-Africa economic dialogue for far-reaching cooperation.

Fourth, President Clinton's historic trip to Africa 2 years ago helped begin the long-term process of recasting American perceptions about the continent. In the wake of this trip, last year we hosted 200 senior African officials at the U.S.-Africa Ministerial--the largest gathering of U.S. and African officials ever to meet anywhere. The next month, we sent a hundred-member delegation to Botswana to inaugurate the U.S.-SADC forum.

Fifth, we have worked to strengthen and deepen key bilateral relationships with South Africa, Nigeria, and Angola through innovative consultative mechanisms. And in each instance, these efforts have benefited from significant private sector involvement.

If we have all come a long way, so too have our African partners. Many African governments already have taken significant steps to reform their economies and open their markets to U.S. traders and investors. Many are establishing inclusive political systems and accountable governance. Roughly thirty of Africa's nations are liberalizing their markets, reducing subsidies and tariffs, and fighting corruption. From SADC to ECOWAS and COMESA to the EAC, African countries are beginning to integrate their markets to form regional economic engines.

But the truth is, in the same period, much has gone wrong in Africa. From the Congo to Sierra Leone, Sudan, Angola, and the border dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea, conflict has set back African progress considerably. So too have serious threats to democracy. In just 1999, coups robbed Africans of elected leaders in Guinea-Bissau, Niger, Comoros, and most recently and most tragically in Cote d'Ivoire. The Asian economic crisis has depressed Africa's economic growth rates. And HIV/AIDS is literally poisoning Africa's present and robbing Africa of its future. In the year ahead, we will meet head-on as many of these challenges as possible, while we aim to seize breaking opportunities. Of highest priority is making lasting and irreversible the United States' tremendous progress in elevating our commitment to Africa.

Looking ahead, let me first focus on the opportunities. In the West, Nigeria is obviously everyone's priority. Days into his Administration, President Obasanjo moved to end the pillaging of government coffers, to reconcile disparate elements of society, to bring peace to Sierra Leone, and to keep the military to the barracks.

The United States has responded with encouragement and tangible support. We inaugurated the Joint Economic Partnership Committee to support Nigeria's economic reform efforts. We aim to nearly quadruple our assistance to Nigeria this fiscal year. Together, with Nigeria, we have overcome the security barriers to direct flights between our two countries. And although we have a long way to go, we have made some initial progress in counter-narcotics cooperation. Yet 20 years of one iron fist after another in Nigeria has taken a lasting toll. Worrisome legacies, including poverty, economic inequality, and ethnic division endure.

Communal tensions in the Delta are especially dangerous. The U.S. stands ready and willing to lend an appropriate helping hand. But no outsider's contribution can match or substitute for the Nigerian Government's own ongoing efforts and continued responsibility. The Delta's peoples' voices must be heard. Their environment must be protected. The rule of law must be respected. The region's development should go forward. And the U.S. private sector can and should play a constructive role.

In Southern Africa, our priorities include further strengthening the strong U.S.-South Africa relationship through the Binational Commission. We also aim to augment our collaboration with all of SADC through the U.S.-SADC Forum and the soon-to-be-launched U.S.-SADC business council. The United States will continue to press for an enduring peace in Angola through toughened sanctions enforcement and active and candid dialogue with the government to encourage far-reaching economic and political reform.

In the East, Kenya's future is key. The IMF plans to resume stalled negotiations with the government on its Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) program in the near future. The success of Kenyan plans to mend its very troubled economy could have dramatic implications for the region. The recent revived East African Community has a potentially bright future as well, and we will strongly back its efforts.

We will also watch carefully developments in Sudan with an open mind and an interest in seeing Khartoum's improved rhetoric translated into improved behavior. We seek a lasting, just, and comprehensive peace on the basis of the Declaration of Principles. We continue to demand an end to the state's sponsorship of international terrorism and Sudan's backing of insurgent groups that have wreaked havoc and fear throughout the region. And we seek an immediate end to some of the worst human rights abuses in the world today.

Next, the Administration aims this year to fulfill outstanding commitments that are key to the success of a bipartisan African policy. On the legislative front, our top priority is final enactment of a robust and meaningful African Growth and Opportunity Act.

We will also continue to strive to fulfill the President's commitment to work with Congress to restore assistance to Africa to its historic high levels. To protect Africa's wetlands and improve Africa's use of dwindling land and water resources, we will redouble our efforts to achieve the Senate ratification of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification.

The President's numerous innovative initiatives must also be strengthened and sustained. During the year 2000, through the African Crisis Response Initiative, we seek to expand the range of partnership countries and to ratchet up the level of training from battalion to brigade level. The Great Lakes Justice Initiative, now in its second year, aims to end the cycle of injustice and impunity that has ravaged the Great Lakes region. The President's Education Initiative is now up and running. It is providing girls' scholarships in over 30 counties. We've funded educational partnerships between 22 African and American universities, linked U.S. and African grammar schools through the internet, trained 250 education organizations, and shipped over 350,000 books to the continent. And through the Safe Skies Initiative, we are collaborating with eight African nations to make African airways and airports safer and more secure for us all.

Yet, to be candid, on other issues, we still have quite a distance to go. The United States, working with its African partners, must do a much better job of protecting Americans and Africans from the transnational security threats that emanate from the continent just as they do from the rest of the world. To stem arms flows in Africa's hot spots, we should fund West Africa's Small Arms Moratorium. We must train more African countries in anti-terrorism tactics and share more closely and effectively with our partners information on activities of terrorist groups. We must build upon our efforts to bolster African law enforcement capacity to fight crime and interdict illicit drugs.

Most importantly, we as a nation and as people must do much more still to counter the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa. HIV/AIDS is no longer a health problem, it is the greatest threat ever to Africa's security and potential prosperity. As your companies know, it is decimating Africans from all walks of life, tearing farmers away from maize fields, skilled workers away from factories, and breadwinners and caregivers away from African families.

But this pandemic can and must be countered directly--through enlightened leadership, destigmatization, prevention, and provision of affordable treatment. Two countries are proving that this battle can be won: Uganda, the original African epicenter of HIV/AIDS, and Senegal. They have done so through massive grassroots public awareness campaigns.

As a result, Uganda has cut its incidence rates by two-thirds, and Senegal now has some of the lowest rates in all of Africa. On Monday, at the United Nations, Vice President Gore promised that the Administration will request an additional $100 million from Congress for fiscal year 2001 for a total of $325 million over the next 2 years to combat the HIV virus in Africa and globally. This is a vital additional step in the right direction, but clearly, much, much more needs to be done--by all of us--to treat the infected humanely with safe and affordable medicine and to accelerate the quest for a viable vaccine.

Persistent conflict is the other major factor holding Africa back. Too many African countries are fighting costly wars that retard growth, kill innocent civilians, enrich despots and warlords, and scare off investors. U.S. diplomats will continue to work day in and day out to promote the peaceful resolution of conflicts in the Congo, Sierra Leone, Angola, Burundi, Sudan, and the Horn of Africa. We will continue to do our part. But our efforts cannot and will not succeed without the necessary will for peace among the parties to these tragic conflicts. As chair of the United Nations Security Council, the United States has designated January "The Month of Africa." We will focus this month in New York on HIV/AIDS and conflict resolution, with particular emphasis on Sierra Leone, Burundi, Angola, and the Congo. New peace facilitators--former President of Botswana Masire and Nelson Mandela--will address the Council on the steps to resolve the conflicts in the Great Lakes region.

I for one hope Africa month will be extended an additional eleven and a half months. In what I hope will be the year of Africa, we need to sharpen our focus, face plainly Africa's problems, and together take steps to address those problems, however difficult or taboo. We must recognize that if the spread of AIDS and conflict are not checked, all our other objectives--from passing the AGOA to debt relief--might as well be aborted. Africans dreams for a better future will be left in tatters. To our African partners, I say you and your brothers and sisters must decide if your choice is for peace or for war, for swords or plowshares, for ostracism of your sick, or education and compassion.

Corporate leaders--America's traders and investors, explorers, employers, and joint venture partners--you too have a special obligation. I challenge you to go beyond what you already have generously provided in social responsibility funds. It is time to pool your resources, to match your stated will and commitment with a determination to invest collectively in Africa's human capital. You can secure over the long-term your own investments by helping raise the living standards where you have African subsidiaries and customers. I urge you to participate in helping drive Africa policy as linebackers and receivers rather than as referees and coaches.

In closing, I wish to recall the commitment of the late Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown. He was and is the first architect of the Clinton Administration's economic policy in Africa. He believed passionately that commerce between all our nations could elevate the fortunes of all our peoples. He believed in the private sector's ability and obligation to effect significant economic, social, and political change. He believed this change and your engagement were manifestly in our own national interest. I do too.

Some 6 years after Secretary Brown stood with President Clinton at the White House Conference on Africa, it is clear we have all come far toward actions worthy of his high standards. Yet, we have a long way to go to build a safe and prosperous Africa worthy of the African people. A hundred years ago, at the turn of the last century, President Teddy Roosevelt told Americans to face the future squarely, "neither hiding from ourselves the gravity of the problems before us, nor fearing to approach these problems with the unbending, unflinching purpose to solve them aright."

We must stand together with Africans to meet new challenges at the dawn of this new century--a time when the light is cast to reflect both clear hues, as well as forbidding shadows. Let us go forward today with renewed determination to help Africa unleash its vast potential and in so doing, to better the lives of all our peoples. Thank you.

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