Following are my notes (my comments are in italic maroon) on SEN ISAKSON’s speech last week at SAIS.
My overall take would be to caution his staffers to ‘tone’ the Senator’s ‘quotable’ lines. I could see them rubbing some people the wrong way needlessly. It also grated me a little that he didn’t mention Africa Partnership Station, ACOTA, AMLEP or any of the other Navy/State success stories on the continent. However, if he's not informed on these issues I can't really blame him.
In the end, SEN Isakson appeared sincere in his concern for issues in Africa; he may not be an ‘African-ist’ or seasoned State Department Official, but does hold a position in which he can command a large audience. Most importantly, he has spent time on the continent, a fact which places him far ahead of many other congressmen and government officials. I look forward to his continued use of this ‘pulpit’ for Africa and hope he expands his interest into the maritime security arena of Africa--aside from clean water the most pressing issue for Africa over the next 50 years.
SEN Isakson Speech at SAIS
“Most important continent in the 21st century is Africa.”
“Middle East happenings are potentially historic.”
#1 American Foreign Assistance in Africa
- President’s Emergency Initiative to eradicate AIDS, PEPFAR has had
tremendous paybacks, reducing death from AIDS drastically
- NGOs CARE USA and an Atlanta-based microloan NGO (didn’t catch the name). Loans are only given to the women in the various African villages. Stated that on the whole, the men aren’t as trustworthy as the women when it comes to money. This may be a cultural ‘truth-ism’ but I still winced when he said it. However, he didn’t skip a beat and went on to comment that “it’s probably a lot like here in the US.
If I were the Senator, I would use Nelson Mandela’s quote instead as it comes off as much more credible:
"Money on the hands of a woman is spent better and goes further, leading to the development not only of the family unit, but society as a whole."
- NELSON MANDELA, Global Summit of Women 2000
- NELSON MANDELA, Global Summit of Women 2000
- African Millennium Foundation “Africa is the most corrupt place on the face of the earth.” This may or not be true, but it irks me, and I am sure a lot of others from various African nations to be lumped together like that. This isn’t a statement I would want to repeat often were I “Ranking Member of Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Subcommittee on African Affairs. Some may view this as semantics, but I would instead say: “Africa has some of the most corrupt nations of any continent.” Or something to that effect.
He went on to talk about the 11 investments on the continent so far that seek to fight corruption and promote transparency.
#2 US Private Investment
- Equatorial Guinea=> 20 years ago is one of the poorest nations on earth, and today it is one of the most quickly developing due to natural gas discoveries and the investment by Marathon Oil.
- Coca-cola’s #1 project right now is to become a water neutral company with a $30 million seed investment in Africa to do so. To tell you the truth, it never occurred to me that Coca Cola is using local water sources to manufacture and make their products—now that I have read about it, this is obvious of course.
As to how well Coke is doing, a quick google search show mixed results:
“The biggest problem in Africa is clean water.” Second biggest: Fish:
#3 China’s involvement
- they have flooded Africa with workers to extract resources, whereas the US employs Africans
“If we extract, we must also develop human capital”
#4 DARFUR
> 1 million live in most dire circumstances. There are 11 wells for 55K people.
#5 HOA
Important as intel and development outreach
Questions and Answers Session:
- On Rwanda, Senator is friends with their President Kagame.
*There they have forced the Tutsis and Hutu to work side by side (in pairs) at the National Basket Company
*Umuganda Sundays: he said these are certain Sundays where people can’t drive cards and from 8 to noon everyone does a community service project to help the community. During these Sundays, the genocide perpetrators’ sentence is to wear a blue shirt with a yellow stripe and to take care of the survivors.
All of these things are a nice sentiment but I sense that it isn’t quite this ideal. Those wishing to learn more should check out the following links. Personally, I learned a lot by reading them. I didn’t know many details concerning the genocide or how the country has dealt with it since. The Harvard article below offers particularly astute insight into post-genocide Rwanda. The author gives great details on the gacaca (meaning “small grass”)courts.
Of note, I couldn’t find a single article to support the “scarlet letter” yellow striped shirt anecdote. However, I could just be typing the wrong thing into google. Perhaps his staff could provide reference material for this?
If I were one of Senator’s Isakson’s staffers I would read the following paper and provide him with an executive summary before he spoke on Rwanda’s handling of the genocide perpetrators in the future.
Why is the US so slow to react in the Cote D’Ivoire?
“Good question. Rwanda’s another good example of past missed opportunities. The government of the US must make decisions based on our vital and national security interests.” He went on to defend our involvement as altruistic in Libya because we get less than 1% of our oil from there. What he failed to mention was the large amount of oil OUR ALLIES get from Libya.
*Secretary of State is going to be making an announcement soon on a special envoy to this west African region. Senator intends to travel to Benin and Ghana soon.
Regarding a question on China: “We can deal and trade with China or we can become enemies with them.” He would like us to deal and trade.
On Libya again, he does subscribe to the statement by McCain and Kerry from a few weeks ago, “I think we did the right thing 3 weeks too late”
“Equatorial Guinea’s leader [Mbasogo] is not ready for primetime yet, but he’s the best we’ve got to deal with right now.”
“Last thing Ahmedinajad wants is the democratization of the Middle East.” He went on to tout the world coalition of support for intervention in Libya BUT he didn’t mention the AU’s failure to support.
