Cfr - Bh Sect4

IV Our Role: What the United States Can Do

If Africa is of growing importance to the United States, then treating Africa as a focus of foreign policy concern is essential. The tendency in the past to treat Africa primarily as a region of ‘‘humanitarian’’ concern masks the other significant American interests in Africa, throwing them into the shadows or addressing them only fitfully without overall policy direction. Taking Africa seriously as a region of strategic importance will also in fact improve the ways in which the United States addresses the issues of poverty, disease, and conflict that make up much of the humanitarian concern. All too often the humanitarian issues are addressed through emergency aid, or with widely swinging areas of focus— agriculture for a period, primary education the next—lacking the long-term commitment to fundamental problems that these issues demand. In 2005, the world had the opportunity to focus more attention on Africa than it had for many years. There were studies, commissions, public campaigns, and in the end—at the G8 Summit at Gleneagles, Scotland—major commitments made for increased aid, debt relief, and trade reform. But whether these efforts will translate into a consistent and effective partnership between the industrialized countries and Africa, and lead to a more stable and productive continent—something very much in the interests of the United States—remains to be seen. The opportunities, and the challenges, were set forth in the Council’s Independent Task Force Report, More Than Humanitarianism: A Strategic U.S. Approach Toward Africa. [197] Copyrighted material