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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
REMARKS BY J. BRIAN ATWOOD ADMINISTRATOR, U.S. AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
U.S.--AFRICA MINISTERIAL
MARCH 16, 1999
I am pleased to be here today to discuss the President's Partnership for Economic Growth and Opportunity in Africa, and the role that the Agency for International Development is playing in that partnership. When President Clinton went to Africa a year ago, one of his most important messages was that it was time for the United States and the countries of Africa to embark on a new, more mature relationship. This ministerial meeting is just the latest reflection of the President’s commitment.
This Administration believes that both aid and trade are essential to our relationship. This is the basis of the African Growth and Opportunity Act we are strongly supporting in our Congress. We share your desire for more trade and investment, but, like you, we understand that development is the foundation upon which economic growth can be built. It is your development success and your economic growth that will attract trade and investment.
The ministers and representatives in this room understand well that Africa needs to strengthen its ties to the global economy, to encourage foreign private investment, to make use of new technologies, and to expand its foreign trade. It is also clear that, over time, more and more of Africa's capital needs must be met by private sources rather than by Official Development Assistance. You also know that foreign assistance continues to have an important role to play, particularly in two related areas: first, in helping your governments strengthen human capacity; and second, in helping you create an environment that encourages private investment and trade.
USAID has been working in the first area, human capacity building in Africa, for many years. We have worked with you to strengthen health care systems, and to promote maternal and child health. We have helped countries reform their basic education systems, and promote increased education for women and girls. We have made microenterprise loans available and trained thousands of teachers, health workers, environmentalists, economists and extension workers. These educated and trained Africans represent the foundation for sustainable development, that is, development owned by Africans, enduring and replicable by future generations.
This has contributed to a great deal of recent progress. In addition to steady economic growth, it is gratifying to see that, across the continent, the percentage of GNP devoted to education rose from 4.1% in 1980 to 5.3% in 1995. And that, since 1980, under-age-five mortality rates have declined from 193 per thousand to 147 per thousand in 1996.
Still, because of population growth, the challenge remains a great one. Today, more than ever before, successful participation in the global economy must be built on the products of our minds rather than on the sweat of our brows. To take one prime example, today’s African workers must be familiar with the new information technology.
Two years ago, the United States launched the Leland Initiative, named for the late Congressman Mickey Leland. This five-year program brings the benefits of the information revolution to Africa. Thus far, USAID has negotiated 14 agreements with African countries to enable their people to access the Internet. Because of this program, men and women who have never before left their towns or villages now have access to information and people all over the world. With modern technology like the Internet, African nations can leapfrog over the hurdles of the development process, provide distance learning to their people, and make globalization work for them.
And now we can do more. Last year, in Uganda, President Clinton announced the Education for Development and Democracy Initiative, aimed at building a new partnership between the U.S. public and private sectors and educational institutions throughout Africa. This initiative will build upon programs for education reform and training, and help prepare Africa for the next century.
In Uganda, this program brought electricity and a phone line to the Kisowera Primary School, for its eight hundred students and seventeen teachers. The Kosowera Center is one of 500 USAID-funded resource centers linked to nine thousand primary schools now functioning in Uganda and the first to acquire Internet access. When I first visited Uganda in the summer of 1995, I saw students sitting on dirt floors, teachers with only a primitive blackboard and one book for a class of thirty. Now those Ugandan classrooms can come alive with learning. They now possess the technology to enter the classrooms of America, the libraries of the industrial world, the laboratories of the best scientists of Africa, Europe or America.
We all know that Africa’s workers must be better trained, but they must also be healthy. The cost of infectious diseases like malaria and AIDS is not only human tragedy, it also means that societies cannot reach their productive potential.
I pledge to you today that the U.S. will stand with you in your fight against disease. USAID is the leading international donor in the battle against AIDS. We have recently doubled the resources we devote to combating malaria and tuberculosis in Africa. We want to support you as you create the health and surveillance and prevention systems you need to protect your most valuable asset, your people.
To build investment and trade, we must take full advantage of the power of the private sector, both domestic and foreign. Africa is already experiencing its most robust economic growth in decades. USAID has contributed to that growth by working with our partners in African nations to liberalize markets, remove trade barriers, and build the enabling environments that attract foreign investment. We have linked our economic assistance to efforts that support the rule of law, legal and judicial reform, and to support for democracy, and we see those efforts starting to bear fruit all across your continent.
Despite the well-publicized crises, the African people today have more hope for a better future than at any time in this century. Most of your nations have chosen the course of democracy and open markets. You have chosen to tap the potential of your people. In doing so, you have made them full citizens, entrepreneurs, producers and consumers. You have made them the real and potential engines of economic growth.
As part of the President's Partnership, USAID, through its African Trade and Investment Program, is now supporting policy changes that are needed to encourage private investment. Like the Leland Initiative, this is an exciting program, one we believe is truly transformational. Under this program, we are assisting countries in improving their investment environment – through better commercial laws, through better judicial systems to enforce the law, and through the elimination of unnecessary regulations and red tape. Investors today will avoid nations whose financial and legal systems are inefficient, arbitrary or corrupted. But Africa is changing and this AID Trade and Investment program is helping.
In Mozambique, for example, the investment environment is being improved by eliminating red tape in company registration requirements; in Mali, public and private sector activists are cutting tariff barriers and other obstacles to livestock and rice exports; and in Kenya, a partnership is being developed between Kenyan and U.S. private seed trade associations.
Another goal of the program is to strengthen Africa’s efforts to expand its exports. USAID is now sponsoring a series of national and regional workshops on the World Trade Organization agreements. These workshops will raise awareness about the current agreements and procedures of WTO. They will prepare our African partners for future WTO negotiations and eventually for full participation in the global marketplace.
We are also assisting several of your countries in developing the policy frameworks needed to take advantage of regional opportunities for trade, cheaper power, and environmental protection.
In Southern Africa this includes development of the Southern African Power Pool. A Power Pool Control Center has been created to encourage cross-border investments in power generation and transmission facilities. If this concept works, customers could save up to $8 billion in electricity costs over the next 20 years. That should be a powerful incentive.
In West Africa, we want to support Ghana, Nigeria, Benin, and Togo as they resolve important tax, tariff, and environmental issues relating to a proposed West Africa Gas Pipeline. Such agreement will encourage private U.S. and European oil companies to finance and construct a pipeline to deliver large quantities of offshore Nigerian gas, now being flared, to Nigeria’s energy-short neighbors to the west.
USAID has worked with your countries for a long time – you are ourfriends and partners. President Clinton has pointed the way to a new U.S.-Africa partnership, and we will support that partnership to the utmost of our ability.
This may be my last opportunity to speak to a group of distinguished Africans as Administrator of USAID. In the past six years, I have witnessed impressive development gains in Africa as well as tragic conflict. I have seen a new breed of African leader – elected presidents and prime ministers who derive their powers from their people. These leaders today want to end dependence on foreign aid. They want to rule fully independent and self-reliant countries whose economies compete within a global economy and thrive on locally generated capital, trade and investment. These leaders recognize that conflict within their region can harm their nation’s prospects whether or not they are directly engaged. They have taken steps to create regional security mechanisms and regional alliances.
I started my foreign service career in Africa in the 1960’s. That was a decade of dependence, a decade of ideological manipulation, a decade of dictatorships of the left or the right. I stuck around long enough to see all that change for the better.
When we look back in 20 years, we will see clearly that the seeds of progress were planted in the 1990’s. In this last decade of the 20th Century, Africa has finally shaken off the legacy of colonialism and the legacy of the Cold War. We will remember the 1990’s as a decade when the people of Africa rose up to start a new type of revolution, a revolution that was based on empowerment, participation and respect for the individual.
I will soon leave this position but I want to assure you that I will always be an optimist about Africa and I will never cease caring about the people and the nations of Africa. Thank you for your friendship and thank you for the many wonderful memories of Africa that I will carry with me into the next chapter of my life.
This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
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Last Updated on: July 12, 2001 |
