Africa and U.S. National Interests: Project Description

The American Assembly

March 1997

The American Assembly convened a project on "Africa and U.S. National Interests," at Arden House, Harriman, New York, March 13-16, 1997. It was chaired by former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Donald McHenry, and co-directed by Ambassador David C. Miller, Jr,. and former Congressman Howard Wolpe. Mr. Wolpe is working on these issues at Brookings Institution and is also Special Envoy to the President and Secretary of State for the Burundi peace negotiations. Mr. Miller is now president of the Corporate Council on Africa and former U.S. Ambassador to Tanzania and Zimbabwe under President Reagan. This program is being coordinated very closely with the National Summit on Africa so that the Assembly can lay a valuable foundation for that multiyear, nation-wide effort.

Historical Background

The American Assembly has been in the forefront of developing consensus on national issues, and often returns to a subject to consider its new dimensions. In 1958 The Assembly held a program on "The United States and Africa." The book published from this program was revised in 1963, following momentous events on the African continent. Through the years issues involving Africa have continued to be explored in related Assemblies, most recently in the 1994 program on "Threatened People, Threatened Borders: World Migration and U.S. Policy."

The Project Overview

"Africa and U.S. National Interests" confronts the popular conceptions currently framing U.S. policy and American public opinion regarding Africa, which have promoted indifference to the serious problems of the continent. It is clearly in America's national self-interest to pay attention to issues endemic to Africa, including, for example, economic development, access to resources and markets, environmental degradation, population growth and/or stabilization, democratization, health, migration, peacekeeping, humanitarian concerns, and the important emerging role of South Africa.

The American Assembly has commissioned a book to be used as background reading by participants and then published for commercial distribution.

Program Participants

The American Assembly convened a group of sixty-nine national leaders from throughout the United States and from all sectors of our society. Many were not primarily Africanists (although we will, of course, include a substantial number of specialists on the region), but rather foreign policy generalists who are decision makers and influential leaders who need to understand where Africa fits within U.S. national priorities in the short, medium, and long term.

At Arden House, participants were divided into three working groups, which remained intact throughout the Assembly program. Each group will have a discussion leader and a rapporteur whose responsibilities were, respectively, to focus the group on a discussion agenda prepared by the directors, and to record the main points of agreement and disagreement in the sessions held between Thursday afternoon and Saturday noon. Four three-hour sessions took place. On each of the three evenings, a distinguished speaker or panel addressed the group. Throughout the three days the directors monitored the sessions and began to develop an outline for a draft report of the group's findings and recommendations. Together, the directors, discussion leaders, and rapporteurs will prepare a draft report of findings and recommendations that was presented to the participants for their review, amendment, and approval on Sunday morning.

Outreach

As is traditional with The American Assembly, we will print and begin distributing the final report, within a few days after the Arden House session ends, to 10,000 public and private sector leaders, institutions, and interested citizens. The final report will be available online immediately. We will also post preliminary documents for public comment.

Our program leaders prepared a draft of a short monograph (about 125 pages) outlining issues and policy options that was given to all the participants approximately a month before they meet at Arden House, and will be published subsequently.

The Assembly will develop a series of outreach activities including policy briefings for key decision makers in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. We will also consider holding regional Assemblies in other parts of the United States to be organized and run by a local institution in cooperation with The American Assembly, as has been done with approximately two hundred institutions throughout the United States and abroad.