USAID ADMINISTRATOR ATWOOD ON U.S.-AFRICAN PARTNERSHIP
(Outlines impact of Clinton trip)

PARIS -- The most enduring impact of President Clinton's recently concluded 12-day visit to six sub-Saharan African nations was his "presentation of a coherent and comprehensive strategy for the new partnership," says U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator J. Brian Atwood.

In remarks prepared for delivery here April 7, Atwood added, "For the first time in my 30 years of working with Africa, we have been presented a holistic approach that connects development to trade, food security and debt relief to economic reform, education to democracy, and conflict resolution to justice, peacekeeping, and regional cooperation."

Following is the text of Atwood's remarks, as prepared for delivery:

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"A NEW VISION FOR AFRICA"

April 7, 1998 Paris, France

Thank you for the kind introduction, Ambassador Bondurant. I very much appreciate the obvious interest in Africa this turnout implies. Africanists have been waiting a long time for an American president to devote extended and serious attention to Africa. Now that President Clinton has made it happen, it is gratifying to see so many seeking to better appreciate the broader implications of America's sharper focus on this region.

It is apropos that we meet in the Talleyrand Building to discuss a new partnership with Africa. Some 50 years ago, this building served as the European headquarters for the Marshall Plan. Fifty years provides sufficient distance for an objective historical perspective.

Today, we can say with confidence that the Marshall Plan's success was a product of the commitment and ingenuity of European leaders who wanted to build sustainable societies around the concepts of democracy, open markets, freer trade, and regional integration. American reconstruction aid provided an important catalyst, but the Europeans of 50 years ago never envisioned a prolonged period of aid dependency.

This same attitude motivates the new generation of leaders with whom President Clinton met during his 12-day tour of each of Africa's geographic regions. These leaders may face greater odds than the Europeans of 50 years ago, but they are dedicated to bringing their countries into the mainstream of the global economy. The president of the United States responded to the dynamism of these African leaders by offering a new partnership; a relationship with African governments based on mutual respect and shared goals.

President Clinton pledged to listen, and he did -- not only to government leaders, but to ordinary people as well. During these 12 days President Clinton visited not only national capitals, but also the small villages that remain the heart of African society. By engaging Africans directly, the president was able to overcome some long-standing psychological barriers to real cooperation.

Not even a presidential visit can erect a new partnership structure in a fortnight. But this visit laid the foundation for a significantly different relationship with the people of this great continent.

To comprehend the full meaning of President Clinton's 12-day visit to Africa, one needs to step back and appreciate its context. The president's first goal was to bring a better understanding of Africa to the American people. American public opinion was marked either by disinterest or cynicism. Protracted civil wars, reports of new diseases, starving refugees, and the tragic story of genocide dominated our airwaves and produced a sense of distance and hopelessness. These negative images provided a very poor foundation for a more enlightened approach to a new Africa.

What the American author and intellectual W.E.B. DuBois said of another time was also true of ours. He said, "The tragedy of our age is that we know so little of each other."

The American people now know much more about Africa. The president's trip succeeded beyond our most optimistic expectations in creating a more balanced view. Through the media coverage, the entire world was exposed to the dramatic positive changes occurring in Africa.

We heard about the commitment to economic and political reform in many countries, the efforts to integrate regions and the growing commitment of African states to provide for their own security. We witnessed Africa's renewed efforts, with our assistance, to alleviate poverty, protect the environment and build human capacity through investments in education and health care.

President Clinton also understood that certain legacies of the past needed to be confronted if Africans were to open their minds to a new partnership with the United States and the West.

In his speech before the South African parliament, the president said, "It used to be, when American policy-makers thought of Africa at all, they would ask, what can we do for Africa, or whatever can we do about Africa? Those were the wrong questions. The right question today is, what can we do with Africa?"

In conceding that the United States and the West had made mistakes during the Cold War, the president was stating the obvious, but with powerful effect. One South African official told me that these messages would go far in erasing residual suspicions of our motives.

While some in my country have objected to any negative characterization of our actions during the Cold War, it is clear to me that great nations remain great only if they are capable of dealing honestly with the past. Africans received these candid, self-critical statements with gratitude and relief. Had they not heard these messages, it would have been more difficult to move from a posture of paternalism to one of partnership.

From the long view of history, the president wants this trip to be remembered for its impact on substance and policy. Perhaps the most enduring impact of this mission was the president's presentation of a coherent and comprehensive strategy for the new partnership.

During his 12 days in Africa, policy and legislative initiatives were offered that will change the nature of the U.S. relationship with Africa. President Clinton's goal was to create a momentum that would endure far beyond his presidency.

For the first time in my 30 years of working with Africa, we have been presented a holistic approach that connects development to trade, food security and debt relief to economic reform, education to democracy, and conflict resolution to justice, peacekeeping, and regional cooperation.

Taken together, the policy statements issued on this trip defy simplistic descriptions such as "trade not aid." For that I am grateful.

A centerpiece of the new policy is the African Growth and Opportunity Act, legislation that passed the House of Representatives and now awaits passage in the U.S. Senate. This bill endorses the need for continuing development assistance to Africa. The legislation also opens American markets to all African nations. Those nations who demonstrate a strong record of embracing economic reform will be eligible for even greater access to our markets.

For the most part, this initiative was welcomed in Africa, but some raised questions about what were called "conditions" attached to its more liberal benefits. A closer examination reveals that these provisions are nothing more, and nothing less, than the costs of doing business in today's global economy.

African governments such as the ones we visited have already committed themselves to more liberal trading regimes, to deregulating their economies, and to establishing efficient and transparent financial systems. Any country that wants to operate successfully in the global economy must know that it will have to observe international standards in fields such as labor, the environment, and intellectual property rights.

The president also offered debt relief, again tied to economic reform. The debt burden in Africa has a significant impact on the poor; the $12 billion annually repaid by African governments equals more than twice their spending on health and primary education combined.

The United States has already forgiven most of the concessional debt owed by the poorest countries, but we have proposed forgiving all remaining concessional debt to countries undertaking economic reform.

The president also endorsed the forgiveness of multilateral debt under the Highly Indebted Poorest Countries program. The president plans to discuss these issues further with our G-8 partners in Birmingham later this month to see what more can be offered on a bilateral basis.

What is crucial is that debt forgiveness be tied to economic reform. It will do no good to forgive debt today only to have undisciplined economic systems and policies create new debt that will require more forgiveness tomorrow.

The partnership President Clinton described is not about conditionality; it is about working with committed partners.

African nations who aggressively pursue free-market reforms, who make the hard choices to allow democracy to work, and who are willing to unleash the energy of their people will benefit most from foreign assistance. They will also be the nations that are most attractive to private investment. As we saw vividly in countries like Ghana, South Africa, and Botswana on the president's trip, private resources are already flowing in a substantial way to the countries where investors see prospects for good returns.

In South Africa, the president established the correct link between aid and trade when he noted, "Increasing trade does not mean ending aid. I am committed to working with Congress to return our aid for all of Africa to its historic high levels. We will target our assistance to investing in the future of the African people."

As we assist this new Africa, we cannot underestimate the continuing challenges. Ethnic conflict, fragile democracies, diseases such as malaria and AIDS, and serious environmental problems remain throughout much of Africa.

Today is World Health Day. This year, World Health day is dedicated to the goal of making motherhood safer around the world. African mothers face serious challenges. Their chance of dying in pregnancy is 70 times as great as it is in Europe or the United States. Hundreds of thousands of African women pay the ultimate price each year for the lack of even the most rudimentary health and family planning services.

Sustaining economic growth in Africa will remain an overwhelming challenge if Africa's literacy rates remain around 50 percent, as compared, for example, to 84 percent in Latin America.

This is why the president announced a $120 million education initiative for Africa that will introduce the latest learning technologies and teaching techniques to the children of Africa.

All of these challenges demonstrate why a coherent overall approach is essential and why development assistance still has a vital role to play in alleviating poverty and spurring economic growth.

Equally important have been the broad donor efforts to bolster regional integration. Cooperative regional efforts, directed by Africans, are essential in removing many of the stumbling blocks that still remain to increasing the flow of goods across borders in Africa.

When I was in Botswana, I signed an agreement between USAID and the Southern African Development Community to help standardize customs procedures throughout southern Africa. This may seem like a small thing, until you realize that each country in the region has different procedures and regulations, and that tens of millions of dollars are lost every year as trucks and trains sit idle at borders.

Building upon the positive trends in Africa is absolutely vital in shoring up Africa's fragile democracies.

Young democracies are subject to intense pressures and popular demand builds for better living standards. As one African human rights advocate told the president, "Many African nations find themselves suspended in mid-air," wanting to be democracies but without the institutions necessary to sustain democratic behavior. This is a major development challenge. If we ignore it, we risk the prospect of more failed states.

Private capital will serve as the long-term engine for development, but it will not help create a rule of law culture, or sound public administration, or reformed education systems, or any of those other vital measures that help create a framework for open markets and good government.

Weak governments and simmering social tensions are a recipe for conflict. Reducing the threat of conflict places a premium on cooperation among African states and among those nations who wish to help Africa develop to its full potential.

Here again the president heard leaders with very strong views and a willingness to accept responsibility for regional security. Our proposal to provide training and logistical support to peacekeeping operations under the African Crisis Response Initiative has been well received. It was made clear that such operations would be conducted under African command and control, a condition to which we readily agreed.

The East and Central African leaders who met in Entebbe were also appreciative of external support for their efforts to resolve the remaining problems in the Great Lakes region. They urgently requested that we support them within the bounds of their own regional framework. They expressed concern that their efforts to force the parties to a conflict to address substantive issues are sometimes undermined when those parties are able to appeal outside the region to the United States, Great Britain, or France. If we wish to encourage regional responsibility and conflict resolution, we must be sensitive to these concerns.

For me, the most dramatic and heart-wrenching moment of this trip was the president's stopover in Kigali, Rwanda. The president met with genocide victims whose families and friends had been killed before their eyes. In his speech to the people of Rwanda, the president acknowledged the failure of the international community to respond adequately or even to call the genocide what it was. He also cited the subsequent failure of the international community to muster the will to separate the perpetrators from the innocents in the refugee camps.

It was important to Rwandans to hear a Western leader acknowledge these past shortcomings, but it was even more important to hear an American president commit his administration to help create the international systems needed to prevent such tragedies in the future. The challenge President Clinton defined was a difficult one, for the genocide that took nearly one million lives occurred in 90 days. After all, it took four years to develop the consensus necessary to respond to the ethnic conflict in Bosnia.

No responsible member of the international community can contemplate the incredible tragedy of Rwanda and conclude that our preventive systems are sufficient. No one can listen to the stories of the Rwandan survivors and be satisfied with anything short of the admonition "never again."

The challenge was eloquently posed by President Clinton in Rwanda when he said, "There is only one crucial division among the peoples of the Earth: the line between those who embrace the common humanity we all share and those who reject it."

Those of us in the international community who embrace the notion of a common humanity must not rest until we are confident that the systems are in place to prevent the evil of genocide.

I have also come here to Paris to tell you and my colleagues in the French government that the United States seeks harmony not hegemony in Africa. The new partnership with Africa would never succeed were it based on exclusivity. For too long, East-West competition complicated the development process. We do not wish to replace this negative ideological struggle with a competition over commercial interests, language, or global standing. There is room in Africa for all who wish to participate in the new partnership.

Broad-based economic growth in Africa is the essential antidote to poverty and the only path to increased trade. If we harmonize our approach to economic reform, the reward will be development progress and an ample share for all commercial competitors in more stable, open, and growing African markets.

If we harmonize our approach to economic and political reform, it is the poor of Africa who will benefit the most. If we replace paternalism with partnership, the people of Africa will respond.

The United States respects the special relationship France has had with French-speaking Africa. We also welcome the French government's moves to encourage regional integration in Africa to enhance political and economic security among Francophone, Anglophone, and Lusophone countries.

The new African leadership appreciates its historic ties to Europe, but it now insists on improving ties with its neighbors as well. The French experience with European integration can play a very instructive role for African countries as they work toward similar efforts.

The new phone in Africa has begun to ring and it compels us to answer. You can call it Afrophone.

My country has contributed modestly to the changes that have helped create the new African leadership even despite the mistakes of the past. We also understand that the positive developments are built upon the historical foundation of France's leadership and engagement.

It has been France who has consistently argued for higher levels of development assistance to Africa. And it is France today that is moving to develop new and more positive relations with all African states built around shared respect for democracy, human rights, and open markets.

Just before landing in Dakar, Senegal, President Clinton phoned President Chirac to share his impressions and make clear that his vision of a new partnership with Africa could not be achieved without the continued cooperation of France. Never have our approaches been more attuned. Our two nations may have had past differences over Africa, but our vision for the future is the same.

Before departing Goree Island in Senegal, President Clinton summed up his notion of a new partnership by describing the Atlantic Ocean as connecting, not dividing, Africa and the United States. This same great ocean has linked France and the United States from America's first days. Today, France and the United States have a wonderful new opportunity to work together in partnership with Africa. A more prosperous and stable Africa is good for France, good for America, good for the world, and, most importantly, good for Africa.

The challenge now is to work together to build upon the momentum created by President Clinton's historic voyage and turn the vision of a new partnership with Africa into a reality. Our hope and expectation is that we can work together with Africans to enable that great continent to realize its vast potential. Thank you.

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