About the Center

The Rationale

Historically, the United States' interest in Africa has been minimal. Initially, our policies vis-à-vis Africa were defined by the reality of slavery. In 1823, as part of the Monroe Doctrine, we conceded "control" of Africa to Europe, and confirmed it in 1884 when we became the first country to acknowledge Belgium's claim to the Congo. During the Cold War years, the United States' interest in Africa increased, for the continent had become an ideological and actual battleground with the former Soviet Union and its surrogates. U.S. attention to Africa took a positive turn under the Clinton Administration with the President's Africa Growth and Opportunity Initiative and a $500 million commitment to combat HIV/AIDS. Presently, there are signs that Africa's importance to the United States has increased beyond the particular interest of any one administration. One of the newest and most vigorous organizations in Washington, D.C. is the Corporate Council on Africa (CCA). The CCA has a membership of almost 200 U.S. companies, including Archer Daniels Midland, Bechtel, Caterpillar, and Citigroup. The size and vitality of the CCA reflects Africa's potential and important role in international trade and investment.

Sub-Saharan Africa's increasing status within the global community reflects the profound and powerful changes taking place across the continent. Viewed within the context of the past century, Sub-Saharan Africa is presently in the process of a second phase of fundamental change. The first phase occurred in the 1950's and 60's with the transition from colonial governance by European states to independence. This second phase is far-reaching, both in an economic sense and as it relates to democratic governance. All across the continent, African nation states are debating the merits of, and in some cases implementing, free market economic models. One indicator of this trend is the establishment of fourteen stock exchanges in Africa, in places like Botswana, Zambia, and Mauritius, in addition to South Africa. Likewise, countries are experimenting with multiparty democracy as a system of governance. These various "experiments" are as old and successful as Tanzania's thirty years of democratic governance and as recent and fragile as Nigeria's third try at democracy. This second phase of change could well determine which nation states will flourish, and which will flounder, over the next century.

Furthermore, how Africa develops during this phase has equally profound implications for the rest of the world. As the United States experienced with the bombing of our Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, the transnational security threat posed by terrorism is not confined to the Middle East. Our vulnerability, as well as Africa's, to these sorts of threats will only diminish with increased cooperation between Africa and the U.S. and a decrease in poverty in Africa, which is a breeding ground for radicalism. The Center will help to bridge the knowledge gap so critical to increased cooperation and expanded engagement between the United States and Sub-Saharan Africa. Other areas in which Africa and the U.S. have mutual interests that can be addressed more effectively by increased cooperation include: pandemics like HIV/AIDS, our energy and environmental interdependence, Africa's and the United States' respective needs for technology and natural resources, and market opportunities in Africa resulting from potential international trade and investment.

Given the critical juncture at which Africa finds itself there is a need to:

• Develop the next generation of academic African Studies programs to correspond with the political and economic changes in Sub-Saharan African countries particularly Tanzania, South Africa, Nigeria, Mauritius, Botswana, Ghana, Senegal, and Zambia
  
  
• Chronicle and understand this phase of Africa's development, thus enhancing and contributing to the fund of knowledge about Africa
  
  
• Encourage a multidisciplinary approach in teaching students who are inclined to study, and eventually to work with and in, Africa
  
  
• Establish a forum for African leaders to engage other political, business, academic, and public sector leaders regarding Africa's relation to the world community of nations.

APARC will provide an institutional framework within which to address these needs: it will provide a setting in which Africa and the world can come to better understand each other in light of changing global realities. The Center is an effort to move much of the discussion and debate about Africa beyond traditional stereotypes, allowing African nations and the West to engage each other on terms that reflect Africa's promise and potential, not simply its problems.

Next: APARC at Boston University