Contact Us

Staff

APARC’s State of Africa report details African growth, political reforms

By David J. Craig

In the past three years, Abdoulaye Wade, Senegal’s first democratically elected president, has installed tough new regulatory procedures to stomp out corruption in Senegalese corporations, invited the World Bank to help oversee the privatization of his nation’s communications industry, and created a government agency to help attract foreign investment. Wade, a free-market liberal who has proven a stalwart U.S. ally in the war against terrorism, also has created about 8,300 permanent jobs through a progressive youth training program.

Charles Stith, director of BU’s African Presidential Archives and Research Center and former U.S. ambassador to Tanzania (right), and former Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda, who is at BU this year as APARC’s first Balfour President-in-Residence, say the United States will bolster its national security by building relationships with African nations. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky

The news Wade is making is hardly the type Americans are accustomed to hear from Africa, a continent typically associated with war, famine, disease, poverty, and corruption. But Senegal is not the only democratic African nation determined to integrate itself into the global economy and body politic. In fact, a report published this month by BU’s African Presidential Archives and Research Center (APARC) highlights the recent progress of several African states in their pursuit of democratic and free-market reforms.

APARC’s first annual African Leaders State of Africa Report is a collection of documents authored by 13 democratically elected African leaders, each providing an overview of their recent reform initiatives and successes, as well as descriptions of the pressing social, political, and economic challenges their country faces. The report details, for instance, the growth of the financial services sector in Mauritius, the recent surge of imports to Zambia, and the reduction of South Africa’s federal deficit from about 9 percent of its gross domestic product in 1994 to 1.7 percent last year.

The purpose of the report, says APARC Director Charles Stith, who served as U.S. ambassador to Tanzania from 1998 to 2001, is to inform U.S. policy makers, scholars, and students about important developments in Africa, and in particular, to demonstrate to the United States its opportunity to bolster national security by building partnerships with such progressive African nations. Other countries represented in the State of Africa Report are Benin, Botswana, Cape Verde, Ghana, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Tanzania.

“Against the backdrop of a heightened security alert in this nation, the United States has a timely opportunity to ensure that these 13 countries remain our allies,” says Stith. “There is a connection between poverty alleviation and eradicating potential safe havens for terrorists.” Fruitful U.S. partnerships with African nations, he says, should “enhance their economic security, offer trade opportunities, and increase cultural and intellectual exchange.

“Africa is more than the sum of its problems, although that is what tends to transfix U.S. media coverage of the continent,” he continues. “This report gives Americans insight and perspective from leaders of these African democracies about a part of our world with which we must engage -- particularly since the September 11 attack on America. Their voices reflect a sense of responsibility for the future of the African continent and deserve to be heard and respected by Americans, who will benefit from listening and understanding them. Encouraging and amplifying this transatlantic enlightenment is the fundamental mission of APARC.”

The African Leaders State of Africa Report is being distributed to key members of Congress, the White House, and the European Union, as well as to media outlets around the world and dozens of African leaders. Stith says that as more African nations embrace democratic and free-market reforms he anticipates that future issues of the report will include contributions from other countries as well as the 13 in the 2003 report. The report will serve as a benchmark, he says, for measuring the progress African nations make toward joining the global marketplace.

Publication of the report was supported by a $75,000 grant from the Coca-Cola Africa Foundation, with additional support from the Lloyd G. Balfour Foundation, an endowment administered by FleetBoston. Last year, the Balfour Foundation presented APARC with a $1 million grant to launch a residency program that brings to BU former African presidents who are committed to democracy and who left office peacefully.

Stith says that former Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda, who is BU’s first Balfour African President-in-Residence, was instrumental in securing the participation of several African leaders in the new APARC report.

“Understanding Africa’s complexities and potential can only be good for African relations with America, and this report will facilitate the conversation that must take place between Africa’s leaders and America’s leaders,” says Kaunda, who in 1991 stepped down as Zambia’s first president after allowing a multiparty election, which he lost to Frederick Chiluba. “Having achieved the dream of a free Africa, our challenge now is to create a universally prosperous Africa. These African leaders share a commitment to creating conditions on the continent where all our people can fulfill their God-given potential.”

APARC was created in 2001 as a center for research and dialogue on contemporary political and economic trends in Africa. It will be a repository for the papers of democratically elected African leaders and other influential figures in modern African history. In April APARC will bring several former African leaders to Boston University for a roundtable discussion about promoting foreign investment on the continent.

For more information about APARC and the State of Africa Report, visit www.bu.edu/aparc.

28 February 2003
Boston University
Office of University Relations