MONDAY, 9 AUGUST 2004

501 Passion For Africa Evident In Reporter's Book Discussion
(Howard French decries western inattention at Wilson Center talk) (690)

*AEF501 08/06/2004
Passion For Africa Evident In Reporter's Book Discussion
(Howard French decries western inattention at Wilson Center talk) (690)
By Tara Boyle
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- American journalist Howard French is not afraid to declare his love for Africa. He was "seduced" by the continent, he says, after moving to Côte d'Ivoire as a young college graduate in 1979. And he is equally candid in his assessment of what has gone wrong in Africa since independence -- particularly with the continent's politics.

"Many countries have been serially struck by bad leadership," he told an audience at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a nonpartisan research institute, on August 5. "But I think it's dishonest to pretend that the outside world has played by and large a beneficial role, certainly in any consistent way, in terms of the way Africa's political situation has evolved in the post-independence period."

French, a reporter for the New York Times who taught at the University of Abidjan before becoming a journalist, spoke in Washington at the tail end of a tour to promote his new book, "A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa." The book, French said, is part personal narrative, part amateur history -- an attempt to understand "how Africa got to the particularly difficult place that it's in today," he said.

Conflict has inevitably played a large role in that story, and French highlighted one war in particular -- the civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo -- in his discussion. As many as 3.3 million people are estimated to have died in that conflict, many from malnutrition and disease. French called the war a "horrific catastrophe," and a disaster to which the outside world has not paid enough attention.

"[I] don't think there has been a terribly deep introspection or analysis or review or policy debate, even, about this catastrophe -- here in Washington or in the international community, and I think that's really, really unfortunate," he said.

French also accused the international community of failing to respond to crises in Africa as quickly it does in other parts of the world.

"I simply look at the facts, and the facts are that when disasters happen in other parts of the world, the international community tends to muster a humanitarian response faster and more generously," he argued.

"You can look at these things over time and you can compare region to region, and I think Africa pretty consistently comes up short."

French's arguments were countered in a panel discussion by Gayle Smith, who served as special assistant to the president and senior director for African affairs at the National Security Council during the Clinton administration. Smith argued that even though Africa has not historically been considered strategic to U.S. interests, the United States began during the Clinton years to "build the internal architecture" of a rigorous Africa policy.

"Some people think that Bill Clinton's trip to Africa [in 1998] was nothing more than a television show and not at all that meaningful. Quite frankly, what it triggered was a message to the rest of the Cabinet that you've got to pay attention to this.

"Now is that sufficient? No, but is it significant? I think absolutely, yes, because what it meant is that discussions that previously didn't go all the way up the chain started to go up the chain, and I think that's quite important," Smith said.

Meanwhile, African leaders also are showing more initiative in tackling regional problems, Smith said, pointing to the African Union's efforts to resolve the humanitarian crisis in the western Sudanese region of Darfur.

"There are some trends in Africa ... which are positive. Ten or 15 years ago in an OAU [Organization of African Unity] meeting, to discuss what was going on in Sudan would not have happened because it was the internal affairs of a member state," she said.

"Today, the first one to do anything about Sudan ... was the African Union. Now are they doing enough? I think that's questionable, but certainly they're doing more than the rest of the international community."

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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