From the Voice of Amer­ica, a pair of think tanks have released a study on what African pol­icy chal­lenges are ahead for the Obama admin­is­tra­tion. For­eign Pol­icy in Focus has the entire report avail­able online.

A new report says the Obama admin­is­tra­tion faces key chal­lenges in Africa this year, includ­ing poverty, cli­mate change and HIV/AIDS.

Africa Pol­icy Out­look 2010 says the U.S. must take action to ensure it “does not miss a his­toric oppor­tu­nity to bring mean­ing­ful change to the con­ti­nent.” The report is co-published by Africa Action and For­eign Pol­icy in Focus.

Ger­ald LeMelle, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Africa Action, “The pol­icy out­look is some­thing we’ve put out now for 10 years. What we try to do is give a sort of an hon­est look at what the fol­low­ing year will look like vis-à-vis U.S. for­eign pol­icy in Africa based on the trends that we’ve seen from the year previous.”

Poverty is the biggest challenge

“We don’t like to dis­cuss poverty that much because it’s kind of an indi­ca­tion that some of the free trade dereg­u­la­tion poli­cies so favored by West­ern coun­tries and Bret­ton Woods Insti­tu­tions (World Bank, IMF) are in fact fail­ing,” he says.

LeMelle calls poverty the great­est sin­gle threat to U.S. secu­rity today.

“We have seen the result of failed states across the globe and includ­ing in Africa, places like Soma­lia, that have come back to haunt The United States and other coun­tries. And there­fore, if we are not seri­ously address­ing the ques­tion of poverty, then we’re really set­ting our­selves up for a fairly dis­mal future,” he says.

The Africa Pol­icy Out­look report calls for a “nuts and bolts” approach to deal with poverty.

“We have to stop pro­mot­ing dereg­u­la­tion. We have to stop pro­mot­ing free trade. We have to stop pro­mot­ing struc­tural adjust­ment pro­grams that make it safe for for­eign direct invest­ment to make 20, 30 per­cent profit at the expense of even min­i­mal rein­vest­ment in these com­mu­ni­ties where the money is being taken from,” he says.

LeMelle says an exam­ple of how fail­ure to rein­vest in the com­mu­nity can cause major prob­lems is Nigeria’s Niger Delta.

“Fif­teen years ago, we were orga­niz­ing with Ken Saro-Wiwa, the peace activist from the Niger Delta, to get the oil com­pa­nies to stop dump­ing oil into the envi­ron­ment. And by and large they refused to meet even min­i­mal demands of rein­vest­ing in schools and in hous­ing and in roads for poor peo­ple in the Niger Delta. Today, peo­ple in the Niger Delta are pick­ing up guns and shoot­ing,” he says.

He calls it an atti­tude of prof­its being more impor­tant than people.

Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists were exe­cuted after being con­victed by a mil­i­tary tri­bunal for allegedly insti­gat­ing vio­lence that led to the deaths of pro-government Ogoni chiefs. Saro-Wiwa and the oth­ers were hanged in 1995.

Cli­mate Change

The report says another major chal­lenge to Africa is cli­mate change. And LeMelle is crit­i­cal of the major pow­ers for fail­ing to take stronger action at the Copen­hagen cli­mate sum­mit in December.

“Cli­mate change is going to be a major con­tribut­ing fac­tor to death, dis­ease, con­flict, inse­cu­rity — all the things that we are con­cerned about from the per­spec­tive of national and global secu­rity. So we have to begin to address this,” he says.

LeMelle says while the rich nations pledged $100 bil­lion to help devel­op­ing coun­tries deal with cli­mate change, it’s unclear whether that’s new money or funds real­lo­cated from other programs.

HIV/AIDS

The Africa Action report says HIV/AIDS will also remain a major prob­lem, despite pro­grams such as PEPFAR, the President’s Emer­gency Plan for AIDS Relief. LeMelle says it’s respon­si­ble for an 18 per­cent decrease in AIDS-related deaths across Africa since 2004. But he says the increase in fund­ing for PEPFAR is not as large as in years past.

“The end result has been that coun­tries like Tan­za­nia are begin­ning to turn peo­ple away. New patients approach them and they are told they can only enter the rolls (for treat­ment) if some­one else dies. Or they’re say­ing they’re not tak­ing any new patients for the com­ing year. This is going to reverse the trend toward suc­cess­fully decreas­ing the deaths from HIV,” he says.

He calls on the Obama admin­is­tra­tion to keep the strong U.S. sup­port to pro­vide anti-retroviral drugs to those infected with the AIDS virus.

LeMelle says with the many prob­lems fac­ing the con­ti­nent, “Africa deserves a more sophis­ti­cated approach than what has been afforded to its people.”

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