Africa

Angola’s elections last week signaled the departure of Africa’s second longest serving leader, reminding me of an exhilarating 1986 dinner I attended.

Pessimism, paternalism, and pity are inappropriate responses to the present predicament of the people of Africa.

These things hang together: clean government, clean energy, sustainable prosperity, the modest goods of a good life.

The Africa that will rise and then sustain its new heights is the Africa that will transform the lives of its smallholder farmers, and from the sound foundation of a healthy agriculture build the industries that are the true engines of national wealth generation.

Indulging in this thought experiment has led me to conclusions that surprise me: Africa might suffer less from a Trump presidency than America would.

Sub-Saharan Africa in the 21st century faces one great opportunity and two great dangers. And American foreign policy will profoundly affect each.

For America today to truly be America, it must be the world’s leading proponent of human rights at home and abroad. It is when it answers this great national vocation (first glimpsed by the nation’s founders) that America most fully gives expression to what, in seed, it has been from the very start.

While I am an optimist with regard to global poverty alleviation, my optimism is sorely tested when it comes to my beloved birth continent, Africa.

The next American president should shape the United States’ Africa policy in response to three questions: How can America help constrain Islamicist violence in the African Sahel? What can America do to help counter state collapse in the roughly 34% of Africa where there is no effective state control? How can American foreign policy best encourage economic growth in the rising parts of Africa (taking into account China’s growing presence in Africa)?