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By Michel Kassa
Coordinator, Cohesive Leadership Initiative in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

On that day, 7 May 1999, the Durba goldmine area is provokingly green, and the gravel airstrip looks like a copper road somewhere in DR Congo’s north-eastern province under Ugandan army’s control. A small plane (KingAir) has landed there with three passengers after flying from Kinshasa to Goma, which is controlled by a Congolese movement backed by the Rwandan army. The plane has stopped for refueling  and then will head on to Durba, right in the middle of the “Ugandan influence zone.”

By Nureldin Satti
UNESCO Adviser for Culture of Peace in Africa

In December, I returned from a five-day mission to Addis Ababa with a UNESCO delegation where we made a number of contacts at the African Union, the Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), and with partners and donors. The main objective of the mission was to initiate contacts with the African Union as a co-organizer with UNESCO of the “Pan-African Forum on a Culture of Peace,” hosted and funded by the Government of Angola, and which will take place in Luanda from March 26-28, 2013. I had visited the African Union innumerable times in the past, but that was my first visit to the new buildings, constructed with the aid of the Chinese Government. The beauty and the iconic character of the building would be enhanced by adding an African touch to it, such as introducing some features of African traditional architecture or the use of local African building materials to give it a distinctive African style. But, of course, in architecture, as in other walks of life, it is becoming increasingly difficult to combine functionality with heritage values and traditions. This is a challenge which is constantly being posed to architects and cultural and social practitioners alike.

By Francis A. Kornegay
Senior Fellow, Institute for Global Dialogue, Pretoria

The Global Swing States report (German Marshall Fund-Center for a New American Security) exposes serious flaws in American foreign policy thinking by excluding South Africa from their equation involving India and Brazil as rising democratic powers. Washington’s foreign policy mind-set still has a way to go in order to adapt to these changing world realities. Given the major gaps that exist in the current U.S. administration’s own thinking, starting with President Obama himself, it is not surprising that South Africa is bypassed in Global Swing States or that Africa is treated simply as an object for US-‘swing state’ attention, rather than possessing its own agency for charting the continent’s direction. In President Obama’s ‘Person of the Year’ Time magazine interview, he mentioned everything except Africa as a priority in his second term foreign policy.

By Francis A. Kornegay
Senior Fellow, Institute for Global Dialogue, Pretoria

Before Daniel M. Kliman and Richard Fontaine of the German Marshall Fund (GMF) and the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) unveiled their foreign policy advice to the re-elected Obama administration, perhaps they could have saved themselves the effort by going over the speeches of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Indeed, what may have been Secretary Clinton’s valedictory address at the Foreign Policy Group’s “Transformational Trends 2013” Forum on the 29^th of November might serve as a counterpoint to Global Swing States: Brazil, India, Indonesia, Turkey and the Future of International Order by Messers Kliman and Fontaine. In other words, the administration might do better to continue doing what it has already been doing than get itself think-tanked into a foreign policy modeled on American ‘swing state’ electoral politics.

By Ambassador David Shinn 

There is agreement among those who follow China-Africa relations that state-owned and private Chinese companies have become major investors in Africa over the past 10 years.  Even Chinese individuals are investing small amounts in enterprises ranging from restaurants to acupuncture clinics.  It is possible that in the past several years, China was the single largest bilateral source of annual foreign direct investment (FDI) in Africa’s 54 countries.

There is, however, considerable confusion as to what constitutes Chinese investment in Africa.  Many analyses, especially journalistic accounts, conflate investment with multi-billion dollar loans from China to African governments that often use the loans to build infrastructure by Chinese construction companies.  These loans tend to go to resource rich countries such as Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ghana and are usually repaid by shipping natural resources to China.  These loans are not FDI; they are commercial deals, albeit often with a concessionary loan component.  It is important to keep them separate from investment.

So how much have Chinese companies and individuals invested in Africa?  I have concluded that no one, including no one in China, knows the answer to this question.

By Tina Robiolle-Moul, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy

In 2009 and 2010, I had the great opportunity to be involved with the Burundi Leadership Training Program (BLTP) in the development of a conflict resolution curriculum designed to instill a culture of dialogue and non-violent conflict management among secondary school students in Burundi. Funded by USAID East Africa at the request of the Burundian Minister of Education, through both the Wilson Center’s Africa Program and CMPartners, this initiative’s main goal was to complement efforts already underway within the Ministry to promote citizenship and human rights education through its national civic education curriculum.

By Elizabeth McClintock, CMPartners, LLC

Between April and September 2012, I was involved in two initiatives in Burundi: the design and execution of a capacity building program for local implementing partners assisting ex-combatants to reintegrate into their home communities; and the oversight of an evaluation of a construction project meant to facilitate community reconciliation via job provision, training, and the building of community-police relations. The implementation of each of these initiatives raises a number of issues – some of which are obvious and recurrent, others that are particular to the project – and all of which are important to keep at the forefront of any development work in Burundi. The two issues I’d like to comment on here are the role of perceptions in program design and implementation, and the advantages and challenges of partnership.

The Pentagon’s new strategic guidance, “Sustaining U.S.Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense,”  released in January 2012 outlines major changes in the U.S. defense posture, from a geostrategic shift toward Asia and the Pacific to restructuring its forces. The section on stability and counterinsurgency operations states that the U.S. will no longer “…conduct large-scale, prolonged stability operations” as it has done in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Rather, the U.S. will “emphasize non-military means and military-to-military cooperation.”  Specifically, the U.S. will focus on building the capabilities of partners in regions at risk and rely more heavily on Special Forces, technology, and intelligence, as well as diplomacy and development assistance to promote U.S. national security.

By Francis A. Kornegay, Jr. Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center