Africa UP Close

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 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.