    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 11 (Monday, March 22, 1999)]
    [Pages 443-447]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    Remarks to the Conference on United States-Africa Partnership
    for the 21st Century

    March 16, 1999

        Thank you. Good morning. Let me say, first of all, to Minister
    Ouedraogo, thank you for your fine address and for your leadership.
    Secretary General Salim, Secretary-General Annan, Secretary Albright, to
    our distinguished ministers and ambassadors and other officials from 46
    African nations and the representatives of the Cabinet and the United
    States Government. I am delighted to see you all here today. We are
    honored by your presence in the United States and excited about what it
    means for our common future.
        A year ago next week I set out on my journey to Africa. It was, for
    me, for my wife, and for many people who took that trip, an utterly
    unforgettable and profoundly moving experience. I went to Africa in the
    hope not only that I would learn but that the process of the trip itself
    and the publicity that our friends in the press would give it would
    cause Americans and Africans to see each other in a new light, not
    denying the lingering effects of slavery, colonialism, the cold war, but
    to focus on a new future, to build a new chapter of history, a new era
    of genuine partnership.

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        A year later, we have to say there has been a fair measure of hope,
    and some new disappointments. War still tears at the heart of Africa.
    Congo, Sierra Leone, Angola, Sudan have not yet resolved their
    conflicts. Ethiopia and Eritrea are mired in a truly tragic dispute we
    have done our best to try to help avoid. Violence still steals innocent
    lives in the Great Lakes region. In the last year, Nairobi and Dar es
    Salaam became battlefields in a terrorist campaign that killed and
    wounded thousands of Africans, along with Americans working there for a
    different future.
        But there have also been promising new developments. The recent
    elections in Nigeria give Africa's most populous country, finally, a
    chance to realize its enormous potential. It's transition may not be
    complete, but let's not forget, just a year ago it was unthinkable. This
    June, for the first time, South Africa will transfer power from one
    fully democratic government to another.
        More than half the sub-Saharan nations are now governed by elected
    leaders. Many, such as Benin, Mali, and Tanzania, have fully embraced
    open government and open markets. Quite a few have recorded strong
    economic growth, including Mozambique, crippled by civil war not long
    ago. Ghana's economy has grown by 5 percent a year since 1992.
        All of you here have contributed to this progress. All are eager to
    make the next century better than the last. You share a great
    responsibility, for you are the architects of Africa's future.
        Today I would like to talk about the tangible ways we can move
    forward with our partnership. Since our trip to Africa, my
    administration has worked hard to do more. We've created a $120 million
    educational initiative to link schools in Africa to schools in this
    country. We've created the Great Lakes Justice Initiative to attack the
    culture of impunity. We have launched a safe skies initiative to
    increase air links between Africa and the rest of the world; given $30
    million to protect food security in Africa and more to be provided
    during this year. In my budget submission to Congress I have asked for
    additional funds to cover the cost of relieving another $237 million in
    African debt on top of the $245 million covered in this year's
    appropriation.
        We're working hard with you to bring an end to the armed conflicts
    which claim innocent lives and block economic progress, conducting
    extensive shuttle diplomacy in an effort to resolve the dispute between
    Ethiopia and Eritrea. In Sierra Leone, we're doing what we can to reduce
    suffering and forge a lasting peace. We have provided $75 million in
    humanitarian assistance over the last 18 months. And with the approval
    of Congress we will triple our longstanding commitment of support for
    ECOMOG to conduct regional peacekeeping.
        We have also done what we can to build the African Crisis Response
    Initiative, with members of our military cooperating with African
    militaries. We've provided $8 million since 1993 to the OAU's Conflict
    Management Center to support African efforts to resolve disputes and end
    small conflicts before they explode into large ones.
        Nonetheless, we have a lot of ground to make up. For too much of
    this century, the relationship between the United States and Africa was
    plagued by indifference on our part. This conference represents an
    unparalleled opportunity to raise our growing cooperation to the next
    level. During the next few days we want to talk about how these programs
    work and hear from you about how we can do better. Eight members of my
    Cabinet will meet their African counterparts. The message I want your
    leaders to take home is, this is a partnership with substance, backed by
    a long-term commitment.
        This is truly a relationship for the long haul. We have been too
    separate and too unequal. We must end that by building a better common
    future. We need to strive together to do better, with a clear vision of
    what we want to achieve over the long run. Ten years from now, we want
    to see more growth rates above 5 percent. A generation from now, we want
    to see a larger middle class, more jobs and consumers, more African
    exports, thriving schools filled with children--boys and girls--with
    high expectations and a reasonable chance of fulfilling them.
        But we need the tools to get there, the tools of aid, trade, and
    investment. As I said when I was in Africa, this must not be a

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    choice between aid and trade; we must have both. In my budget request
    for the next fiscal year, I've asked for an increase of 10 percent in
    development assistance to Africa. But the aid is about quality and
    quantity. Our aid programs are developed with your involvement, designed
    to develop the institutions needed to sustain democracy and to reduce
    poverty and to increase independence.
        To expand opportunity, we also need trade. Our administration
    strongly supports the ``Africa Growth and Opportunity Act,'' which I
    said in my State of the Union Address we will work to pass in this
    session of Congress. The act represents the first step in creating, for
    the first time in our history, a genuine framework for U.S.-Africa trade
    relations. It provides immediate benefits to nations modernizing their
    economies, and offers incentives to others to do the same. It increases
    U.S. assistance, targeting it where it will do the most good.
        The bill clearly will benefit both Africa and the United States.
    Africans ask for more access to our markets; this bill provides that.
    You asked that GSP benefits be extended; this bill extends them for 10
    years. You said you need more private investment; this bill calls for
    the creation of two equity investment funds by OPIC, providing up to
    $650 million to generate private investment in Africa.
        We agree that labor concerns are important. This bill removes GSP
    benefits for any country found to be denying worker rights. You told us
    we needed to understand more about your views on development. This bill
    provides a forum for high-level dialog and cooperation.
        It is a principled and pragmatic approach based on what will work.
    No one is saying it will be easy, but we are resolved to help lower the
    hurdles left by past mistakes. I believe it represents a strong,
    achievable, and important step forward. There are many friends of Africa
    in Congress and many strong opinions about how best to help Africa. I
    hope they will quickly find consensus. We cannot afford a house divided.
    Africa needs action now.
        There's another crucial way the United States can hasten Africa's
    integration. One of the most serious issues we must deal with together,
    and one of truly global importance, is debt relief. Today I ask the
    international community to take actions which could result in forgiving
    $70 billion in global debt relief--global debt. Our goal is to ensure
    that no country committed to fundamental reform is left with a debt
    burden that keeps it from meeting its people's basic human needs and
    spurring growth. We should provide extraordinary relief for countries
    making extraordinary effort to build working economies.
        To achieve this goal, in consultation with our Congress and within
    the framework of our balanced budget, I proposed that we make
    significant improvements to the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries
    initiative at the Cologne Summit of the G-7 in June. First, a new focus
    on early relief by international financial institutions, which now
    reduce debt only at the end of the HIPC program. Combined with ongoing
    forgiveness of cash flows by the Paris Club, this will substantially
    accelerate relief from debt payment burden.
        Second, the complete forgiveness of all bilateral concessional loans
    to the poorest countries.
        Third, deeper and broader reduction of other bilateral debts,
    raising the amount to 90 percent.
        Fourth, to avoid recurring debt problems, donor countries should
    commit to provide at least 90 percent of new development assistance on a
    grant basis to countries eligible for debt reduction.
        Fifth, new approaches to help countries emerging from conflicts that
    have not had the chance to establish reform records, and need immediate
    relief and concessional finance.
        And sixth, support for gold sales by the IMF to do its part, and
    additional contributions by us and other countries to the World Bank's
    trust fund to help meet the cost of this initiative.
        Finally, we should be prepared to provide even greater relief in
    exceptional cases where it could make a real difference.
        What I am proposing is debt reduction that is deeper and faster. It
    is demanding, but to put it simply, the more debtor nations take
    responsibility for pursuing sound economic policies, the more creditor
    nations must be willing to provide debt relief.

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        One of the best days of my trip last year was the day I opened an
    investment center in Johannesburg, named after our late Commerce
    Secretary, Ron Brown, a true visionary who knew that peace, democracy,
    and prosperity would grow in Africa with the right kind of support. I
    can't think of a better tribute to him than our work here today, for he
    understood that Africa's transformation will not happen overnight but,
    on the other hand, that it should happened and that it could happen.
        Look at Latin America's progress over the last decade. Look at Asia
    before that. In each case, the same formula worked: Peace, open markets,
    democracy, and hard work lifted hundreds of millions of people from
    poverty. It has nothing to do with latitude and longitude or religion or
    race. It has everything to do with an equal chance and smart decisions.
        There are a thousand reasons Africa and the United States should
    work together for the 21st century, reasons buried deep in our past,
    reasons apparent in the future just ahead. It is the right thing to do,
    and it is in the self-interest of all the peoples represented in this
    room today. Africa obviously matters to the 30 million Americans who
    trace their roots there. But Africa matters to all Americans. It
    provides 13 percent of our oil, nearly as much as the Middle East. Over
    100,000 American jobs depend upon our exports to Africa; there could be
    millions more when Africa realizes its potential. As Africa grows it
    will need what we produce, and we will need what Africa produces.
        Africa is home to 700 million people, nearly a fifth of the world.
    Last year our growing relationship with this enormous market helped to
    protect the United States from the global financial crisis raging
    elsewhere. While exports were down in other parts of the world, exports
    from the United States to Africa actually went up by 8 percent, topping
    $6 billion. As wise investors have discovered, investments in Africa
    pay. In 1997 the rate of return of American investments in Africa was 36
    percent, compared with 16 percent in Asia, 14 percent worldwide, 11
    percent in Europe.
        As has already been said, we share common health and environmental
    concerns with people all over the world, and certainly in Africa. If we
    want to deal with the problems of global warming and climate change, we
    must deal in partnership with Africa. If we want to deal with a whole
    array of public health problems that affect not only the children and
    people of Africa but people throughout the rest of the world, we must do
    it in partnership with Africa.
        Finally, I'd like to just state a simple truth that guides our
    relations with all nations. Countries that are democratic, peaceful, and
    prosperous are good neighbors and good partners. They help respond to
    crises. They respect the environment. They abide by international law.
    They protect their working people and their consumers. They honor women
    as well as men. They give all their children a chance.
        There are 46 nations represented here today, roughly a quarter of
    all the countries on Earth. You share a dazzling variety of people and
    languages and traditions. The world of the 21st century needs your
    strength, your contribution, your full participation in the struggle to
    unleash the human potential of people everywhere.
        Africa is the ancient cradle of humanity. But it is also a
    remarkably young continent, full of young people with an enormous stake
    in the future. When I traveled through the streets of the African cities
    and I saw the tens of thousands, the hundreds of thousands of young
    people who came out to see me, I wanted them to have long, full, healthy
    lives. I tried to imagine what their lives could be like if we could
    preserve the peace, preserve freedom, extend genuine opportunity, give
    them a chance to have a life that was both full of liberty and ordered,
    structured chances--chances that their parents and grandparents did not
    know.
        The Kanuri people of Nigeria, Niger, and Chad say, ``Hope is the
    pillar of the world.'' The last decade proves that hope is stronger than
    despair if it is followed by action. Action is the mandate of this
    conference.
        Let us move beyond words and do what needs to be done. For our part,
    that means debt relief, passage of the ``Africa Growth and Opportunity
    Act,'' appropriate increases in assistance, and a genuine sense of
    partnership and openness to future possibilities. For

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    your part, it means continuing the work of building the institutions
    that bring democracy and peace, prosperity and equal opportunity.
        We are ending a decade, the 1990's, that began with a powerful
    symbol. I will never forget the early Sunday morning in 1990 when I got
    my daughter up and took her down to the kitchen to turn on the
    television so that she could watch Nelson Mandela walk out of his prison
    for the last time. She was just a young girl, and I told her that I had
    the feeling that this would be one of the most important events of her
    lifetime, in terms of its impact on the imagination of freedom-loving
    people everywhere.
        We could not have know then, either she or I or my wife, that we
    would have the great good fortune to get to know Mr. Mandela and see his
    generosity extended to our family and to our child, as it has been to
    children all over his country. But in that walk, we saw a continent's
    expression of dignity, of self-respect, of the soaring potential of the
    unfettered human spirit.
        For a decade, now, the people of South Africa and the people of
    Africa have been trying to make the symbol of that walk real in the
    lives of all the people of the continent. We still have a long way to
    go. But let us not forget how far we have come. And let us not forget
    that greatness resides not only in the people who lead countries and who
    overcome persecutions but in the heart and mind of every child and every
    person there is the potential to do better, to reach higher, to fulfill
    dreams. It is our job to give all the children of Africa the chance to
    do that.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:38 a.m. in the Loy Henderson Auditorium
    at the State Department. In his remarks, he referred to Chairman
    Youssouf Ouedraogo and Secretary General Salim Ahmed Salim, Organization
    of African Unity (OAU); United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan; and
    President Nelson Mandela of South Africa. The President also referred to
    the Economic Community of West Africa Observer Group (ECOMOG) and the
    Generalized System of Preferences (GSP).