[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).