Afro-Netizen

Clinton Global Initiative 2008 Focuses on Global Health

By Mary Dillard

Guest Contributor

Today is the third day of the 2008 Clinton Global Initiative.  This year I decided to focus on listening to the global health panels, which have emphasized the goal of expanding the global health workforce. 

One statistic that was mentioned yesterday is that Africa has 11% of the world’s population, over 20% of the world’s disease burden, but only 3% of the world’s health workers.  This has not always been the case and there are a number of reasons the numbers of health care workers have diminished so precipitously over the past thirty years. These include the Structural Adjustment Programs imposed on a number of African countries during the 1980s and 90s that forced African governments to decrease the amount of money that went into public health.

A second factor was the so-called brain drain- a controversial term referring to the migration of skilled professionals from developing countries to fill human resource needs in wealthier countries.  This process began in the 1970s but accelerated due to the decline in working conditions for health workers in the 1980s and 90s.   

Over the past two days, several panel participants have called for private investors to pay more attention to partnering with the public sector, thus challenging the legacy of structural adjustment.  The clearest call for this came yesterday from Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners in Health who reminded the audience that the CGI goals (Poverty Alleviation, Energy and Climate Change, Education and Global Health) are particularly relevant for impoverished countries in the global south. 

While Farmer was technically on the panel to speak about global health, he emphasized that the recent devastation that Haiti has faced is due to climate change.  Although this has been little reported in the U.S. corporate press, Haiti has been battered by four hurricanes in the past two months.  These storms have resulted in the deaths of over 1000 people and displacement of close to a million people. 

Farmer argued that with the splintering of NGO groups, it has been more difficult than ever to coordinate efforts or to share best practices of health care delivery but that it is crucial for people to pay attention to what is happening in Haiti in order to avoid an increasingly dire humanitarian crisis.   

Given the fact that there are many immediate healthcare crises occurring in the world, it may seem strange to focus the theme of the Global Health panels on recruiting healthcare workers.  However, this need was echoed by most panel participants over the past two days.  Yesterday, Dr. Nancy Aossey, President and Chief Executive Officer of the International Medical Corps (IMC) argued that this is a crucial priority for post-conflict and active conflict zones where IMC works including Chad, the Central African Republic, Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Today was “policy-wonk day” on the health panels.  Most of the speakers on the smaller panels were very well versed in health policy and there was a clear emphasis on practical, replicable solutions to challenges facing health care workers around the world.  This morning’s global health panel featured Craig R. Barrett, Chairman of Intel Corporation,
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Minister of Health, Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, 
Aruna Uprety, Director, Rural Health and Education Service Trust of Nepal and Dr. Lola Dare, Executive Secretary of African Council for Sustainable Health Development (ACOSHED).

The Ethiopian Minister of Health reported on initiatives that his government is doing to expand the medical corps.  According to Minister Tedros, when the government set priorities,  “We decided to focus on trying to reach the Millennium Development Goals, particularly the goal of ending poverty by 2015.”  Ethiopia’s per capita health expenditure is only one dollar per person.  With such limited funds directed towards the healthcare, increasing the numbers of low and mid-level providers (traditional birth attendants, nurses, physicians assistants) became a priority and the Ministry decided to strategically allocate resources. 

The current national health plan focuses on what he calls  “Flooding and Retention”.  Flooding refers to exponentially increasing the number of trained doctors, while retention refers to efforts to keep trained healthcare professionals employed in that capacity.  In too many impoverished countries, salaries for health care providers are so low that people cannot afford to work in the sectors where they were trained.  This contributes to skilled workers either leaving the country or finding other employment.  The largest outlay of funds in the health budget will go towards “Flooding” with  the hopes that at least a fraction of the doctors trained will continue to live and work in Ethiopia. It’s a risky strategy but clearly one that the government believes it must take.

Dr. Lola Dare made one of the most compelling arguments to not only increase the number of health care providers but also to provide those workers with the necessary supplies. She reminded the audience, “I worked in pediatric health and I left because I had no supplies in order to do my job.”  Her comments highlight the fact that the best intentions mean nothing to workers on the ground unless they have the supplies necessary to provide the kind of care that they were trained to provide. 

Africa has the highest disease burden but also has the lowest number of health workers.  Clearly the Continent has faced tremendous challenges in providing adequate health care over the past thirty years.  Since CGI is about creating “political will” my hope is that one day we will see real progress, by convincing governments around the world to make their health budgets more important than their military budgets.

Mary Dillard is Associate Professor of African History at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York.

Afro-Netizen covers the 2008 Clinton Global Initiative: What a difference a year makes

By Mary Dillard
Guest Contributor

On Wednesday morning, I attended the first full day session of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), an annual meeting of world leaders, corporate executives, NGO representatives, foundations and research institutions.  Timed to coincide with the opening session of the UN General Assembly, CGI’s goal is to link these various organizations in an effort to direct resources towards sustainable solutions to some of the most vexing global problems. 

This is my second time blogging for Afro-Netizen about CGI.  I attended last year and was impressed by Bill Clinton’s ability to assimilate a wide range of information, to bring disparate perspectives together in the same room and to speak intelligently on a wide range of topics.  Last year, I diligently followed the education panels because I wanted to hear up close and personal about the latest innovations in girls’ education, especially in Africa. 

What a difference a year makes. 

Last year, Clinton sang the praises of Kenya’s President Mwai Kibaki for his efforts to provide universal primary education to all of Kenya’s children.  Today, Kenya is still recovering from its own political crisis at the end of 2007 which displaced thousands of families and set the country back tremendously in terms of its educational and development goals.

The opening panel session featured Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Queen Rania al-Abdalla of Jordan, former U2 member and co-founder of the ONE campaign Bono, E. Nevill Isdell the Chairman of the Board of Directors for Coca Cola, and former Vice President Al Gore.  President Clinton heaped praise on President Ellen Sirleaf-Johnson for the tremendous growth of Liberia’s GDP since she became Africa’s first female head of state in 2006, after the country ended fourteen years of civil war.  President Sirleaf-Johnson’s background as a senior loan officer at the World Bank has certainly enabled her to tap into the various multinational entities that are interested in participating in Liberia’s postwar recovery. 

Investors have flocked to Liberia because as President Johnson-Sirleaf stated “We are not a poor country, we have tremendous natural resources.”  She argued however, that the country still faces tremendous challenges, particularly in rebuilding infrastructure. In addition, the lack of coordination among donors has hampered smooth implementation of redevelopment efforts. 

Surprisingly, the most fiery speaker of the morning session was former Vice President Al Gore who linked the current economic crisis in the United States to the continuing climate crisis.  Gore suggested that for years, the American public received misinformation about the potential hazards of sub-prime lending practices.  The Vice President argued that similar misinformation is still being spread by entrenched fossil fuel industry interests about the dangers of climate change and suggested that these companies were committing a type of securities fraud by telling investors that their products were not harmful to the environment.  He then called for civil disobedience by young people to fight the building of any new coal burning power plants.

Bono began his statements by pointing out that the U.S. government can find $700 billion to bail out Wall Street, but the entire G-8 can’t find $25 billion to make sure that thousands of children don’t continue to die every day of preventable diseases.

His comments highlight the fact that part of the potential of CGI is that it can help to create the political will to divert more resources to alleviate poverty, bolster global health initiatives, support education and address the question of climate change.  In this respect, CGI is a very important forum for bringing key players together.  However, there also tend to be a lot of contradictions in these types of gatherings.  The winner of today’s “Clueless Africa Comment” prize must go to Bono. 

Addressing Queen Rania al-Abdallah of Jordan as “your majestyness”  he said, “The biggest problems of your continent are three types of extremes: extreme politics, extreme poverty, and extreme ideology.”  He continued, “Take a situation like Darfur.  I’ve been there. There is nothing there.  It’s just dirt.”

Clearly, his point was not well made but his words are also a reminder to many Africa specialists of the problems that arise when moderately informed celebrities end up being the last word on African politics.  First of all, Jordan is NOT in Africa.  Secondly, this kind of language obscures the real roots of political conflicts in Africa, giving the impression that Africans are once again fighting over things that don’t really matter.  Do the people of Darfur think there is nothing there? 

The Chinese government clearly sees something other than dirt in Darfur, or else it would not be continuing to expand its political and economic relationship with the Sudanese government.  Most troubling to me in the many invocations of Darfur that occurred today, was the complete silence on the Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa’s largest war to date.  Could it be because Canadian and American companies (among others) are still benefiting from their trade relationships in Congo?

There is obviously a lot of good that can come from this summit.  The rest of the week will feature announcements by CGI partners of funding commitments that they will make this year.  I for one, have returned more skeptical this year and will attend the remaining events hoping to hear more informed analyses about Africa and the Caribbean. 

Mary Dillard is Associate Professor of African History at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. 

Middle East Bloggers Remember 9/11

By Amira Al Hussaini
Courtesy of Huffington Post

Today marks the seventh anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the US, a pivotal day in history and a day which brought about so much heartbreak and destruction not only in the U.S. but around the world. Bloggers from the Middle East reflect on the disaster.

Jordanian Hareega wishes it never happened:

I wish it never happened. It could and should have been prevented.

You may ask, how come I'm still remembering this event even though most Americans (82% on today's CNN poll) are not doing anything significant to mark it?

I don't believe in conspiracy theories. I do believe that it was those 19 low-life men that flew those planes into the towers and into the Pentagon, and doubt that the US government had an active role in bombing the towers or shooting the planes. I am buying all of this.

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Web-based cartoon inspired by China's anti-Darfur activities & the Beijing Olympics

This powerful parody speaks for itself.

Please share it widely!

Still out of Africa, Part Two

By David M. Whettstone

Guest Contributor

When it comes to the wonderful continent of Africa, the West interacts with it with a great amount of disregard and a lack of historical memory and accountability.

The psychology and in behavior of disrespect and colonialism still lingers. This has profound implications for all people of the Diaspora.

Mukoma Wa Ngugi, a Kenyan writer, has some thoughts about this. He is the author of "Hurling Words at Consciousness" and a political columnist for the BBC's Focus on Africa magazine. He has a simple request: Britain should pay for its colonialism.

In a recent op-ed piece in The Los Angeles Times, he begins:

Lately, saving Africa has become very fashionable.

Hollywood celebrities are adopting African babies. Bono and Bob Geldof sing for Africa. And Bill Gates, former heads of state Bill Clinton and Tony Blair and a sprinkling of former World Bank officials have probably caused traffic jams there as they tout their campaigns.

Put aside the irony of Clinton doing little for Africa when holding the most powerful office in the world and now, as a private citizen, wanting to save the whole continent. In the "save Africa" caldron, you will find two active ingredients missing: Africans and modern African history.

Africans want former colonial powers to be held accountable for a history of suffering.

He then proceeds to describe a series of atrocities in the British attempts to quell the Mau Mau “Rebellion.”

He points readers to historian Caroline Elkins’ Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya" for them to get a fuller understanding. The book indicates that there are estimates that more than 100,000 people died in the detention camps in the process of "re-education."

Mr. Wa Ngugi writes that the Kenya Human Rights Commission plans to file a lawsuit in February, 2008 with the British High Court on behalf of the survivors of what came to be known as the Mau Mau Rebellion. The commission is a nonpartisan, nongovernmental organization.

He states:

The lawsuit raises several questions: Can and should one generation be held accountable for another's atrocities? Should citizens be held accountable -- through the taxes they pay -- for the atrocities committed by their governments? Should corporations and banks be held accountable for profits gained through past actions that hurt others?

Historical precedence answers in the affirmative. For example, Germany and Austria have paid billions of dollars to the Israeli government and individual Holocaust survivors for World War II atrocities.

He has cogent critique regarding another effort: the activities of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa. “Forgiveness, justice and healing are closely related, the perpetrator of the crime had to own up to the wrongs of the past, then ask for forgiveness. But the perpetrators also should give back (a step missing in the South African commission), in one form or another, what they took from the victims.”

Wa Ngugi affirms that there is “a compelling moral argument for Mau Mau reparations. [Society composed of] moral beings, we have three sets of duties: helping those in need, doing no harm and alleviating problems inherited from the past to prevent further harm in the future.”

I agree with his conclusions: “We, the living, become accountable for the past, for the sake of the future.”

David Whettstone is a public policy advocate, educator and writer who works at national and local levels, particularly in the areas of civil rights and criminal justice. Based in Washington, D.C., David recently finished an eight-year tenure as a religious lobbyist and advocate on Capitol Hill. A native New Yorker, David has studied in the areas of religion and theology, political science, and urban studies.

Britain should pay for its colonialism

Kenyans should be compensated for atrocities suffered during the Mau Mau rebellion.

By Mukoma Wa Ngugi
Los Angeles Times

Lately, saving Africa has become very fashionable. Hollywood celebrities are adopting African babies. Bono and Bob Geldof sing for Africa. And Bill Gates, former heads of state Bill Clinton and Tony Blair and a sprinkling of former World Bank officials have probably caused traffic jams there as they tout their campaigns.

Put aside the irony of Clinton doing little for Africa when holding the most powerful office in the world and now, as a private citizen, wanting to save the whole continent. In the "save Africa" caldron, you will find two active ingredients missing: Africans and modern African history.

Africans want former colonial powers to be held accountable for a history of suffering. One example is the lawsuit the Kenya Human Rights Commission plans to file in the British High Court on behalf of the survivors of what came to be known as the Mau Mau rebellion. (The commission is a nonpartisan, nongovernmental organization focused on human rights in Kenya.) The colonial government declared the rebellion a "state of emergency," and it lasted from 1952 until the rebels' defeat in 1960.

Kenya had been officially made a British colony in 1920. The rebellion began with the Kikuyu -- the largest ethnic group -- fighting against British rule and British settlers' land grabbing. Some Kikuyu leaders mobilized fighters against the British through oaths of allegiance (the term "Mau Mau" was coined by the British, likely from the Kikuyu word for oath).

The British response, through the British army, the Royal Air Force and the help of Kenyan collaborators, was brutal, with innocents swept up along with the rebels. The official number of fighters killed was 11,000, but some estimate that tens of thousands more Kenyans died and as many as 1 million -- mostly women, children and elderly men -- were detained.

Because recent authoritarian governments suppressed Mau Mau history and threatened survivors with arrest if they tried to organize, the Mau Mau movement was not legally recognized in Kenya until 2003.

The lawsuit, to be filed in February, will now seek justice, alleging that from 1952 to 1960, the Kenyan colonial government killed and tortured Mau Mau detainees. A background document I obtained from the Kenya Human Rights Commission argues that because the injuries "were sustained in the detention camps of the Kenya colonial government" operating under the mandate of the British, it follows that the British government is liable. Further, it claims the British did not do enough to prevent the torture and abuse.

In her Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya," historian Caroline Elkins estimates that more than 100,000 people died in the detention camps in the process of "re-education." Thousands of others were shot in combat, hanged or killed as collateral damage, and the majority of the Kikuyu people were interned.

The lawsuit raises several questions: Can and should one generation be held accountable for another's atrocities? Should citizens be held accountable -- through the taxes they pay -- for the atrocities committed by their governments? Should corporations and banks be held accountable for profits gained through past actions that hurt others?

Historical precedence answers in the affirmative. For example, Germany and Austria have paid billions of dollars to the Israeli government and individual Holocaust survivors for World War II atrocities.

Read more

Mukoma Wa Ngugi, a Kenyan writer and author of "Hurling Words at Consciousness," is a political columnist for the BBC's Focus on Africa magazine.

The Global Clinton Summit in Review

By Mary Dillard
Guest Contributor

I once saw an interview with Bill Clinton where he was asked “What do you think of the American people?”  His response was, “Give them enough time and they always get it right.”  That struck me as wildly optimistic, but stayed in my mind because I felt that it gave real insight into the man.  Witnessing two days of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI)  reminded me of that interview.  Former President Clinton seems determined to use his political capital in order to bring attention and resources to bear on some of the world’s most serious problems. And he’s as optimistic as ever. 

The idea behind CGI is to get a range of people together discuss global issues, come up with action plans and steps towards action.  Each morning began with a plenary session followed by working group meetings in which CGI members and invited guests met to brainstorm action items, make suggestions and most importantly, make commitments.

While the press was not allowed in the working sessions, we were able to watch video feeds of the panel discussions. I chose to watch the feeds on education in order to see what would be discussed about Africa.  I knew that Bill Clinton has been extremely inspired by Kenya’s efforts at providing Universal Primary Education to all of its school age children. Kenya’s Education Minister George Saitoti reported on the popularity of the school program and what his country is doing to ensure its success.

Kenya is emphasizing teacher training, parental involvement in budget decisions and multi-age classrooms so that older students don’t feel segregated and stigmatized.  Since this initiative was first announced in 2003, enrollments have skyrocketed and Minister Saitoti mentioned that the countries oldest primary school enrollee is 75 years old! At a time when over 100 million school age children around the world are not in school, this is an ambitious undertaking and Kenya’s efforts are being watched closely to see whether its program can be replicated. 

On Friday’s panels, Andre Agassi touted the success of his charter school in Las Vegas which serves a 96% African American student population.  Dr. Fazle Hasan Abed, founder of Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), spoke of BRAC’s expanded initiatives in Uganda, Tanzania and Southern Sudan and John Wood of Room to Read discussed his organization’s efforts to create 10,000 bilingual libraries around the world by 2010.  Author Toni Morrison attended the working sessions on education, while actor Jeffery Wright participated in the special sessions on poverty alleviation and highlighted his efforts to support the recent elections in Sierra Leone.

There seemed to be particular interest in supporting the rebuilding of the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans.  On Thursday, President Clinton personally pledged $500,000 as a matching grant to support housing construction for displaced residents.  By Friday, Brad Pitt’s “Make it Right” campaign increased the money directed towards New Orleans by an additional $5 million.  In making his announcement, President Clinton stated, “Anyone who wants to return home to New Orleans ought to be able to do so, and we want to do everything that we can to make that possible.”

It is difficult to describe the range of emotions that I felt at this event. The energy of the conference was electric.  It was exciting to hear world business, governmental and non-profit leaders talk enthusiastically about their commitments to create social change. I left Thursday’s sessions buoyed by a “Clintonesque optimism”.  Each day he announced more commitments from CGI partners and pledges to date total over $10 billion. At the same time, I couldn’t help wondering what happens next?  How does CGI insure that the commitments that are made reach the organizations that need them? How many times have global conferences inspired pledges only to find that the funds never materialized six months later?

At home, while I was turning these questions over in my head, I turned on the TV and there was Clinton again!  This time at the Apollo theater in Harlem, announcing the creation of CGI-U, an initiative directed towards college students.  I decided at that moment that I would suspend my academic cynicism and get my students on board.  I guess optimism is contagious. Plus, it will give me an opportunity to blog some more and see firsthand how these initiatives are working. 

Sharp Words from Ethiopia's Prime Minister Zenawi at Clinton Summit

By Mary Dillard
Guest Contributor
Afro-Netizen

This week, coinciding with the opening session of the United Nations, the Clinton Global Initiative is holding its third annual summit, inviting attendees from around the world to discuss what can be done about some of the most serious issues of our day. The main themes addressed by this year’s conference are: poverty alleviation, education, climate change and global health.  I attended the conference on behalf of Afro-Netizen and was charged with the task of identifying which of the issues discussed would be relevant to Afro-Netizen’s audience. 

It was an interesting day.  This morning’s plenary discussed the issue of climate change. Included on the panel, moderated by Tom Brokaw, were former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of Norway, Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

Often in discussions of development and climate change, Africa is treated as a footnote or as the world’s forgotten stepchild.  PM Meles was the only panelist from a developing country, and fortunately for Africa, he held it down.  Each of his remarks drew applause from the audience, which wasn’t true of the other panelists.  While Blair and Harlem Brundtland talked about the need to create incentives for conservation in countries like China, the United States and Britain, the Ethiopian Prime Minister highlighted his country's leadership in organic farming methods, efforts at creating biofuel alternatives and success in generating electricity through hydroelectric power.  According to Meles, Congo and Ethiopia combined have the ability, through the level of hydroelectric power that they produce, to fuel the energy needs of the entire continent.  The main reason why this has not happened is that the infrastructure to allow this type of energy sharing to occur is not in place.

He was direct in his advocacy for Africa. “Africa contributed nothing to global warming because we did not develop in the way that the large industrialized nations did.”  It needed to be said because most people in the room knew that Africans are already paying the price for the environmental effects of global warming, and this is expected to get worse.  “Africa’s only option,” according to the Prime Minister, “is to grow in a carbon neutral fashion.”  And guess what?  Ethiopia is a pioneer in Africa in creating ethanol from sugar or corn.  But, the trucks and cars currently on the roads in Ethiopia can’t run on the biofuels that the country produces.  In order for this to change, developed nations are going to have to convince car manufacturers to partner with African nations and create flex fuel cars, allowing Africa to profit from its own agricultural production. 

The Prime Minister’s remarks raise the issue of fair trade policies in relation to Africa.  It is one thing for North Americans and Europeans to sit around and expound upon issues associated with global warming and sustainable development.  It is another thing altogether to hear African leaders say “Hey, we are not asking for your charity”  or, in the exact words of the Prime Minister, “This is an issue of rights, not a question of philanthropy.  We did not pollute and we deserve the right to sell our sugar here.” (an obvious dig at the farm subsidies and protectionist tariffs that the U.S. and European countries use to keep African crops out of their markets.) 

Applause again.  Go ‘head Meles!  It was refreshing to hear the perspective of an African leader and know that there were so many in the audience who agreed with him.  Let’s hope that participants at this forum will take his intervention seriously and truly partner with African nations so that Africans can reap the benefits of their own natural resources.

Mary Dillard is an Associate Professor of African History at Sarah Lawrence College.  Her research interests are education, health care, and gender studies in Africa.  She lives in New York City. 

 

Well, as long as they're not willy-nilly airstrikes

We've been bombing Somalia!

We've been bombing Somalia!

We've been bombing Somalia -- a sovereign nation!

As the mainstream press coverage so clearly spells out . . .

The U.S. has been bombing suspected terrorist targets and individuals tied to such targets believed to be involved in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Well, as long as they're not bombing just random targets, I guess that's okay. And maybe Somalia's not actually a sovereign nation on account of the fact that the U.S. has not yet successfully quelled opposition to the new government it has installed there in its global crusade to spread freedom like chunky peanut butter on thin, moist white bread.

But how can any red-blooded American dispute the noble intent of fighting the bad guys on their turf so that they won't wage war on our shores? After all, they're "suspected terrorists"? What more justification do we need than that?

Well, bear in mind that if Nelson Mandela were still a political prisoner in a post-9/11 Apartheid South Africa, the U.S. could be bombing his fellow African National Congress (ANC) party members and supporters which the U.S. Department of State once considered a terrorist organization.

Imagine the carnage that that could have been caused if history unfolded differently. Oprah Winfrey and Bono would be hiding out in caves like Osama as we speak!

Destabilizing the Horn

By Salim Lone
Courtesy of The Nation

The stability that emerged in southern Somalia after sixteen years of utter lawlessness is gone, the defeat of the ruling Islamic Courts Union now ushering in looting, martial law and the prospect of another major anti-Western insurgency. Clan warlords, who terrorized Somalia until they were driven out by the Islamists, and who were put back in power by the US-backed and -trained Ethiopian army, have begun carving up the country once again.

With these developments, the Bush Administration, undeterred by the horrors and setbacks in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, has opened another battlefront in this volatile quarter of the Muslim world. As with Iraq, it casts this illegal war as a way to curtail terrorism, but its real goal appears to be to obtain a direct foothold in a highly strategic area of the world through a client regime. The results could destabilize the whole region.

The Horn of Africa, at whose core Somalia lies, is newly oil-rich. It is also just miles across the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia and Yemen, overlooking the daily passage of large numbers of oil tankers and warships through that waterway. The United States has a huge military base in neighboring Djibouti that is being enlarged substantially and will become the headquarters of a new US military command being created specifically for Africa.

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