Social Science Research Council

President Obama has again stunned the world. In stark contrast to his predecessor he has once again demonstrated the political will to provide international leadership on one of the central problems that plague the global community. This past Sunday, in the city of Prague, he called for the reinvigoration of the struggle against nuclear weapons. [...]

In 1958, eminent Africanist scholars including David Apter, Elliot Berg, Rupert Emerson, Ruth Schachter and Emmanuel Wallerstein, among others, wrote “A New American Policy Toward Africa”. The document became the blueprint of the Kennedy Administration’s policy for an Africa then struggling to unyoke itself from European colonialism. Unfortunately, its principal recommendation–that America should support elite [...]

In November 2006, Jendayi Frazer, then Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, prided herself of “no longer traveling to Africa via Europe”, adding: “We don’t need that any more. We deal with the continent directly, our own way”. She made the statement in San Francisco when addressing the annual meeting of the African Studies [...]

The past decade of U.S. Africa policy has made some wish most for policies that would “first, do no harm.”   A Hippocratic test could be useful for President Obama’s new Africa team at the NSC and the State Department, as they reflect on the harm that has punctuated their predecessors’ policies towards many African countries.
The [...]

On the face of it, Africa has been relatively unharmed by the world financial crisis. The fact is that it remains the continent that has been the least penetrated by formal institutions of investment and credit – mortgages, bank loans, share dealings, that sort of thing. Much low-level business in Africa is done [...]