Obama's Africa Strategy: Aljazeera Discussion

Aljazeera asked me to participate on 19 June 2012 in a half hour discussion titled "What is behind Obama's new Africa strategy?" The program is called "Inside Story Americas" with Shihab Rattansi as presenter. The other two guests were Paul Mutter, a fellow at Truthout.org and Nii Akuetteh, an African policy analyst was was formerly the executive director of Africa Action.

The program focused on U.S. counterterrorism policy in Africa and especially the role of AFRICOM, drawing on the Washington Post reporting on this subject, which is available under June 14 below. Click here to view the program.

US Counterterrorism Strategy in Africa

Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Don Yamamoto, provided a good summary on 25 April 2012 in testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on instability in Africa and US strategy for countering terrorism. He discussed the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and Boko Haram.

Yamamoto said the US approach for addressing these threats includes the following principles: regional ownership of meeting the threat, promoting good governance, supporting development and economic opportunity and enhancing regional cooperation. Implied but not stated, except in the case of the LRA, was the use of US resources for capturing and killing terrorists and violent extremists.

Click here to read the entire testimony.