Podcast on China's Political and Security Relations with Africa

ChinaPower posted on 26 February 2020 a 26 minute podcast titled "China's Increasing Engagement with Africa: A Conversation with Joshua Eisenman" hosted by Bonnie Glaser of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The focus of the discussion is China's political and security relationship with Africa rather than the more widely covered economic issues. The podcast is also a precursor to a book we are doing on the China-Africa relationship. A small part of our research is being published in the next issue of Orbis: FPRI's Journal of World Affairs.

Somalia: Assessing the First Year of the Federal Government

The Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington hosted on 19 September 2013 a three hour event titled "Somalia: Assessing the First Year of the Federal Government."

There were two panels. The first on Somalia's economy and financial sector included Linda Etim, deputy assistant administrator at USAID; Hersi Suleiman, Somali-American Money Service Association; Michael O. Engman, senior economist, Africa Region, World Bank; and Fatima Jibrell, founder of Adeso.

The second panel on governance and political security included Donald Teitelbaum, deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs; Keith Jennings, senior associate and regional director for southern and eastern Africa, National Democratic Institute; Paul Williams, associate professor, George Washington University; and Omar Daair, first secretary, embassy of the UK in the US.

There panels covered a wide range of political, social and economic issues.  The entire event is available on podcast.

South Sudan Lobby

Alan Boswell, Africa correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers in Nairobi, wrote a blistering account titled "The Failed State Lobby" on the lobby in the United States that helped create South Sudan. The piece appeared in the 9 July 2012 issue of Foreign Policy.

Click here to read the article.

Lord's Resistance Army and US Policy

The Heritage Foundation published on 23 April 2012 an issue brief titled Lord's Resistance Army: A Symptom of Central Africa's Larger Problems. The brief analysis focuses on US policy and urges that American military advisers continue their efforts until the LRA's leadership is eliminated. Click here to read the piece by Morgan Lorraine Roach.

Conflict in the Horn of Africa

The Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington organized a group of people interested in the Horn of Africa and asked Paul D. Williams of George Washington University to prepare an analysis of conflict in the region and offer some recommendations to mitigate this conflict. Although the study is dated October 2011, the Woodrow Wilson Center published it in mid-January 2012. Titled Horn of Africa: Webs of Conflict & Pathways to Peace, a number of us contributed to the final product.

The study notes that the Horn of Africa has experienced more than 200 armed conflicts since 1990. The U.S. government has for too long looked at the Horn through lenses which have emphasized regime security, counterterrorism, religious fanaticism and tribalism. The focus on regime security, counterterrorism and extremism has clearly failed to produce either a stable or peaceful region.

The paper suggests that viewing the Horn through a conflict resolution and peacebuilding lens would focus policymakers' attention on an alternative agenda focused on issues of good governance, the rule of law, human security, and supporting local state-society complexes that work for their people.

The central purpose of the study is to to illuminate the complex political terrain in which policies to build peace and resolve conflict will have to take place and to make tentative suggestions as to what priorities should guide an alternative comprehensive and integrated approach to the Horn.

A companion document titled Pathways to Peace in the Horn of Africa: What Role for the United States? offers a set of recommendations for how the U.S. government might engage more constructively with the states and peoples in the Horn to build peace.