Policy Seminar to Review the 2022 US-Africa Leaders' Summit

Posted on February 11, 2023

The African Centre for the Study of the United States (ACSUS), and the Centre for the Advancement
of Scholarship (CAS), both at the University of Pretoria; and the Centre for African Studies at Howard
University in Washington D.C. cordially invite you to a Policy Seminar to review the 2022 US-Africa
Leaders’ Summit.


Date: Monday, 27 February 2023
Time: 15:00 (South African Standard Time) | 08:00 (Eastern Time)
Venue: Auditorium, The Javett-UP Art Centre at the University of Pretoria, South campus,
23 Lynnwood Rd, Hatfield
Enquiries: Ms Lerato Dube: Administrator, ACSUS-UP, +27 12 420 2034, Email: [email protected]
RSVP: Click here to register by 24 February 2023


Panelists
1. Prof Krista Johnson, Howard University, USA
2. Prof Christopher Isike, University of Pretoria, RSA
3. Prof Abdi Samatar, University of Minnesota, USA
4. Prof Tawana Kupe, University of Pretoria, RSA
5. Prof Adekeye Adebajo, University of Pretoria, RSA
6. Prof Samar al Balushi, University of California, Irvine, USA


The much-publicized United States (US)-Africa Leaders’ Summit which was held in Washington DC from 13 – 15 December 2022, came on the heels of the new US policy towards Africa launched in August 2022. The summit has come an gone but questions linger on what it meant or means for Africa in concrete and policy terms. Unlike China’s Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) which meets every three years, the US-Africa Leaders’ Summit only met for the second time since its inception in 2014. At both summits, Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden pledged financial support in varying sectors of development interventions in Africa. For example, the 2014 summit produced declarations on key issues such as gender, global health, support for combating wildlife trafficking, electricity, promoting American investment and export to Africa, peacekeeping, and counter-terrorism cooperation. Although these thematic areas were already addressed by existing projects, the summit sought to formalize the relationship between the United States and African countries to address these critical issues. Building on and prioritizing similar issues as the 2014 summit, the 2022 summit sought to focus on: fostering new economic engagement; advancing peace, security, and good governance; reinforcing commitment to democracy, human rights, and civil society; working collaboratively to strengthen regional and global health security; promoting food security; responding to the climate crisis; amplifying diaspora ties; and promoting education and youth leadership. The US-Africa Leaders’ Summit should be seen as an ongoing engagement beyond the actual events of both summits. 

It is therefore useful to appraise critically their outcomes in terms of what they mean in real terms for Africa. 

Five key questions must be addressed on the state of the US-Africa summit:
• First, is the summit necessary and relevant to addressing mutual interests?
• Second, what was promised and delivered in the eight years between the 2014 and 2022 summits?
• Third, what has been pledged in the 2022 summit, and what challenges militate against achieving the stated targets?
• Fourth, what agency, if any, does Africa have in setting the agenda of the summit? and,
• Finally, is Africa ready to leverage whatever development opportunities these summits present it?


These broad questions are the subject of this collaborative half-day hybrid workshop which aims to assess the main outcomes of the 2022 US-Africa Leaders’ Summit.


Biosketches 

Krista Johnson is an Associate Professor and Director of the Center for African Studies at Howard University, and is co convenor of the HU Women and Gender Studies Collective and the WGSS minor. She received her PhD in Political Science from Northwestern University, and has published on a wide range of topics including health policy, gender and HIV prevention, global health governance in Africa, and race and racism in international relations. She has lived and travelled extensively throughout southern Africa, completed a Fulbright Fellowship in 2012 at the Centre for the Study of HIV and AIDS at the University of Botswana, and was a 2021 Carnegie African Diaspora Fellow at the Institute of Pan-African Thought and Conversation at the University of Johannesburg.

Tawana Kupe is a Professor of Media Studies and Journalism and has been Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Pretoria (UP) since 2019. He holds a DPhil in Media Studies from the University of Oslo, Norway. In December 2019, he received an honorary doctorate from Michigan State University and another from the University of Montpellier in October 2021. Prof Kupe has recently been appointed as the Knight of the French National Legion Honour in recognition of his remarkable achievement in promoting scientific and academic cooperation by the President of the French Republic. He is the founder of the African Centres for Study of the United States at both UP and Wits University. Prof Kupe is an active member of several civil society organisations and is a board member of several tertiary education networks and organisations globally.

Christopher Isike is a Professor of African Politics and International Relations in the Department of Political Sciences, University of Pretoria, and Director of the African Centre for the Study of the United States, University of Pretoria (ACSUS-UP). He is also the current President of the African Association of Political Science (AAPS), and member of the Board of Directors of Global Development Network (GDN). His research interests include African soft power politics, women, peace and conflict studies, women and political representation in Africa, rethinking state formation in Africa, politics in a digital era and African immigration to South Africa. Prof Isike has over 70 publications in top national and international peer-reviewed journals including two books and several chapters in books published by reputable publishing houses globally. He is Editor-in-Chief of Africa’s foremost political science journal, Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies.

Abdi Ismail Samatar is a Professor in the Department of Geography, Environment, and Society at the University of Minnesota, an Extraordinary Professor in the University of Pretoria's Department of Politics, and a member of the Advisory Board for the African Centre for the Study of the United States. A Carnegie Africa Diaspora Fellow, Prof Samatar is the author of five books on geography, African political economy and development, and over 80 articles and essays. A renowned commentator in media outlets such as Daily Maverick, Al-Jazeera and the BBC, Prof Samatar was also the President of African Studies Association in North America, a Trustee of Mogadishu University, and currently a member of the Somali Parliament.

Samar Al-Bulushi is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the department of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). Before then, she was a University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UCI. She is a contributing editor at Africa is a Country and a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute. Prof Al-Bulushi has published in a variety of reputable academic outlets on topics ranging from the International Criminal Court to the militarisation of US policy in Africa. She has experience working for a number of international human rights organisations, including the Center for Economic and Social Rights, Parliamentarians for Global Action, and the International Center for Transitional Justice.

Adekeye Adebajo is a Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Pretoria’s (UP) Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship (CAS). He was director of the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation (IPATC) at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) for five years, and executive director of the Centre for Conflict Resolution (CCR) in Cape Town between 2003 and 2016. He is the author of eight books, including Africa after the Cold War; Building Peace in West Africa; and Thabo Mbeki: Africa’s Philosopher-King. He is editor and/or co-editor of ten books including Nigeria’s Foreign Policy After the Cold War; Foreign Policy in Post-Apartheid South Africa; and The Pan-African Pantheon. Professor Adebajo holds a doctorate from Oxford University in England where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and is a columnist for Business Day (South Africa), The Guardian (Nigeria), and The Gleaner (Jamaica).

 

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