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1. Africa's Turn

Author:
Macky Sall
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Since it gained independence from France in 1960, the West African country of Senegal has been a bastion of stability and democracy on a continent that has seen relatively little of either. During the presidency of Abdoulaye Wade (2000–2012), however, the Senegalese exception seemed under threat. The elderly Wade grew increasingly authoritarian and corrupt, and he managed to run for a third term even though the constitution prohibited him from doing so. But in March 2012, Senegalese voters dealt Wade a decisive defeat, electing the reformist candidate Macky Sall instead. Trained in France as a geological engineer, Sall had served in a number of government posts under Wade, including prime minister, before publicly breaking with him in 2007. In opposition, Sall created a new political party; served a second term as mayor of his hometown, Fatick; and organized an anti-Wade coalition. Sall spoke with Foreign Affairs senior editor Stuart Reid in Dakar in June, days before U.S. President Barack Obama's arrival in Senegal for a state visit.
Topic:
Governance
Political Geography:
Africa and Europe

2. Cough It Up

Author:
Jack Chow, Shenglan Tang, and Enis Baris
Publication Date:
03-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Yanzhong Huang (“The Sick Man of Asia,” November/December 2011) paints a troubling picture of a China that has rapidly industrialized yet lags in modernizing its health-care system. Yet in his cogent history of China's health policy, much of which centers on self-reliance, Huang puzzlingly omits China's success in winning nearly $1 billion in recent years from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. That the country's health officials have had to resort to tapping a fund ostensibly dedicated to helping the world's poorest countries speaks to their inability to persuade the government to pay for public health with its national coªers. Only when the incongruity of a financial giant getting grants at the expense of impoverished African countries was illuminated did China choose to stop taking Global Fund awards.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
Africa, China, and Asia

3. South Africa's Land Reform

Author:
Bernadette Atuahene
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Under colonialism and apartheid, the ruling white minority stole vast amounts of land from black Africans in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Reclaiming this land became an important rallying cry for liberation movements in both countries; but in the years after white minority rule ended, it was extremely difficult for the new regimes to redistribute the land fairly and efficiently. In recent years, as the unaddressed land inequality in Zimbabwe became a pretext for President Robert Mugabe's demagoguery and led to Zimbabwe's demise, many observers have asked: Could South Africa be next? When Nelson Mandela took power in South Africa in 1994, 87 percent of the country's land was owned by whites, even though they represented less than ten percent of the population. Advised by the World Bank, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) aimed to redistribute 30 percent of the land from whites to blacks in the first five years of the new democracy. By 2010 -- 16 years later -- only eight percent had been reallocated. In failing to redistribute this land, the ANC has undermined a crucial aspect of the negotiated settlement to end apartheid, otherwise known as the liberation bargain. According to Section 25 of the new South African constitution, promulgated in 1994, existing property owners (who were primarily white) would receive valid legal title to property acquired under prior regimes, despite the potentially dubious circumstances of its acquisition. In exchange, blacks (in South Africa, considered to include people of mixed racial descent and Indians) were promised land reform. But the new government upheld only one side of the liberation bargain: South African whites kept their property, but blacks still have not received theirs. Political apartheid may have ended, but economic apartheid lives on.
Political Geography:
Africa and South Africa

4. Defending Democracy in Cote d'Ivoire

Author:
Thomas J. Bassett and Scott Straus
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
In early April, in the final days of Côte d'Ivoire's torturous four-month-long political crisis, French and UN helicopters bombarded the presidential residence in Abidjan. This military operation sealed the fate of the incumbent, Laurent Gbagbo, paving the way for Alassane Ouattara, the widely recognized winner of the November 2010 presidential elections, to claim office. But the French and UN action had another effect: it triggered commentary and outrage about international interference -- in particular on the part of France -- in African affairs. Ivoirian newspapers backing Gbagbo fulminated about France's desire to retake its former colonies. The French press, meanwhile, obsessed about whether France's military intervention spelled a new era of Françafrique, the term, first introduced in the 1950s, for French interference in the internal affairs of its former African colonies. The New York Times ran a story about France's "long shadow" over its former colonies, and pundits around the world worried that these international actions could doom Ouattara's legitimacy. Such a Eurocentric focus, however, both mischaracterizes the internal dynamics of the conflict and misses the more significant diplomatic development -- namely, the role of African regional organizations. In the end, France and the UN did not win the war for Ouattara and his self-styled "Republican Forces." By the time France and the UN intervened, Ouattara's forces controlled 90 percent of the country and were on the verge of taking the commercial capital, Abidjan. International forces did manage to hasten Gbagbo's demise: in effect, accomplishing the inevitable and preventing a final attack on Abidjan, which would have resulted in a terrible humanitarian crisis.
Topic:
Humanitarian Aid
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, and New York

5. The Settlement Obsession

Author:
Elliott Abrams
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Two recent books on the Israeli settlements explore their corrosive effect on Zionism and Israeli society. But despite the problems settlements cause, Washington should not overstate their importance for the peace process, argues a former U.S. deputy national security adviser.
Political Geography:
Africa and Israel

6. Africa Unleashed

Author:
Edward Miguel
Publication Date:
11-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Steven Radelet's accessible new book argues that much of the credit for Africa's recent economic boom goes to its increasingly open political systems. But Radelet fails to answer the deeper question: why some countries have managed to develop successful democracies while others have tried but failed.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Government
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, Asia, and Liberia

7. The Fertile Continent

Author:
Roger Thurow
Publication Date:
11-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
With one billion people already going hungry and the world's population rising, global food production must urgently be increased. The countries that managed such surges in the past -- Brazil, China, India, the United States -- cannot do so again. But Africa can -- if it finally uses the seeds, fertilizers, and irrigation methods common everywhere else.
Topic:
Agriculture
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, China, India, and Brazil

8. Manufacturing Insecurity

Author:
William Pfaff
Publication Date:
11-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
The United States has built a worldwide system of more than 1,000 military bases, stations, and outposts -- a system designed to enhance U.S. national security. It has actually done the opposite, provoking conflict and creating insecurity.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, and Iraq

9. The Global Glass Ceiling

Author:
Isobel Coleman
Publication Date:
05-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Over the last several decades, it has become accepted wisdom that improving the status of women is one of the most critical levers of international development. When women are educated and can earn and control income, a number of good results follow: infant mortality declines, child health and nutrition improve, agricultural productivity rises, population growth slows, economies expand, and cycles of poverty are broken.
Topic:
Development and Human Rights
Political Geography:
Africa, South Asia, and Middle East

10. The New Energy Order

Author:
David G. Victor and Linda Yueh
Publication Date:
01-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Growing demand for energy in developing countries and calls for greener energy worldwide are putting unprecedented pressure on the global energy system. Existing energy institutions are struggling to remain relevant. A new mechanism for cooperation is needed.
Political Geography:
Africa

11. Banned Aid

Author:
Jagdish Bhagwati
Publication Date:
01-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
As the Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo argues, the concept of foreign aid is flawed -- not just because corrupt dictators divert aid for nefarious or selfish purposes but also because even in reasonably democratic countries, aid creates perverse incentives and unintended consequences.
Political Geography:
Africa

12. The Better Half

Author:
Isobel Coleman
Publication Date:
01-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Efforts to provide the world's women with economic and political power are more than just a worthy moral crusade: they represent perhaps the best strategy for pursuing development and stability across the globe.
Political Geography:
Africa and China

13. Farm Futures: Bringing Agriculture Back to U.S. Foreign Policy

Author:
Catherine Bertini and Dan Glickman
Publication Date:
05-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Hunger remains one of world's gravest humanitarian problems, but the United States has failed to prioritize food aid and agricultural development. Washington must put agriculture at the center of development aid -- and make it a key part of a new U.S. foreign policy.
Topic:
Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, Washington, and Asia

14. Africa's Capitalist Revolution

Author:
Ethan B. Kapstein
Publication Date:
07-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
In one of the great ironies of history, Africa may well emerge from the current global recession as the only region in the world that remains committed to global capitalism. While the tired industrialized nations of the West are nationalizing their banks and engaging in various forms of protectionism, Africa remains open for business -- promoting trade, foreign direct investment, and domestic entrepreneurship. Analysts in the industrialized countries are concerned that foreign aid flows to Africa might drop because of the recession, but Africans themselves are much more worried about rising barriers to their exports and diminishing private investment from abroad, which could impede the continuation of the impressive economic progress the continent has made over the past decade. It is still a well-kept secret that the African continent has been in the midst of a profound economic transformation. Since 2004, economic growth has boomed at an average level of six percent annually, on par with Latin America. This rate will undoubtedly decline as a result of the global financial crisis, but the International Monetary Fund still projects growth of around 1.5 percent for this year and four percent for 2010 throughout Africa -- a relatively healthy figure by today's depressing standards. International trade now accounts for nearly 60 percent of Africa's GDP (far above the level for Latin America), and foreign direct investment in Africa has more than doubled since 1998, to over $15 billion per year. Overall, private-sector investment constitutes more than 20 percent of GDP. Furthermore, since 1990, the number of countries with stock markets in sub-Saharan Africa has tripled and the capitalization of those exchanges has risen from virtually nothing to $245 billion (that is, outside of South Africa, which has long had an active stock exchange). These "frontier" markets have, until recently, given investors huge returns compared to those found in other emerging economies.
Topic:
International Relations
Political Geography:
Africa and Latin America

15. China and India Go to Africa: New Deals in the Developing World

Author:
Harry G. Broadman
Publication Date:
03-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Economic activity between Africa and Asia, especially China and India, is booming like never before. If the problems and imbalances this sometimes creates are managed well, this expanding engagement could be an unprecedented opportunity for Africa's growth and for its integration into the global economy.
Political Geography:
Africa, China, India, and Asia