Rising U.S. Stakes in Africa

Authorized by Congress in 2003, the Africa Policy Advisory Panel delivered innovative and actionable recommendations on how to strengthen U.S.-Africa policy to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in February 2004. The recommendations and proposals of the Africa Policy Advisory Panel and its expert authors address several of the most critical challenges before the United States. This volume includes special in-depth studies issued in 2004 as free-standing publications: (1) recommendations on the urgent challenges that postwar Sudan in 2004 will present to the United States, the UN, and others, and (2) a proposal to strengthen Africa’s capital markets. (A third study presents, in an appendix, the estimated wealth that oil will bring to five African producing countries in the next seven years.) The volume also includes the panel’s provocative, detailed proposals for innovations in U.S.-Africa policy: (1) a new U.S. energy policy; (2) measures to strengthen U.S. counterterrorism efforts; (3) a strategy to address chronic crises and instability through strengthened diplomacy and support for priority peace operations; (4) recommendations for sustaining U.S. global leadership on HIV/AIDS; and (5) a U.S. conservation initiative. Together, these products lay out an ambitious agenda for future action by the current Bush administration, the Congress, and the next administration. All are central to U.S. policy interests in Africa. Indeed, that was a guiding criterion for their placement on the panel’s agenda.