ing ranges from helping the government arrive at cost-reflective tariffs to increasing the creditworthiness of Malawi's energy off takers. And the result is in December of 2016, the government launched the country's first ever competitive tender in the power sector by using the procurement framework developed with the support of the Millennium Challenge Corporation. There are 21 international companies that have submitted bids to develop 70 megawatts of new solar capacity. That is an achievement to get to that point by the Malawi government and it sees itself on a path to diversify its generation mix, to bring down costs for its consumers and population and to open the door for further rounds of private investment, not just in power but to expand it into other sectors of the economy as well. With USAID support, African governments, civil society, the US and African private sector are able to better realize the benefits of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act. We partner with African companies to ensure that they meet the stringent US requirements to import into the United States to meet the grades and the standards. We partner with companies such as Phillips Van Huisen, which is the largest shirt manufacturer in the world to allow them and their other companies to source from Africa predominantly in East Africa, creating thousands of formal, predominantly for women jobs. Walmart is expanding upon the 2.5 billion investment it made in Africa in 2011, slowly moving out its mass-marked chain across Southern Africa. G, clearly with Power Africa but in other domains as well, is seeing greater and greater business opportunities. And there's a US Equity Fund that recently acquired an African Trout Producer. The way USAID is engaged with AGOA is that we provide the three trade hubs, which are, if you will, the technical arm to allow greater access under AGOA by African companies and also to make sure that American companies know the opportunities that exist on the continent and to work with both to come up with transactions that are sustainable, that are to the benefit of all. Another transaction that I will just throw out there because it's not always textiles, we said to always think in terms of textiles, but Namibia, working with our colleagues at USDA recently within the last year, received the approval to start importing beef into the United States. That's huge. There's been no beef imported from Africa and yet Africa has an enormous amount of beef on the hoof and we are looking to see how we can expand that further. So there's lots of opportunities. It does take work, not only from us, but also from the African governments. While indeed it took 45 days to start a business in Kenya and it now takes five, that needs to come down. Competition Africa is not a binary investment opportunity for many things. It is not coming from the private sector. We don't just think in terms of do I invest in Africa or do I not invest? It is do I invest in Africa versus am I investing in Latin America or am I investing in Asia depending upon the product? And so Africa has to recognize and really arm itself against its competitors globally. Finally, I would say that China is indeed recognizing the investment opportunities in Africa and it has made 150 investments per year in the manufacturing sector in Africa up from only two in 2000. What does that mean? It means that again, we have to recognize our competition. It is not just the competition that Africa faces going out, but it's the competition coming in. And we have had many discussions within the interagency about how we can best tool or retool what we are doing to be more effective and more efficient in reaching out, making sure that the African countries are well-tooled to be competitive and recognize their competitive advantage, recognize the need for the regionalization so that there are economies of scope and scale which in turn improves their competitiveness as well as talking with the diaspora and private sector here in the United States about those opportunities. And with that, I think I will stop and be very happy to answer questions. Thank you so much, Orin. Andre. I also want to start off by saying thank you to the USIP to take the initiative to convene this conference. This is really a conference about the future. Demographics are destiny. And with Africa producing a court of the world's working population by the year 2030 and a billion young people, as we heard by 2050, the demographics of Africa is due political destiny. Today I want to talk to you about a future that's cloudy. But I want to qualify this cloudy future. As a child, I spent a large part of my childhood growing up in the Kalahari Desert in Africa. And there when you said the outlook is cloudy, that was good news because it meant that there was rain on the way. And in this context too, when I talk about a cloudy future for Africa, I want to contextualize this in the context of good news and as a potential future pillar for an economic partnership between the US and African economies. Today the US is the leader in cloud technology worldwide. The first 15 companies in cloud technology are all American. And to give you an indication of the scale of this vast computing power that is being built on an industrial scale by American companies across the world, the leading cloud computing company, Amazon Web Services, is 10 times bigger in terms of its computing capacity than the 14 competitors combined, and that includes Microsoft and Google. Cloud computing is really transforming the way in which we are scaling the digital economy because it's reducing the cost of computing power to the cost of a utility. To give you a very good practical example, in the 1990s when you wanted to launch an internet-based technology company, the average cost of a startup, scaling a startup would have been in the range of 20 million US dollars. Today that's been reduced to potentially between 50 and 100,000 dollars. And that gives a very clear indication of how cloud computing is opening up the potential to very rapidly scale digital economies and open up the potential and opportunity for entrepreneurship. And young people are voting where they feed. Today 90% of all startups in the US get born in the cloud platform, 70% in France, and more than 50% of all new startups in Africa get born in the cloud platform. And this is potentially transforming the potential for economic growth in Africa in the same way that the introduction of mobile phones during the 90s accelerated the growth of many African economies and opening up a third wave of potential transformation. I want to give you some practical examples of how cloud computing is helping to change Africa for the better. One very good example is in the field of healthcare. As you all know, Africa recently grappled with the threat of a major pandemic in the form of the Ebola virus and following the successful combating of the Ebola virus with the support of the international community, a local early warning center for pandemics have been established by the Africa Union and at the heart of the predictive and early warning power of this new center will be cloud computing and the power of big data analytics that are cloud based. Another very good example is in the field of education. To accommodate a billion young people over the next 30 years, we have to change the model on which we educate people in Africa and we have to find new models which enable us to scale the skilling and the access of education in a way that's been never done before. My colleague of sight at Walmart and Walmart is using the same startup company that does all its e-commerce fulfillment. In other words, all its e-commerce deliveries to make sure that educational textbooks get delivered effectively, efficiently and transparently in South Africa. The US is a leader in the field of EdTech and the EdTech sector in the US economy forms a very important part of the digital economy and more and more EdTech startups are opening up their MOOC stage, massive online courses to African students. The third example is in the field of stability, security and governance and I'm pleased to report that here at the USIP we've established a Pistek accelerator to help scale up startups from Africa that have technology, innovative technology that can help prevent, predict or mitigate conflict and recently we, for example, hosted a young startup from South Sudan which got a very innovative and addictive mobile game that helped bring about reconciliation and better understanding between the communities in Sudan and that is just one example of how scaling startups from African countries where young people want to make a difference and grasp the opportunity of technology can be done effectively. The question is what more can be done? I want to cite five areas of opportunity where we can help to scale the digital economy in Africa and build a very effective partnership based on US cloud leadership. The first one is to help build the venture capital sector. The US is the leader in venture capital worldwide. In 2015, Africa had about $185 million worth of venture capital transactions. That doubled last year, more than doubled, to $385 million that was invested in 77 startups. The US is already a very important source of capital to listed companies both in Europe and in Africa that have exposure to the African market but opening up US venture capital investment to the African market can make a very important difference but also sharing the know-how and the skills of how to build a venture capital ecosystem. What are the key components of a venture capital ecosystem that does not require capital will be tremendously helpful. The second area is another area of opportunity and these are specific sectors of venture capital that's growing and blooming in Africa. And one for example is the FinTech sector. In Africa, we have more than 330 million people who are still unbanked, adults, who don't have access to core banking services. And this is a key area where US investment can make a difference. The African FinTech sector is booming more than a third of all venture capital investments last year was into the FinTech sector. In many ways, Africa's leading FinTech innovation. Mobile money in Kenya is a very good example where more than 50% of Kenya's GDP now pass on mobile money and mobile payments. And this is a tremendous opportunity for growth in the future. A third area is new models for transferring and sharing skills. Again, in this area, the US is leading the way. A very good example is a startup called Andela that's been funded by Mark Zuckerberg and other venture capital firms. Andela takes young African high school graduates and within a period of one year, they skill them in ICT skills that can be marketed globally in key sectors where there's a shortage of skills and they ensure that the graduates of that school also have access to jobs and employment. And I've seen a similar model being implemented by a US not-for-profit called the Digital Divide Dimension who have led a similar program in Kenya and with the support of Amazon have created a jobs board for these young graduates to ensure that they get jobs for the future. A final area is to share our know-how in the field of regulation. The US is one of the leaders in how do you pass effective regulation to stimulate not only venture capital but also the growth of the digital economy. Any country that has a deregulated telecommunication sector can build a cloud economy. Many African countries have deregulated telecommunication sectors and sharing our know-how how one builds on this opportunity with effective regulation, with effective laws can stimulate the growth of the digital economy is another major opportunity. Data is the oil of the 21st century and the US is a leader in the field of data and how to monetize data, how to create value from data how to innovate from data and how to create better lives from data. And I think this gives us a very strong pillar for economic partnership with Africa for the future. Great, thank you Andre, fascinating possibilities there. Let's turn to the audience and take a few questions. I think we'll follow Judd's model and take a few at a time. Please raise your hand, identify yourself and if you want a particular person to answer, let us know. In the very far back, the mic is coming. Hi, thank you, my name is Bethany, I follow primarily West Africa and I wanted to ask about corruption. So people often talk about corruption as an impediment to business. It seems so entrenched in Africa. I'm wondering kind of a maybe outside the box way of thinking about it, is there a possibility of just leaving corruption alone and having economic success without it or is it really something that we need to get rid of? I also wanted to have a second question about how kind of in America where you don't have state controlled businesses, companies are going to invest only if there's opportunities to make money. China has a slightly different model where the government can be a little bit more directive but in the absence of that, what can we really do to convince companies not to be extractive since you can, in fact, make money that way? Thank you. Other question? Yes, sir. David Chu, IDA. Much of the conversation about economics is focused on the industrial sector. My question is, what are the partnership opportunities to the agricultural sector? Ms. Wai Shaw mentioned beef exports. I raise it in part because if you look at the longer arc of recent economic history, several of the economies that have been very successful whose national endowment facilitated as strong agricultural sector have built their prosperity on that. Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United States, Argentina before Peru. So are there opportunities in the agricultural sector that will be part of the partnership conversation? Great, thank you. One more up on the aisle and then we'll come back to our panel. Thank you, Kawasi Hall again. Just one comment on the diaspora. I think when it comes to US-Africa partnerships is no way the US can not consider partnership with the African diaspora, which now sends an average of $80 billion to African countries. Kenya now sends about $160 million a year. And this is a lot of money. When it comes to partnerships, you can consider social impact programs where you can use the diaspora to impact development directly in their countries. This is happening, but it's happening at a very small scale because the diaspora has not yet gotten platforms which can effectively help them create the large social impact programs. To Dr. Kingsley, one of the fastest growing economic sectors I think is the creative arts. There's Norley Wood, which I think is growing pretty big, and there's also a nascent theater and film industry in Kenya. There's one in South Africa. Now, I think one of the things that's making them grow is that the governments have decided a certain percentage of it has to be, of consumption has to come from that particular country. I believe in Nigeria is 80% has to be consumed, has to come from Nigeria now. My question is, are these considered products under a goal that can also be imported to the US? Can Nigerians, South Africans, Kenyans, films from Wagadougou, can they be imported to the US so that they can be exposed as much as American movies and music is exposed to African countries? Great, so we have the corruption question, which I'd love to hear from all of you on that. Kind of encouraging US companies to kind of take the risk or assess the risks. Growth in the agriculture, diaspora, and then this last point on film and kind of cultural exchange. Dr. Kingsley, why don't we start with you and move down? Thank you. I'd just like to make a few comments about corruption. In the world before now, BN, as I would like to call it, there was the world BC, there was the world AD, and there was the world BN, which is current. Corruption and political risk was seen as an exclusively global South or emerging market or developing country phenomenon. I think we should understand, of course, that it's a huge global problem. It's a problem in Africa, certainly in Nigeria, it's a problem in Asia, and it's a problem in many other parts of the world, including developed countries. But the key to addressing the challenge of corruption in Africa specifically, I believe lies in two things. One is in encouraging and supporting the emergence of a new generation of political leadership in African countries. Members of a generation who've been very widely exposed around the world and operate on the basis of global best practices and therefore can contextualize corruption's corrosive influence on development and economic growth. If you're dealing with members of a generation, mainly, that hasn't had that type of exposure, they can preach it, but doing it is different because there's a cultural dimension to corruption in Africa. There's a cultural dimension of it. So I think encouraging the young, the youth, to go into politics, not too young to run, one of the things that is fueling them is their anger against the prevalence, the widespread prevalence of corruption in the political systems in Nigeria today. So therefore, I think the leadership development cycle is one way to tackle corruption. The other big way to tackle corruption is to build systems that make corruption difficult. And here you now have the digital economy as an opportunity. You know, when you digitalize a lot of things, a lot of processes in the procurements, in the management of the economy, the possibility for corruption is quite significantly reduced. And then the third and fourth elements of fighting corruption, just as important, are the elements of accountability and the whole element of leadership. So, but if you talk about leadership, it comes back to the question I raised earlier about having leaders who understand what leadership actually means and that part of what it means is to co-educate citizens on value systems and so on. So for example, in Nigeria, there's a big noise about fighting corruption, but it's controversial because people say, how many people have you actually convicted? It's very theatrical, but what's the result? Yeah, so I think that's the comment. There are several dimensions to fighting corruption and we should come at it from a number of areas. So now, should I comment on the Hollywood question? Yeah, and I wondered if you might want to say something about agriculture. Oh, sure, absolutely. Yes, I mean, agriculture is hugely important. I mean, it's about average GDP component of many African economies is about 30% and in terms of employment, about 60 to 70% of many economies in Africa depend on agriculture. Now, there's a very important question about agriculture. It's a conceptual question, first of all. Can you achieve economic transformation on the back of agriculture? Because by definition, economic transformation means a shift away from agriculture-based economies to industrial economies or digital economies. So there's a bridge between these two. It's not necessarily either or, and that bridge is the value chain approach in agriculture. Developing agriculture as a value chain from just planting the crops to processing agricultural produce. So if we can move more towards the end of processing agricultural products, then we are addressing transformation even inside agriculture. We are using agriculture to address that. But also, we cannot run away from agriculture totally for now. The reason is because of the employment dimension. Many African countries, again, as some of my fellow panelists have mentioned, have serious problems with employment and certainly Nigeria does. So you want people to have jobs for now while you work on modernizing the economy. But you've got to be strategic. Just saying to people, go to the farm. Like I've heard a certain president say, I shall not mention his name, is just not. It doesn't work. You are encouraging a general, you know, that is just 40, 50 years ago thinking. You need to be looking at, you know, how do you use high quality crop yielding seeds to develop agriculture because of acreage? How do you use less area to produce more? And this is the type of thinking, I think, that should be going into agriculture in Africa's economies. And then, of course, making sure that at the bottom of everything, you've got to be able to export. That's what makes you competitive. Great. Thank you. Let's turn to Oren on the diaspora and encouraging US companies. OK. First, I just want to say just a quick note on corruption. Kingsley has talked about a number of elements that need to be taken into account to try to address corruption, leadership, new youth. All of that is absolutely true. But institutionalizing these things as opposed to it being individuals is going to be critical. The other factor that I would say would need to be considered as well as the judicial system. That regardless of what's the laws on the books, if you do not have confidence when corruption comes up, that you can go to the courts and have a transparent, objective process, it sort of doesn't matter who you may have the wrong people that you've been talking to and the young leaders or what they're in the other area. So the judicial system for me would be another one. On feeding in agriculture, absolutely. It's a huge employment, although it is an employment that in general has very low income. I mean, that's the problem. In addition to which, even with our Feed the Future program, which we are doing for increased seeds, for drought-resistant seeds, I think we have to always step back and look at it from the private sector's point of view. I worked for a company that owned Del Monte. The way the global market companies see it, you start with the market. What is demanded? What can you sell? And then you back into it. In the case of our Feed the Future, we're looking really at two areas. One is Africa being able to feed itself or at least get out of the humanitarian crises. Other is export. So at our trade hubs, the trade hubs and the Feed the Future program work together. We work together with Feed the Future to work on policies to open borders so that when there is food shortage in one country and surplus in the other, you can move it forward. And that actually has private sector, obviously, dynamics to it because the transportation, the treatment, all of that is part of that value chain that Kingsley was talking about. So part of it is for domestic, and you have to make sure that you're competitive. Just because Africa can do it doesn't mean it can do it as competitively as someone bringing something in, whether it's China or India. So it's looking at just not what you can do but how competitive are you in the global market because you can't put that wall around Africa. And then the other side of what needs to be done is indeed encouraging African companies to link up and partner with US companies, explore the opportunities here. One of the things in textile, unfortunately not in agriculture yet, but in textiles, we make sure that we bring over African entrepreneurs, African businesses to the magic show which takes place every year in Las Vegas. It is the biggest textile convention exhibition in the world. Every American buyer is there. One, we do it because hopefully we have worked with some companies that can actually meet the requirements, not just in terms of quality and standards, but quantity. The US is a huge market. So when you're saying you wanna export textiles, you're talking about a lot of textiles for most companies. So one is working with companies that can meet those needs. And the other is it's a learning opportunity for companies who think they can, but really can't. And so that encourages them to start thinking about joint relationships among themselves to do it. So yes, agriculture, that was a deviation from agriculture, but indeed agriculture and getting those relationships going, absolutely critical. Andre, maybe you can talk a little bit about corruption and kind of the digital economy, kind of the possibilities there, even ag. I think the dispersion of technology and in particular mobile technology in Africa has really aided the fight against corruption, combating corruption across Africa, particularly two areas, the area of transparency where citizens are taking the initiative to call out corruption and to call out daily examples of corruption. And also in the area of accountability, as more efficient systems get built around technology to administer both private sector but also state-run companies. But corruption is a huge challenge in Africa and we can't see it in isolation. At the moment Europe sources 85% of its drug supply, it's a legal drug supply, through Africa. This is a massive dislocation of an illicit trade from Latin America through Africa into Europe that impacts business standards, principles, values, politicians, business people. And all of this adds to the challenge of combating corruption in Africa and corruption is part of the global economy. Although we have the benefit of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act today as an accepted international norm of combating corruption, thanks to the very effective enforcement of this act by the US Justice Department, a lot of the corrupt transactions that we see in Africa are inextricably linked to either the illicit or sometimes the illicit part of the global economy and one can't see African corruption in isolation. Absolutely. We have 15 more minutes, so let's take another round of questions and come back to the panel. Yes, sir, up top. Great, period, again. Oh, thank you. I had tried to get a business deal going between Kenya and Ethiopia and there was a demand for powdered milk in Ethiopia and Kenya has a lot of excess powdered milk and at a good price. We couldn't compete with the dumping of powdered milk from Europe onto the Ethiopian market, so we had to cut it out. The other thing is on other projects I've worked on from a business side, one of the problems is in competing with the Chinese and Mozambique, for instance, there's nothing to stop them from bribing but for American corporations, that's illegal, so that's a disadvantage. Those things have to be brought into focus and my research also in this whole area is that there are just networks of international corporations that are such a corrupting influence in country after country that act with impunity all the time and there are Russian subsidiaries in Europe and a lot of Swiss companies, so I think that this has a huge impact on economic development and I'd like to see how this can be addressed. Great, thank you. Yes, Senator. Hi, Robin Sanders. We've talked a lot about the youth demographic but I wanted to hear some comments about what should be done on the economic side for African women in particular. African women have just edged out the population being 50.2% of the continent's population so without fully bringing them more into the economic dynamics that you've all talked about, I would like to hear some examples of what you think should be done and what you might be doing because that really is going to be the key to turn the economy around. If you're not addressing the women at that population rate then you're still going to have challenges on the economic front, thank you. Again, towards the back, we'll take those two and then we're going to turn back to our panel. Hi, Issa Sivian and I'm from NDI. I wanted to bring up Chad which just recently had round tables in Paris for investors and they're working on a development program for the next few years and I thought it was interesting actually that they have taken their projects now to investors. They apparently got promises of up to 20 billion dollars and of course these promises are based on further engagements if the government will accommodate to things such as a justice system or taxes, stuff like that. So I was just wondering what you think of a lot of the countries that are in economic crises and I think they're being forced by these crises to adjust to what a lot of people have spoken about as governance and democracy and transparency, all of these things. Great, thank you. Thank you. And then there's someone right next, yeah. Hello, Oluwatu will be your shopper collaboration Howard University. My question really is regards to the area of infrastructure development and skills, expertise. Usually when we have companies come and build one form of infrastructure, I think not the other, then there's a need for the skills to manage, there's a need for the expertise to manage what has been built, I'd say ports, airports and things like that. The fact that the US is not really making a lot of investment in the area of infrastructure. What's the relations therefore with skills? We're having a lot of the infrastructure development from China who are building the ports, the airports, the roads, and these things need to be managed and they're gonna use their own technology. What's in relation to skills, thank you. Great, why don't we start at the far end of the table and work this way this time? We have the question on dumping, the question on other powers, we're doing okay, but on corruption, but what about China? The youth and particularly the role of women, the question on kind of does crisis, has crisis prompted efforts at reform, and then this infrastructure question. So you can tackle whichever one of those you... I'm not an expert on dumping, but to your point about corruption, say that there are certain enterprises and individuals at the center of most large scale anti-corruption, most large scale corruption or corrupt transactions in Africa, I think there's a great truth in that. And if you were to do a big data analytics of the largest corrupt transactions in Africa, cross-border transactions, you would find that there are certain corporations and individuals and certain countries at the center of it. And I think that can be shown empirically. And the question is, how does one protect US corporations? How do you give US corporations a level playing field and protect them from the sharp practices emanating from these criminal networks? I think that's a challenge for both policymakers, but also for US government agencies that have responsibility for anti-corruption enforcement and also for the intelligence agencies. Why don't I start with women in economic development since I'm one? Clearly, without incorporating women in Africa's development, Africa will not develop for a number of reasons. And it's the entire length of education, skills, as well as entrepreneurship. I think we know that women who are educated, African women who are educated will have better health results for their children, will themselves be more independent in going out and starting their own entrepreneurial businesses or getting together. And so in all of our projects, I would say to a one, women are a central part of USAID projects. Whether it is a grant where we make sure that, and measurable, 50%, 30%, depending upon what that project is, that is part of the design of our projects. Even when it is a private sector grant, we also specify women and measurably so. So whether it is a contractor that's doing work, whether it's the government itself, it is recognized within our agency, and I think within the US government as a whole, that for African development to be inclusive for some of the issues that have been raised about population, an educated woman will tend not to have as many children as one who is not. Making it more inclusive so that poverty when the husband dies, the family is not taking everything, his family is not taking everything, and that woman has the resources to continue to support her family, her children. That's key. I mean, we have lots of, we could talk about the various programs in terms of Feed the Future or Power Africa, what we did in trade in Africa, but women are included explicitly in all of the work that we do. With respect to the infrastructure development by the Chinese, I would just say that the perception, and I am not in any way making any excuses for China, but we recently in the Africa Bureau actually had a report done by McKinsey to determine how Africa, how Chinese companies are behaving in Africa, and it was surprising to us to find out that 30% of their middle managers in private Chinese companies are Africans, that there is more skills and training taking effect than it was say 20 years ago, which I think, which indeed, they came with their own labor, they built the road, they built the stadium, and they went out. That is evolving, and so that's something that we found in the report that we had done by McKinsey, is what are the trends now? And there is a trend, because the Chinese themselves recognize that they can't continue to have an effective business platform in an African country where you are continuously only using Chinese labor and Chinese management. So surprisingly, there is a slight trend among Chinese companies to do that. With respect to the dumping, to some extent that gets back to corruption. It also gets back to governance because you can't bring something into a country unless the government and the regulators allow it. One of the things that we have been grappling with, we in the trade arena of the US government is the disparity between AGOA and the EPAs, the European... Partnership. Exactly, partnerships, because where AGOA is unilateral, i.e. African companies can import into the United States without tariff, the EPAs are bilateral. So European companies have negotiated to start bringing their products in, which is why US companies feel at a disadvantage. And so again, the discussions we're having now is, how do we move beyond AGOA? That is the key thing that USTR is trying to grapple with because it is unlikely AGOA will be passed again in a one-sided approach. And so getting back to the trade and the dumping, part of it is going to be having that partnership but it being a fair partnership and having the governance in countries to be able to stop the dumping. You can only dump if a country allows you to dump. I'll be brief. Yeah. Let me start with the women, women in economies. This is so fundamental. Why is it fundamental? It's important that USAID prioritizes women in its programs, but that's not the reason why it should be most important. It should be the most important component of our approach to development in Africa that comes from inside African countries based on the cultural development of African economies. When you talk about capitalism in Africa, pre-colonialists, who were these capitalists? Mostly women. African capitalism in African culture was built on the back of women. Therefore, and this is part of what I say about the absence of a worldview because that includes understanding every man and his uncle and every woman and their aunt in the world today are capitalists. But capitalism is successful only in certain countries. It hasn't created the wealth of nations in Africa. And one of the reasons is because we are not interrogating capitalism properly. There are different types of capitalism. State capitalism, welfare, entrepreneurial, crony. And entrepreneurial capitalism is the best type of capitalism for African countries because it ties into African cultures. So when I was deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, we decided to do something about this. We set up a sort of venture capital fund, if you'll call it that, for micro and small enterprises for women with about a billion dollars. But we had a problem with access to this fund because when you set up a modern fund like that and you set up all sorts of accountabilities, bookkeeping and all that, there you now find a lot of the small business women challenged. So training, empowering African small and micro business women in terms of modern bookkeeping and how to run a modern enterprise is very important for them to be able to access the economic opportunity from some of these funds. But I think it's a very important part of our approach or should be to Africa's true economic transformation. Now on trade policy, on foreign dumping, I think it actually goes to the core of the issue of trade policy in Africa. I talked about it just slightly that global trade is actually keeping Africa down because what's the basis of global trade? The basis of global trade is 55 to 60% manufacturing. So if you're not a productive economy, if you don't have economic complexity in your economy, you cannot be effective in global trade. What does that mean for us? What it means for us is that we need to begin to think about smart protectionism. I know that this may not be politically correct, but let me explain what I mean. In the World Trade Organization, in the World Trade Organization, there is a provision for that. So you're actually operating within the framework of global trade where you can ask for a special and differentiated approach for your economy for maybe up to seven years if you're a less developed country. I think that African countries need to make better use of this to give themselves room for their infant industries to grow. Everybody, it's called kicking away the ladder. That's how the United States grew up. They were protectionists. That's how the United Kingdom and so many other developed countries. But of course, in the world now, it's different. Now, just to round up, let me mention one word on infrastructure. I talked about it as a major opportunity for American companies in Africa. And I think American companies should really take a very close look at this because by not focusing on infrastructure, they've created all the room and all the space for the Chinese. And the Chinese have been able to overwhelm the space because they're speaking to what many African countries see as their most important need and that's infrastructure. So that's just my last word on it. Thank you. Thank you. I believe we're gonna break for lunch. This has been a great panel. I think it's looked at kind of some of the challenges and the responsibilities that African governments and the US government have, but also some of the promising sectors on the horizon. New models of education and skilled building, venture capital sector, the fintech sector. So I wanna thank all of you very much for joining us. Thank you, thank you. Jennifer, thank you and your panel for an excellent discussion on economic issues which I am sure will continue over lunch. Lunch is going to be in the great hall to my left, your right, and there is free seating except for at the reserve tables. There are box lunches, three or four different kinds of sandwiches to choose from. We have approximately 15 minutes to get our sandwiches, drinks and take our seats. We're going to have a speech by General Waldheiser, the AFRICOM commander. So we've got about 15 minutes between now and when our next segment of the program begins. So I'll invite everyone to join us for lunch in the great hall. I'm David Chew. I have the privilege of serving as the president of the Institute of Transcendencies, one of the co-sponsors of today's event. And I have the further pleasure of introducing our luncheon speaker. But before I do, let me add, if I may, my welcome to those of our co-sponsors. It's delighted, I'm delighted to see the kind of exchange that has occurred already today, very heartening. Indeed, it was the reaction to the first event like this that we helped co-launch last year, focused on Africa, that led us to believe it's useful to repeat this kind of convocation. And I am convinced that it would be useful to contemplate at least trying to do this on an annual basis, hope that we can persuade all the corporate organizations to that end. It's especially heartening that we have the opportunity to hear from the commander of the United States, Africa command, General Thomas Waldhauser. General Waldhauser brings to that position, of course, the range of talent you would expect, a man of extraordinary military accomplishment, as you would forecast, of someone who reaches the four-star rank, he's commanded every level in the Marine Corps, platoon, company, battalion, Marine Expeditionary Unit, Division Marine Expeditionary Force. Perhaps equally important in forecasting his present responsibilities, he served one of the most, in my judgment, most challenging positions in the department, position that requires extraordinary diplomatic skill in the military bureaucracy. That is serving as the military assistant to the Secretary of Defense. Not a position most Americans know exists. Everyone in the department knows it exists because he's the gatekeeper to the Secretary. That means you have to deal with all the barons in the department, each of whom is convinced that his or her agenda, his or her issue or item is the most important thing the Secretary should consider. Of course, favorably accept the recommendations advanced. Of course, that's not always the case in the military assistant's job, is to try to make an outcome occur in which the barons depart, perhaps not satisfied, but nonetheless happy. And General Waldhauser successfully navigated that treacherous terrain. The other characteristic I think that you need in this kind of demanding position that for which he is responsible is the kind of mental acuity and energy that comes from being a talented athlete. And that perhaps the less known aspect of General Waldhauser's background, he is actually a champion hockey player. He helped his college team to a national hockey championship. Now, his outlook on his present responsibilities is perhaps exemplified by some of his testimony at the Center of Services Committee earlier this year, and I'm hopeful that the conversation that Nassim Mbogor is going to moderate that we'll be able to explore his thoughts on that set of points a bit further. And in that testimony, he said, and I quote, small but wise investments in the capability, legitimacy and accountability of African defense institutions offer disproportionate benefits to America, our allies, United States, and most importantly enable African solutions to African problems. General Waldhauser. Dr. Chu, thank you very much for those kind words. I really appreciate that. And Nancy, thank you for inviting me to come here today. And I have a confession at the outset that I must make. When you asked me several months ago, if I was interested in coming here today to make some remarks, I told you I'd get back to you. But the reason I did that was because I had to check the Washington Nationals baseball schedule to see if they were in town during this event. And they are, they played the Braves and the Dodgers over the weekend. So that was a huge impact, had a huge impact on me accepting the invitation to come from, so I'm based in Stuttgart for some of you who don't know. So I'm a big Nationals fan and this is an opportunity to see a game over the weekend. So I appreciate that very much. But thank you, thank you for asking me to come speak to you here today. Look at the outset, I would simply like to say that the men and women of AFRICOM, including our service components, our civilian workforce and our inter-agency partners, are all dedicated to tackling the many challenges on the African continent each day. And we are all very fortunate to have these fine people serving our nation, whether it's in Stuttgart at the headquarters or on the continent in various capacities. This afternoon, I would like to comment on two very broad subjects that hopefully will be of interest to you. Clearly, there are many topics that I could address today, but I thought the two that would be worthwhile are, first of all, talking about how the United States military, in this case AFRICOM, uses the military tool to support our ongoing political objectives on the continent, and I'll use Libya and Somalia as some examples there. And then the second topic that I would like to delve into is our strategic approach alongside with our allies and partners, how we build our primary mission is capacity building and development on the continent. So those are the two broad topics I'd like to discuss with you this afternoon. Now let me briefly begin with some background. 10 years ago, US AFRICOM was established as a stand-alone combatant command within the US Department of Defense with the overarching purpose of fostering long-term and strategic national interests on the continent. Now 10 years ago, I suspect many of you in this room were already working on policy matters in Africa, and you remember that there was quite a bit of discussion about how AFRICOM would complement and reinforce the broader US government engagement. Since that time, AFRICOM has made great strides over this relatively brief period, maturing into an organization viewed by many today as value-added to the challenges that we face on the continent. In this first decade of service, the command has contributed significantly to our national interests by working closely with countries' national governments and by building trust with partner national militaries. Our mission statement describes really three main tasks, to build defense capabilities, to respond to crisis and deter and defeat transnational threats. So I would like to begin this afternoon by talking with you about deterring and defeating these transnational threats. And again, I'll use Libya and Somalia as examples, as these two African countries have been top priorities for our command, certainly over the past year. And our discussion will show how US military operations are only a small part and by no means the only part of our strategic approach to Africa. In 2016, Prime Minister Faiz al-Sarraj, publicly and privately requested assistance from the United States and our European allies to rid the country of ISIS-Libya, which had seized territory and established a foothold in the western coastal city of Sert. ISIS had, for several years, imposed their oppressive will on the citizens and certainly destabilized an already fragile network. So over the course of about five months beginning in July of 2016, AFRICOM assisted Libyan forces aligned with the government of National Accord. US forces provided expertise and niche capability assistance such as advanced technology, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. Moreover, our accurate and consistent close air support augmented ground forces that supported the GNA for a much needed capability. In all, we conducted over 500 precision strikes around the city of Sert during that five month period. In doing so, we supported the United Nations brokered government, that of the government of the National Accord and the militias who did the very heavy lifting in the restricted terrain and urban confines in the battle of Sert. Between AFRICOM, our US ambassador and the country team and the fledgling government, we established a strategic and trusting relationship based on the shared vision of a peaceful political resolution led and implemented by the Libyans themselves. Now our assistance had two important effects. First of all, it caused our Libyan military partners to redouble their efforts and sustain the fight in spite of some very serious and heavy casualties. All of the partners focused their efforts around the common goal to expel ISIS from Sert. Second, by putting the remaining elements of ISIS on the run into the remote deserts, we bought time and space for the Seraj government to take a stronger leadership role as the United Nations had intended. Today, we are focused on continuing to support the government of National Accord. We also are working to prevent all-out civil war in that country. We've opened a line of communication with General Haftar, who is the leading figure of the Libyan National Army, and we also, of course, are keeping up the pressure on the counterterrorism fight in that country. Again, all of these efforts are geared toward a political solution by the Libyans. Our work in Libya illustrates how the military instrument of power can be engaged as an element of stagecraft and in support of a strategic framework to make a positive contribution. Let me illustrate another example in Libya. This past June, in support of our ambassador's efforts to reaffirm the U.S. commitment to a political solution, we, AFRICOM and the U.S. military provided the necessary security for him to fly into Tripoli, where we visibly demonstrated U.S. presence and continue the dialogue. This was the first time in nearly five years that senior U.S. officials were on the ground in Libya. And without overstating the case, this was a significant event, especially in the eyes of the Libyan people and, of course, the government of national accord. As the Libyans turned their attention to the ongoing concerns, such as bringing oil production back online, we will continue working with the international community and other U.S. agencies, such as USAID, to foster the stability. We'll continue to monitor the transnational trends. As ISIS comes under increasing pressure in Iraq and Syria, some fighters continue to attempt to establish a foothold in Libya. And while each day, without a civil war, is a day of peace, a number of questions remain about how Libya will sustain this effort and move forward. What will Saraj's future be? Will Haftar attempt to take Tripoli by force? How will the efforts of the Egyptians, the Europeans and the Russians influence the future? Will there be democratic elections in 2018? Will the recently-assigned U.N. Secretary General Special Representative Salome make a difference in his efforts? And how should AFRICOM best support Libya's neighbors and the multinational coalition known as the Sahel G5, as they work to protect their borders from terrorism and trafficking emanating from Libya? I could go on. But as this story unfolds in the days and months ahead, the message from AFRICOM is that we are working hard to ensure the military tool is in step with and supporting the political process. And while the U.S. can help, as we've heard several times this morning, the resolution must come from the Libyans themselves. Let's move on to Somalia, because that's another example of our military efforts that are in support of a national government. In this case, the recently elected federal government of Somalia. From next door in Djibouti and inside in Mogadishu, we are working closely with our embassy and country team to ensure our military actions support President Farmuzza's strategy to defeat El Shabaab and allow the federal government to eventually take over security requirements for the country. This January, President Farmuzza was the first president elected in Somalia in nearly two decades. And he is making every effort to strike the right balance with the tribal and clan dynamics in order to establish legitimate federal government. Now, I've had the opportunity to engage with President Farmuzza on several occasions over the past months. He is fully aware of the challenges he faces and he is fiercely committed to making the federal government of Somalia relevant for the people. I also was able to accompany Secretary Mattis when he attended the London Conference on Somalia with the leaders from the international community this past spring. The purpose of the London gathering was to accelerate progress on security sector reform, build on the international response to the ongoing drought and the humanitarian crisis and agree to a new international partnership needed to keep Somalia on course for an increased peace and prosperity by 2020. Additionally, at this conference, President Farmuzza unveiled his national security framework for a national army, a national police force, and federal and state security forces with the intention of providing for the country's overall security architecture. AFRICOM's efforts are a component of the federal government of Somali's commitment. We are focused on coordinating and synchronizing international military assistance through the Somali-led strategy called the comprehensive approach to security. We also partner with the Somali National Army and provide training, advice, and equipment as they continue to develop their counter-terrorism expertise. This past spring, we recognized the need for our operations to have greater flexibility in a country the size of the Eastern U.S. Seaboard. Accordingly, we have been given enhanced authorization to keep up the pressure on the Al-Shabaab network, which continues to conduct terror strikes on Somali citizens. We have used this authority in a very judicious but very aggressive manner with the intention of providing legitimacy and support of President Farmugia and his government. This is the first time in many years in Somalia where our military kinetic actions are specifically linked to a strategy of a federal government. This is a very important point and, again, provides a roadmap to the use of the military tool in support of overarching diplomatic objectives. Recently, we assisted the Somalis through our intelligence collection capabilities as they facilitated the defection of Makhtar Robo, a former top leader in Al-Shabaab. In a boost to President Farmugia's leadership, Robo publicly swore allegiance to the federal government of Somalia and said he was committed to taking down Al-Shabaab. This particular defection offers some important insights. First, the Somalis led each aspect of the Robo defection operation, overcoming friction and hurdles along the way, which in the past may have derailed this mission. Second, they are now in a position to leverage this tactical victory for a strategic effect. We can help them get the message out and encourage more Al-Shabaab fighters to disarm, defect, and take advantage of President Farmugia's reconciliation efforts. This initiative has been made widely known through an information campaign that encourages education and jobs for the former Al-Shabaab members who pledge their support to the federal government. Overall, by facilitating improvements in security conditions, our military efforts in support of the Somali strategy for a stable governments in a stronger economy as well as an objective of holding democratic elections in 2021. So again, a legitimate federal government elected by in this case the Somali people provides the framework and the legitimacy for our military assistance. In sum, I hope you can see the common thread throughout our efforts in Libya and Somalia as well as across the continent that it's a collaborative approach with the African nations in the lead. We believe this is the best way to make the greatest contribution towards peaceful solutions. As indicated, a core tenant of AFRICOM's strategic framework is a commitment to use the military instrument of power not on its own, but in support of diplomatic and development efforts. In fact, very few, if any of the challenges the U.S. faces in Africa can be resolved with military force as the primary agent. Instead, our strategy places an emphasis on U.S. military capabilities employed in a supporting role with nations that have compatible objectives. On that thought, I would like to transition to my second main topic of the afternoon, which is to explore the capacity building and development aspect of our mission. And I'll begin with the idea of the framework that sometimes is phrased as by, with, and through, but I want to talk about it from the operational and strategic perspective. So let me talk briefly about how we broadly conceptualize this approach at AFRICOM. Security operations are conducted almost exclusively by the partner nations' security forces and specifically not American service members. Avans and Burkina Faso provide a very good example of this concept. In January of 2016, a group of terrorists attacked a hotel and held a number of hostages. The government received criticism for the slow response and appearance of relying on Western forces to resolve this situation. Since that time, the Burkina force counterterrorism forces, Burkina Faso counterterrorism forces have continued to train with AFRICOM military forces to be able to better handle these types of threats by extremists. A few weeks ago, a group of armed men attacked another hotel in Burkina Faso and in a real world test of their readiness, the Burkinaabe security forces responded much more professionally and much more quickly. They effectively mitigated the situation. And what is interesting is that in this process, they turned down offers of assistance from the US military medical team and from a French counterterrorism force. So when we compare these two attacks 18 months apart, we can see how Burkina Faso successfully enhanced their counterterrorism forces' capabilities to handle these emerging security situations. AFRICOM served as an enabling role in this progress. And by doing so, we support the president's stated goal, President Burkina Faso's stated goal that bolstering his national security forces is one of his top priorities. In terms of the second element of by, with, and through framework that we talked about, with these forces based on their request and their needs, we work with these forces based on their request and needs. Our efforts may include training, advising, assisting, and where we have specific capabilities, perhaps some high-end technology, which when partnered with these forces gives them a higher capability. In other instances, we help with our equipment or simply education programs. A good example here would be in Tunisia, where leaders of the Tunisian Defense Forces are steadily transforming their military into an agile counterterrorism force. Through such arrangements, such as the State National Guard Program, or the State Partnership Program with the National Guard, soldiers from Wyoming have worked with their Tunisian counterparts in a long time and an ongoing effort. This program, by the way, started in 2003. So the continuity that it brings is certainly significant. Now, one of the collaborative initiatives was between Wyoming and Tunisia, was the establishment of an academy for professionally developing the Tunisian non-commissioned officers. This type of relationship supports our aligned objectives for the long-term growth of these defense forces. In the third element of AFRICOM's strategic framework, the compatible strategic objectives of both the US and the partnered nations are achieved through a cooperative relationship in which AFRICOM plays a supporting role. A couple of months ago, a severe storm took place in Chad where the Chadian Air Force had significant damage to their aircraft and hangar facilities. In a country about the same size of Alaska, their air mobility is obviously very, very vital to missions such as border security and the like. However, Chad is a poor country with limited flexibility when it comes to meeting unanticipated expenses. And by the way, Chad is a very vital partner and a member of the multinational joint task force for protecting civilians from violent extremist organizations in the Lake Chad Basin area. Now, the US has some means to assist Chad and we work very hard by stepping in and providing assistance to help repair these facilities that were ruined in the storm and we are helping them keep up their efforts to maintain their regional security. This is the issue of by, within, through. So in some, this framework rests on two key elements. First, US partner nation strategic objectives are compatible and aligned. And second, operations are conducted primarily by the partner nation and the US is in a supporting role. African leaders often tell us how important it is to develop African solutions for African problems and we can appreciate how difficult it is for a proud nation to accept help from the outsiders but the concept of by, within, through recognizes the importance of host nation ownership and a fostering enduring relationships based on trust. At the same time, Afrikaans interests are fully vested in the approach of diplomacy, development and defense to synchronize our efforts and make the most of our collective talents. In addition, we work alongside our allies from historic Western friends to non-traditional partners in Africa such as Turkey and the United Arab Emirates and members of the European Union, the African Union and United Nations. All that said, our greatest investment is the long-term objective of enhancing the capacity of our partner nation's defense forces, ideally with our partners with a through a whole of government approach. This tenant reflects our view that prevention is always better than intervention. And of course, over the course of the year we conduct over 3,500 exercises and programs and engagements on the continent. And these efforts are tailored to span a range from training soldiers who serve as medics to exercises at sea to respond to piracy. So for example, we recently conducted an exercise named African Endeavour which focuses on cybersecurity and communications. This year's event hosted by the Malawi Defense Forces brought together a truly diverse group representing 42 African countries, experts from business including Microsoft and Barclays Bank, academic organizations and training centers, such as the United Nations Signal School and even the Dutch computer emergency response team. African Endeavour focused on how to improve communications between various organizations and countries during peacekeeping and disaster relief operations. This focus on cybersecurity also created an opportunity where we all need to approve upon. And this type of exercise and the accomplishments of the 5,000 to 6,000 US service members who are on the continent daily will make a significant difference although perhaps not a lot of headlines around the world. Nevertheless, the bottom line is that day in and day out these efforts proactively and consistently build the capacity of our partners to protect their own citizens and respond to crisis and threats. Now before I conclude this afternoon, I just wanted to take a minute to talk about China. It was brought up this morning, but it's something that has popped on our radar screen and I want to spend just a few minutes on that. As most of you in here know, China has completed significant and much needed infrastructure projects as part of its one built one road strategy which it likens to a modern day silk road connecting markets of the world. Trade between China and Africa in 2016 by some accounts was estimated to be over $300 billion. Before the United Nations in September of 2015, President Xi announced $100 million in aid to the African Union and to supporting US peacekeeping operations with additional 8,000 Chinese police officers. This investment has the capacity to transform the African continent, improving households, providing livelihood and the like. Better ports, better roads, better railways, better power grids, these are all desperately needed. The Chinese also recently completed construction on their first overseas military base located several kilometers from our base at Djibouti. And as you would expect, this presents unique challenges but also unique opportunities found nowhere else in the world. This summer, China assigned the first soldiers to this base in Djibouti and expressed interest with us to conduct amphibious training between Chinese forces and US Marines. Across the continent, we have shared interests with African stability. We see many areas where we can cooperate with the Chinese military. For example, we both support UN peacekeeping missions and training with African defense forces. The fact that we have mutual interest in Africa means that we can and should cooperate. This fact does not obscure the reality of fundamental worldwide policy differences. However, we don't see these differences as being insurmountable. Earlier this year, Secretary of Defense Mattis pointed out that our two countries can and do cooperate for mutual benefit. And we will pledge to work closely with China where we share a common cause. So in sum, our goal is to work with China and Africa as fellow stakeholders in peace, security and stability for the continent. In closing this afternoon, I hope I've given you a better sense of how AFRICOM approaches the main tasks in our mission statement, building partner capacity, and primarily we talked about defeating and deterring transnational threats. When we consider how Africa will need an estimated 20 million new jobs each year to keep up with the pace of the growing youth population that we talked about this morning, we realize how compelling the reasons are to work together to create conditions for jobs and of course also hope for the future. Today's symposium certainly accelerates our understanding of all of this and the organizations we represent, how we can best develop our thinking and come up with innovative approaches for the continent. So let me just close once again by Nancy, thanking you for the opportunity to come and speak today. And I found the discussions this morning very, very invaluable. So once again, thanks very much. Thank you, General. And I will send a thank you note to the NAACS as well. Very happy that worked out and that's a good tip. As long as we can get Harper back here for the playoffs, we'll be okay. We'll open up the floor to the audience for some questions. But I wanted to lead off, if I may, you spoke quite a bit about, and thank you for that, that was a wonderful tour of the horizon. You have an interesting and expansive command. You spoke a lot about Somalia as one of your priorities on the continent. Actually, we recently here at USIP hosted a tabletop exercise in partnership with AFRICOM, with State Department, USAID, academics and NGOs to look at the future of Somalia, particularly in light of the transitions underway and the potential withdrawal of Amazon. And you talked about the critical role of security as Somalia moves through this transition. How do you see that withdrawal of Amazon and what impact will it have on the role that AFRICOM plays? Well, thanks Nancy. First of all, the withdrawal of Amazon is something that's been discussed kind of on and off again now for quite some time. And I think it's important to remember that Amazon has been on the ground for well over a decade now. They've taken many casualties and they've really beaten back Al Shabbat from a high watermark several years ago. So there's no doubt about the fact that they've made significant contributions. But to be quite honest in the last couple of years, the offensive nature, meaning taking the attack to the enemy really has not been there. The key though is, and this was brought out in the London conference, is that the Somali National Armed Forces, the Somali National Security Forces have got to step up and take ownership of this problem. Because one of the challenges of course has been the training of these Somali National Army forces and there's been a lot of training and a lot of people trained over the last decade as well. So one of the things that we're concentrating on right now is to try to pull together all the efforts because we're not, as you well know, the people in this audience certainly know, we're not the only ones there. So we have international partners, the European unions involved in training, the Turks are involved in training, the Emiratis are involved in training, we're involved in training. But we've got to pull all that together and synchronize it and we've got to get the Somali National Army to take ownership. And of course one of the key elements there is the institution building of the National Army. You've got to have a headquarters. You've got to have an OSD like situation where not only are you generating forces that can go out and fight and go out and control, but you've got to have the institutions that can pay them, train them and decide when to use them. So it's a very, very large task. The concern obviously is the next election cycle in Somalia is 2021. And the goal is that Somali National Security Forces will be able to take over security for that election. Meanwhile, there's ongoing back and forth from the AU about whether or not the extension of the pay of the troops and so on and so forth, and that continues to be there. But I think I would just sum up by saying that Amazon's withdrawal, they'll withdraw at some point in time, but it needs to be some kind of transitional phase where certainly around the Mogadishu area, you just can't leave. There's gonna have to be some kind of transition. And the Somali National Army and President Farmuja is very well aware of this. The National Security Forces have got to step up to the plate and take ownership here. And I would just finish by saying that in the last few months, we kind of joked earlier about trying to have Somalia and optimism in the same sentence because it's inch by inch. So I can assure you of that in one step forward and two steps back, which you all know. But we've taken on some operations that we're trying to get the Somali National Army out front, have them take ownership. It's a slow process, but in some, Amazon is still needed there. Their withdrawal is one of these things that's talked about quite a bit, but I think that Somali National Army needs to step up and everyone's aware of that and that's where we're trying to go. Great, thank you. Open for questions. Please say who you are and wait for the mic, which will come running towards you and we'll start right here. And we'll take a few questions and gang them up. I don't know, I can't remember. Good afternoon, sir. Chris D'Amisa, the Office of Naval Intelligence. I was wondering what the three conditions or benchmarks that you will, that you'd like to see from Libya in 2018 to show that they're making progress to coming out of the Civil War and the Revolution. Can I just take that if you don't mind? Yeah. So thanks for that question and let me just tell you that one of the interesting things with regards to Libya over the last year has been is the close relationship that AFRICOM and the trusting relationship that AFRICOM has made with President Siraj, the trusting relationship that we've made with Ambassador Bodhi and the country team, located of course in Tunis, and we've really been in this together. And one of the things I've learned from my good friend Ambassador Bodhi is that when it comes to Libya, trying to lay out a roadmap of a way ahead is something that's probably an exercise of futility. And the horizon is, we talk about long-term horizons and a big plan and so forth, but I think if Ambassador Bodhi was here, he'd probably say the same thing that if we can get out about six weeks at a time, we're probably making progress. And I think that over the past, and let me just put this, and I'll just say this too, I think that the new Secretary-General's special representative and the UNGA talks next week or next week in New York, there may be something there because they have been waiting for someone like Salome to come and pull all this together. We've had very interesting discussions with Haftar. We've had very interesting discussions with the Egyptians. There are a lot of people trying to solve this problem, but at the end of the day, it's just to say, not to be trite, but the Libyans had to do this themselves. And I think that getting together, Siraj and Haftar, first of all in the UAE and then later on in France, those are two huge steps. They don't just not gonna be the end all, but again, those are two huge steps. So every day, this issue of civil war in Libya is one that's real every day. And I think that our efforts over the last six months, and when I say this, I mean the US government, political efforts primarily, that we obviously support have gone a long way to keep Haftar at least not taking Tripoli by force. And they've gotten together twice, and I'm by no means trying to paint a rosy picture here, but they agreed on elections sometime in 2018. And there's probably two or three things that are important if those elections are gonna either go or be successful. First of all, the Libyan population needs to want to have the elections, and there needs to be security that will allow elections to take place. Those are two very fundamental things that if that's gonna be the next kind of focal point, the next measure effectiveness to get things moving forward, those two things have to be in place. So in sum, Libya has been an extremely interesting endeavor. It's very complex, a lot of people and spoilers trying to work their agendas and so on and so forth. But I think that through the leadership of our ambassador, and they want us to be involved by the way. I mean, one thing that there's two things that I think they're all interested, that everybody in Libya can agree on. Only maybe there's more than two, but so far I've only found two. And one of them is they don't want ISIS there. They don't want ISIS there. Whether you're GNA, LNA, Ms. Rotten, Zintan, they don't want ISIS there. They agree on that. So we've leveraged that. We use that as we move forward. And I think that the second thing I would just say is that they want to find a solution themselves, but they want to find a solution with US leadership involved. That's the second point, really the key point is that they want US leadership involved. That doesn't mean that the US has to be out in front of everything. I mean, one thing I've learned, the UN special representatives has a very, very unique place in this. And all indications are that Salome has been, he's well-liked by all sides, and I think he's gonna make a difference, but they all want the US to be engaged. So when we flew back into Tripoli in June, you know, it was to a certain degree, there's the optic is there, we all understand that. But the point that was made is that the United States is there, interested, we haven't left. And that to a large degree, it'd be hard for me to ever prove this, but to a large degree I believe that has helped this idea of trying to make Haftar and Saraj not go at each other by trying to keep the negotiations ongoing and keep it moving on a positive path. That's a long answer, but it's six weeks at a time. As far as I've ever seen Ambassador Bode and he's had a lot of people ask him, what's your plan? I don't have a, you know, I got a plan for the next couple of weeks. And if we can get through that, then we'll get it the next couple of weeks because that's where we are. You got a lot of appreciative nods on that point. In the back, gentlemen, straight, yep. Bob Berg, Alliance for Peace Building and former senior advisor to UNS Economic Commission for Africa. Very pleased to hear about your capacity building with militaries, another area of capacity building need is related. We can relate to this in the United States as well helping police forces be more protective of their people. Do you have a perspective of what the United States might be able to do best to help police forces in Africa? No, I'll just take that one real clean of mind because I can only remember like one at a time. I don't wanna, you know, because if you take four or five then you start talking, you don't know what you're talking about, you know. Of course you might say that anyways about me, but I don't know. Listen, so a couple of things. One of the things that's unique about AFRICOM is let's just start right at the top. And I've said this to several people, we have two deputies. We have a military deputy, three star, admiral and now it's the Air Force Lieutenant General. And we have a former ambassador who's our other deputy. And when I came into this job, I was somewhat skeptical about that because I'd never worked where you had two deputies and didn't really see the need. But I say that whoever's idea that was at the birth of AFRICOM 10 years ago is a great idea because we utilize our civilian ambassador in ways that I don't think we could communicate with our embassies, country teams and the like because he speaks their language. And he's in a great position to advocate our intentions and try to make sense of that to the other ambassadors on the continent. So that's very helpful. The second thing is this is what makes us different than something like CENTCOM. I mean, we don't wanna be another CENTCOM. Yes, the kinetic actions that we are involved in, they take up a lot of our time every day. And I think that's one of the things that over time has probably changed in the AFRICOM mission is the fact that there's really only two combatant commanders who are actually dropping bombs today on ISIS, CENTCOM and AFRICOM. Life kinda got on the way and things change and we devote a lot of time to that. And we're very, very conscious about what that means. I mean, we understand our striking of El Shabaab or rice and so forth. It's gotta be tied to a political effort and we're very cautious about that. But the capacity building is where we really need to have the, and those are short-term solutions. Killing ISIS this afternoon is a short-term solution. We hope over time it'll accumulate, it'll support a strategic objective, but as you well know, we've been killing ISIS al-Qaeda for 15 years now. So it's obviously, we got a lot of work to do. But the capacity building is the long-term solution for Africa. The capacity building, in our case with other militaries, is to hopefully provide a secure environment where the development or education where businesses wanna come in. That environment will start from that security and all those things we talked about today in terms of development will be able to take hold. Now, the gauge that I use is a real simple one when it comes to training other militaries. And I'm gonna talk about the police just for a second at the end. It's the old adage. If you've got an African military walking down the road in a village, if the mothers and children are running inside their huts, those guys aren't doing their job. If when the African military walks down the road in a village and the women and children, the mothers and children are coming out and shaking their hands and talking to them, then that military's doing its job. So in a very simplistic way, that's how we measure success in terms of capacity building for our militaries. To be quite honest on the police business, when it comes to police, that's really not what the military does. So that State Department programs and EU for the most part, European Union covers a lot of the police training is something that we as a, for the most part, don't engage in. We engage in training the militaries and do very little, if any, on police activities. But US Institute of Peace does, if you wanna hear more about that work. Woman right here, beautiful headdress, yeah. Good afternoon. I'm Amira Woods. Thank you for all the organizers that put this incredible symposium together. I'm also a Nats fan. But I have to say, there are a lot of concerns that many of us had 10 years ago when AFRICOM was established. General Ward is in the room, so I'm sure he remembers many of these debates. And 10 years later, I think many of the critiques have borne out in terms of particularly the resourcing of the Department of Defense, almost privileging it over state and aid over diplomacy and development. And I guess the quick question is, is there a review 10 years later of AFRICOM? Can there be one? Is there an inspector general, for example, that could lead an independent review? Because I think many of us, particularly in this administration now, what, as Africa analysts, are concerned as we see so many vacant seats in many other places in this town, we see DOD fully staffed, fully functioning, fully resourced. And the concerns are many, but primarily that the privileging of militaries as we hear environments where young people are rising up, political repression is increasing, militaries are often on the wrong side of history. And unfortunately the DOD has not had a very good track record, whether it's Libya or Somalia or Mali or many other places. So many questions there, but to thank the organizers for creating the space for the opportunity to raise those concerns and to really push back to see the extent to which there can be some kind of an independent assessment 10 years in. Thank you. Well, first of all, thank you very much for all those that we could probably talk the rest of the afternoon on some of those items. I think the issue of an assessment 10 years, that's a very fascinating suggestion. So I'll take that on board. There's probably some ways we can do this ourselves. And I guess the purpose would be is to see kind of how we've contributed, how we can do better. Is that kind of the thought behind your question? Yeah. No, that's, yeah, that's very good. Look, I'll just, let me just say this. Interestingly, and I hate, in testimony last fall, it was very interesting to me, this was right, it was in March and I testify with the combatant commander from SENTCOM. And this is just as the first budget was coming out, talking about reductions in all the development piece and so forth and sitting there on one side of the aisle on the, let's just say on the left side of the aisle, General Wallace, don't you agree that we need, we should not cut the USAID and development budget on the other side of the aisle from the right? General Wallace, don't you agree that we should not cut the budget and so on? And that's about the time. There was a couple pieces written, Bono had written a piece, there was a letter from 25 General saying we shouldn't cut the budget and Secretary Maddus' famous quote, if you cut the State Department's budget you got to buy more bullets for me, that was all going around at that time. And one of the things that didn't take really a lot of prompting for me was to certainly underscore the need for the development side of this, the need to not decrease the budgets for USAID, State Department and the like, because that's the long-term solution here. And I came away from that hearing rather optimistic that both sides of the aisle realized this. And I remember talking with our ambassador, Ambassador Rubenstein in Tunisia, the Tunisians were all very upset because they were going to get hammered in terms of their marks, but his guidance of them was just wait and see what the final number turns out to be. And so for the Tunisian example, I think they didn't lose anything, they may even gain a little thing after all the drama about cutting. So yes, it's year to year, understand, but the military guys, I'll just tell you this, the military guys realized the necessity for development perhaps more than most because we see this day in and day out. We have been striking El Shabaab and Al-Qaeda for quite some time, and we're still at it. In Africa, the long-term issue with this youth bulge, and you know, your people, you know it better than I do, what education for young girls does in terms of their ability to earn money, to have a livelihood, all that kind of stuff. So you'll never have a problem with the military guys saying development is important, I can assure you of that. Let's go over here. Thanks, Kim Dozier. Sir, you mentioned in your speech what sounded like a jobs program for El Shabaab. If they pledged loyalty, then they got employed. How successful, can you go into some details? How successful has that been, and how is that at fighting the ideology? I mean, do you need a separate program as well to fight the ideology, or can you sap Shabaab's strength by employing people? Thank you. I mean, I would start to answer that question by talking about the drivers that put young men, young boys into these extremist organizations. And you, I don't need to preach to this audience, you know what the drivers are, and we've touched upon those this morning. Education, jobs, a livelihood, a hope for the future, these are all things that are necessary, and in the long-term way, has to do with individuals not being attracted to bonus money, or even being kidnapped, or promises that come from extremist organizations. This is the long-term solution. Look, when it comes to the whole issue of defection and so on, it's a centerpiece of President Farmouj's strategy to try to get some of the key leadership of El Shabaab to defect, and then the theory, of course, would be the rest would come. There are four centers around the country of Southern Somalia where these locations are to defect, but the truth is, you gotta have a lot in place. I mean, it's one thing to say we want you to defect, but you've gotta have a lot in place, not the least of which is the culture and the communities where these people will come back to, they need to be accepted. Some of the cultures, as you well know on the continent, won't accept, regardless of what you actually did as a member of the violent extremist organization, in some cultures you would never be accepted, in other cultures you would be. So it's a very, very complicated issue. It's part of the strategy. We continue to work with our USAID from AFRICOM. We try to have the discussion of how we can help President Farmouj, because what if the dog catches the car? What if tomorrow El Shabaab in mass decides I want to defect, and by the way, you promised jobs and education and the like? We've gotta be able to deliver on that, because I think one of the other elements I would say, when somebody like a guy like this Robo who just defected, there are a lot of people who are watching. There are a lot of other high level leaders who are observing how he's treated. Is the government, does it stand up and do what they say they were gonna do? How is this guy treated? And if he's treated poorly or they don't do with him, then that might hurt the effort. So the long answer to the question, defection is complicated. There are a lot of things that have to be into place. Promising jobs and education is part of that, but the country needs to be able to, the country in this case, Somalia, needs to be able to deliver in that regard, because once this happens, there's no second chance. So it's a strategy that certainly has some risk to it if you can't deliver on those things. And of course, Nigeria and Tunisia in particular are facing similar issues of returning fighters or people leaving terrorist organizations. Are you able to help bridge with lessons and practices in the country? Well look, I think one of the examples I would use here and I don't think Dan Mazina is here today, but Dan Mazina is the, he's not a special envoy because if he was, he still wouldn't be in a job, but he's a special somebody and he's not an envoy. And he's in charge really of the whole government approach to what's going on in the Lake Shad Basin region with regards to Boko Haram at ISIS West Africa. And there are several examples, in fact some of my team is here from Africa, but in Niger, in Difa, in Niger, the governor there has got a very good program to reintegrate these people back in because look, it happens all the time. We'll get 25 guys who come out of the woods and they'll ask, why did you join Boko Haram? And 24 of them will say it was a job, it was livelihood, I needed to feed my family, that's what it was. And so we have some examples and I would say right now if you ask me on the continent, the best place, the best program in place that's hopefully gonna gain traction is Lake Shad Basin and it's primarily a personal, it's Dan Mazine's personal involvement here which has all the elements of government on track to try to deal with the whole Boko Haram ISIS West Africa problem. Okay, way in the back. Hi, Dick Parra from the Institute for Defense Analysis. Thank you for your comments on Libya, it's very interesting. You talked about reaching out to General Haftar and the Libyan National Army and so forth, but you didn't mention Russian support for General Haftar and the Libyan National Army and how significant that's been in the past year, perhaps enabling General Haftar and the LNA to take control of the oil fields. Has this changed your calculus? Is it a game changer in the area? What does it mean for the future? Does it make peace and the GNA more possible, less possible? If it has changed your calculus, could you explain how? Well, thanks very much for the question. First of all, to be fair, Saraj has visited Russia too. So both Haftar and Saraj have visited Russia. And I think that if you had to characterize it, when Saraj visits Russia, it's about help to the peace process. It's about help to get a political solution. When Saraj, when Haftar visits, if I may, it's all about support and weapons and that type of thing. The Russian government in public has stated that they support the Libyan political agreement and they don't want to have the weapons embargo lifted and that they want to have a political solution. Now what they do behind the scenes is a different story. But the issue on Russia has to do with influence, influence in the Med, influence in that area. And it's something that we're very interested in. We watch very closely. But there's no doubt about the fact that, but like many countries, I mean many countries that are, the French, the Italians, certainly President Saraj is the compromised candidate, the UN-backed GNA. But most countries have a line of communication open to Haftar as well. And that's designed to be able to talk to both of these individuals. Because if I had a nickel for every time I either saw or read or was told that a Libyan political solution is gonna require to deal with Haftar, okay. So if that's the case, if that's the case, then we have to be able to have a discussion with Haftar. We need to be able to talk to Haftar, not only to, if you get to a point where he's part of the political solution, but also this whole idea of just trying to stop civil war inside Libya as well. So in some, I guess the Russians have been involved. But both have visited there. But I think that you can draw your own conclusion in terms of support that they provide Haftar and the LNA. We have time for two more questions back here. Is this on? Yes. Thank you sir for coming. My name is James Carlson. I work at the Office of Naval Intelligence. This is a two-parter. The first is I don't often get to see my customers up front. So I just wanted to know, are we serving your interests? And the second one is that we talk about partnerships all the time. You probably got the most rigorous partnership agreements in the entire DoD. You got to borrow stuff from Sankam, U-Com. You got NAV, NAV-UR for the Libya crisis, for example. Could you give us one, two, maybe even three ideas on how do we build coalitions within our U.S. government itself and just within our workplaces? Okay, I'll try to do that. So first of all, the intelligence in AFRICOM, in the African region. You know this, but maybe some in the audience do not. So the intelligence organization for AFRICOM is located primarily in two places. We have maybe a third of our intelligence force in Stuttgart and the other two thirds or so are located in the U.K. And it's a very interesting setup. We've got a lot of really smart young people who are extremely motivated in terms of their desire to try to wrap their arms and heads around these challenges that we face on the continent. 1,000 languages or whatever it is, 800 different nationalities. There are some significant challenges that we have and we can't find enough people that can speak all the languages that we need to have and so forth, some significant challenges. So look, this is what I would say. We have to be innovative in our intelligence collection. We're never gonna have what we would like to have and we understand that and that train has left the station. So instead of sitting around wringing our hands and become paralyzed that we can't do this or can't do that, we really are aggressive in terms of being innovative and smart in how we use what we have. And I think that there's probably not a combatant commander who would come up here today and say I have enough or we know everything we need to know and I certainly wouldn't be one of those. But what I would say is that the intelligence community, the intelligent professionals do magic with the assets that we have. And I'd call our assets adequate. We gotta understand that and there's a mindset that we have to try to get into our workforce, both military and civilian, we are not the main effort. Core ISIS for example, if we're talking about kinetic operations, core ISIS in Iraq and Syria is the main effort. We're global ISIS and so we're kind of the supporting attack out there. Okay, I got it. And if you understand that and if you kind of take that mindset into this, I think that if anybody who's incorporated that or inculcated that is certainly the intelligence community. So we'd always like to know more, but it's kind of funny, Siraj, he always comes to us and asks us who's supporting him. I said, hey, you need to figure that one out for yourself. I can't tell you what militia is doing what today. But anyways, that's that. Look, when it comes to building coalitions, I don't know how to answer that right now today other than the fact that there are certain partner countries that we work with either clandestinely or intelligence collection wise that we've got very good relationships with. And I think that those are well established. We continue to nurture those. Look, let me give you maybe an example here. So we talked about by within through and we can't be everywhere in the continent. You know the size of the continent, you know the threats.  The French have been there now for, I don't know, four, five, six years. We, so they're doing the work and we provide them all kinds of support. We've been providing them support for years and sometimes it's intelligence and that's not a secret. So that's a partner with by within through. It's in our best interests that they kind of keep the organizations JNIM and don't ask what that stands for, but that's the collaboration of the groups that are there. They're taking that on and that's good. So we help and we foster and we provide support and we, I don't know if you would call that a coalition but in a by within through strategy on the continent, they are taking care of an area that certainly we have interests in but let them do it because there's only so much of us that can go around. One more. I think we need to close to, I'm getting a nod from Ambassador Carson, but I want to thank you. You've had enough. No, because we have more, don't go away, we have more discussion to happen this afternoon but General Walters, I cannot thank you enough for coming and joining us today for sharing with all of us your views, perspectives and experiences on the continent and very much appreciate the approach that you described in terms of how you are handling the challenges and the opportunities. So thank you for being with us. Please join me in thanking General Walters. Alex, how's the note-taking sure going? The note-taking is going well. See you there. Thank you. Hope we don't lose our audience. Thank you. Thank you. We're almost there. General's coming back in. So I said that General was coming back in. So I'm going to go ahead and take a picture of him. He doesn't have to take a picture of me. I mean, maybe I should do it. He's coming back in, so you don't have to worry about me. He's trying to get you in. Hello, hello, hello again. We're going to resume with this afternoon's session. This panel is on opportunities and challenges in the security sector. Ambassador George Ward, who is a research staff member for the Institute of Defense Analysis will lead and serve as the moderator for this panel. We will go straight through now, so if anyone needs to leave to get a cup of coffee or to use any of the facilities, you should slip out easily and come back in. We're going to do this panel, and then we're going to have a closing conversation following this panel with Ambassador Ruben Brigady, with Ambassador Jindai Frazier, and Kate Almquist from the Africa Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University will be the moderator of that session. After that, we will have some closing remarks from a Deputy, Principal Deputy over at ODNI. But we're going to go straight through, and I'm going to turn this over to Ambassador George Ward to lead the next session. Johnny, thank you very much, and welcome to the panel three and to the afternoon session. As Johnny said, we are going to focus on opportunities and challenges in security sector cooperation. We have the advantage of taking the floor immediately following General Walthauser's forward-looking and very interesting account of his command's challenges and opportunities in promoting security on the continent of Africa. He's certainly given us a lot to chew on this afternoon. We also have the disadvantage of starting our schedule after five and a half hours of presentations and discussions and a good lunch. So I'm confident, however, that the quality of our panelists will overcome this challenge. We live, as they always say, in a time of change and perhaps a time of transition in the way the countries of Africa and their external partners look at the continent's security challenges. It's a time when initiatives such as the Sahel G5 and the multinational joint task force in the Lake Chad region are providing hope that there can be African solutions to African problems. It's also a time when challenges such as migration and terrorism have sparked greater attention by Western partners to African problems. But it's also a time when questions of resources for the support of peace operations are being raised and those resources are stretched thinly and being looked at very carefully. So our panelists will focus on the U.S.-African relationships in the security sector. They'll speak to a variety of questions, including how effective have those efforts been? How can Africans help the United States mesh effectively with recent African multilateral security initiatives? And looking toward the future, what are the key challenges inherent in the security relationships between the United States and the countries of Africa? You have the biographies of our panelists in your program, so I'm not going to recite those distinguished backgrounds in detail. Just to say that Ambassador Liberata Mula-Mula, at my far right, your left, has had 35 years of diplomatic experience and served as the ambassador of Tanzania to the United States and Mexico from 2013 to 2015. Amanda Dorey is a member of the senior executive service and currently a faculty member at the National War College. Most recently she served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs, an assignment that followed her service as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Strategy. And our friend Emmanuel Quasianing is the director of the Faculty of Academic Affairs and Research at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Center in Accra, Ghana. He's also held several high-level positions with the government of Ghana, the African Union, and academia. I'm going to ask Quasie to set the scene with an initial presentation. He'll be followed by Amanda, and then Ambassador Mula-Mula will be the cleanup hitter to continue that baseball and analogy gonads for our panel. Quasie? Well, thank you very much, George, and let me thank those who invited me to come here. Let me state something very clear right from the beginning. I work at the Kofi Annan Peacekeeping Training Center, but I don't have the diplomatic swagger of Mr. Kofi Annan. So I'm going to say things as they are. And also because, you know, my 35 years of experience I've worked with the military. So my parents' greatest fear is that I've almost become like a soldier. So I'm going to speak like General World House and date. It's great fun being an African now experiencing that Africa now has some priority of sorts, recognized for its geopolitical significance, and of course the challenges that it faces to itself, but increasingly its inability to respond to those challenges affecting the whole world. And therefore the world is now beginning to wake up. If not for anything at all, the Ebola crisis did show that neglecting Africa is a dangerous business. But it's not only that. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic background is beginning to threaten not only the Sahel, but it's also threatening the countries above the Sahel and further down south. The general told us that the Libyans don't want Islamic State. But if the Libyans don't want Islamic State, where would they go? They will come down south, weak armies, useless borders, disenchanted populations, a youth group bulging that watches the suave videos of Islamic State in Al-Qaeda and Islamic Maghreb. Getting them prepared to sell their skills to anyone who will pay for them, and particularly when they have the capacity to strike a blow against the African State. That gives them cashier with the larger population. It makes them role models. Without your respect, nobody in this room is a role model for any of the African youths. We are perceived as part of the State. And George, let me take one minute to explain this thing about the State. The African State, as we all work with, is not what represents the people of the continent. That is the modern State, corrupt, bogus, unrepresentative of the dreams and aspirations of the majority of the population, failed to deliver on the optimism of the independence movement. And it is this State that we deal with that has been superimposed on a traditional State that most people relate to, that they respect, that they dignify, that they fear, that they go to for their problems to be resolved. The nature of their relationship has become inverted. And it is located, and it is within the interstices of the struggle for influence between the modern and the traditional systems that we need to understand where those who want to undermine the State are located. So what is this African realism that I am talking about? What I'm talking about is an appeal for new thinking and approaches about what we perceive to be the challenges of this continent, and to be frank, there are multiple Africans that we are talking about. There's no one single African. I think the general said thousands of languages, hundreds of nationalities, and that poses particular challenges in terms of how we understand and appreciate these problems. And therefore, in talking about partnerships and response mechanisms, we need to talk about two crucial things. One type of partnerships are we talking about, and what should be the content of the partnership. The basic argument is very simple. Africa does matter, and it continues to grow to matter, and these security challenges are no more African security challenges, but global challenges. But the way that we understand this African realism evokes what I term as multiple diverse and sometimes extremely confusing and contradictory characterizations. The most positive of them as we see as an emerging continent and the hopeful continent. So George gave me four questions to answer, and I'll start. How effective are Africa's multilateral arrangements? On paper, they are fantastic. The rhetoric is good. The continent has some of the greatest protocols and conventions that you can see anywhere. An African Heads of States and Government Summit has about 35 to 40 Gulf Stream 4 jets packed, but translating the rhetoric into operational responsiveness is a challenge. And General Warthouse knows this, and a couple of the ambassadors in this room know this, that we've worked lyrical about an African standby force for years, but there's no force that can fight, because underpinning armies themselves have been hollowed out, underfunded, politicized, ethnicized and incapable of telling the political class that they are issuing wrong orders. The police service that the general didn't speak about, there's nothing much to write home about. So there's a problem. And this is where the capacity building staff comes in. There's an unwillingness from our partners to recognize that the armies and the police and the uniformed forces just can't deliver except when they are giving specific targeted nuanced and differentiated types of training. Two, there's a huge dissonance between the voluntarily agreed principles inherent in these documents and the operational actions of the uniformed forces. And it's not just the uniformed forces. The political class needed to drive how the uniformed forces function, playing that oversight role themselves don't know how the security and intelligence services work. Across board this morning we spoke about democracy and transforming the political systems. If you read every single political manifesto of Africa's political parties, the security sections don't fill more than half a page, possibly with the exception of Mr. Imbeke's country. There's a problem with the political class that does not understand how security forces work and therefore cannot play the oversight functions and roles that it's expected to. The argument is very simple. African states may have certain similarities, but their needs are often very different. And therefore the arrangements needs to be entered into very cautiously and be accompanied by a process where they are diffused also locally. The fourth point here, George, relates to leadership deficits. Having leaders who can reform or transform the institutions, strengthen internal accountability and increase transparency to effectively respond to crisis in a timely manner is lacking. The time that it took to understand the Ebola crisis on the continent was because there was a continental deficit, political deficit, in understanding what the crisis was and what ought to be designed to respond to it. So both the African Union and ECOWAS in several emergency meetings saw Ebola as a developmental crisis and not as a health, not a security threat. And the leadership deficits. We see the legitimacy deficit of some leaders also undermining the credibility of some African institutions. This morning Ambassador Shannon being an ambassador they want to talk about Togo, but I am not an ambassador. I'm only a poor academic, so let me speak about Togo. Togo has the chairmanship of the economic community of West African states. Togo's president is involved in the crisis that is engulfing his country and therefore he has no interest in calling an extraordinary meeting of the heads of states and government. That has paralyzed the ECOWAS in responding to the Togolese crisis that I argue is being exploited by radicals from Yemen and Saudi Arabia, possibly with Islamic State also coming in because a particular ethnic group who have been pushed to the wall have all of a sudden organized, and that is the rhetoric that you hear amongst ECOWAS and African Union leaders that they have organized suddenly. Nobody organizes that suddenly. So we have seen a lacuna in the leadership leading to a worsening security and eventually a political crisis. So general, I think we are going to have one more big problem on your hands because we have Burkina that you spoke about, we have La Côte d'Ivoire that the French are trying to make something about. We have Togo that is going to explode in a big way. Of course my own country Ghana is then caught up in the MIMEDO, so hopefully the US can start looking at Ghana and how to support it. The fifth point relates to the politics of foreign rapid consensus on major security issues on the continent. The diversity of African states, their political interests and the latent rivalries among quite a number of the member states often times impede the effective functioning of the institutions in responding to the emerging crisis on the continent. We see a country like Burundi in which Incurinziza managed to intimidate, to murder, to kill, to paralyze and hold an election and win while the Union stood on the sidelines and clapped. Second question from George, what is the capacity of the AU and its wrecks to take on additional security-related responsibilities if you are in support of peacekeeping declines? This ties into some of the later points that I will make, but for the issue of the problems with time, let me just hope over one or two things. It's increasingly becoming the norm for African regional organizations to look internally when crisis arrives, which I think is very good, we've seen it in Somalia. However, the AU and its wrecks will traditionally look to the EU and when they face challenges, that relates to capabilities and often times logistics in dealing with crisis on the continent. Very few of our countries have the capabilities to lift their troops and I think Chad, as the general said, is one of the few countries.  The Chadian army is very effective, terribly brutal, an abuse of human rights, but of course it's an effective army, nobody wants to send armies into the theater for them to die, so now we deal with the Chadians. The question really for us to discuss is whether this is the kind of army that should be in the forefront resolving our crisis and our challenges, or whether we want to ask ourselves alternative questions and to say how do we bring some of the more disciplined forces through targeted capacity building for them to be able to deliver on what we expect them to deliver. I have serious problems when international community diverts its responsibility to an armed force like the Chadians. So we've seen a necklace mission in Guinea-Bissau, we've seen an army some that has proved that they can get this job done. But we are seeing two other developments that I think are very fascinating. One is the regional task force for the elimination of the lost resistance army that has struck some successes, then of course the multinational joint task force and the group of five. A typical, bureaucratic intervention alone will not solve these challenges. For another question from George, how can the U.S. and other partners assist? Three very quick points. Over the past couple of years, let's say since independence, at least 55 years ago, the most successful business has been the capacity building business. But as billions of dollars have been poured into capacity building, there's considerably less capacity on the continent. It means something is not being done right. I work at a training school in which we train 1,400 people every year over the last 10 years, trained about 14,000 people. What can the U.S. do much better? I think the U.S. has got to learn to listen to its partners. Here we come with a desire to partner you and to help, but how best do you understand your own problems and how best do you think we can help? That humility to ask these basic questions don't always happen, George. Finally, it's about the need to provide basic training in cultural diversity and understanding the nuances of the multiple cultures that you deal with so that trust can be built. Because molesty knows himself as he travels around the continent that this can be a very tricky problem, challenges. Plenty of them, we've spoken about them the whole day, but let me talk about demographics for 30 seconds. When we talk about the demographics, lack of jobs, education. We are seeing a different type of challenge related to the demographics. Highly educated, highly skilled, highly frustrated young people who know the IT world and are able to get into the dark sectors of the web. That is how the demographics will transform to become an even bigger problem. Because when the state refuses or is incapable of creating jobs, anyone who comes with a rhetoric and discourse that creates hope, they will follow those people. And for those of you who work on the continent and know the slick videos and the rhetoric from Islamic State, that is attractive, that provides hope, that creates the impression that there's an alternative life. And as at the Kofianan Center, we do with preventing violent extremism and we hear the stories. I can tell you that the challenge is not about industrialization. We can grow the economy. But if it doesn't trickle down, the hope for most young people is that they will take up arms and strike a blow against the state. Let me leave my comments here for now. Dr. Quacy, thank you very much for that comprehensive and candid overview. Your view is a great beginning. I will now turn to Amanda Dorey for a point of view of America. Thank you. And a point of view as an American academic at this point. So that's very liberating in some respects after so many years of being in the policy hot seat. But I appreciate the opportunity, George, to participate in this symposium this year. It's bigger and better than last year and that's already a success. So thank you for giving me the opportunity and I'll do my best to answer the questions that were posed in contrast to the speaker who does free form and picks other topics of interest. The first one that you asked me to address was how does the United States view the effectiveness of its support for African efforts to defeat violent extremist groups and African efforts to further professionalize their military forces? So just as Quacy has outlined, there's not a monolithic Africa. Of course, there's not a monolithic United States either. So this is one person's perspective on effectiveness of support and there are many other perspectives, whether they're different entities within the U.S. government, whether they're those who are outside the U.S. government as well. But I'd just like to remind that I think the two major elements of support to African partners working to defeat violent extremist organizations are first, preventing radicalization in the first place and then second, disrupting and degrading extremists when those preventive efforts don't take root. And for each of those elements, I think we need to think hard and listen carefully to partners about how the U.S. can be supportive in those regards. On the prevention angle, first and foremost, looking for some inspiration from external sources, I came across the 2016 plan by the UN for preventing violent extremism and I was very taken with the description that radicalization is driven by a mix of personal, societal and ideational factors whose manifestations vary from one individual to the next. And I think that is the essence of what we have read in so many different reports and what we have learned from so many different conversations, that there is no singular approach to prevention. Prevention requires deeply localized activity in a particular social concept, particular social construct within each community and within each nation. And so the ability of the U.S. government leads stakeholders who are involved in this and that's primarily the State Department and USAID. Their tools and activities are being adjusted in the past five or six years to really focus on how this can be done. And so some of them are new tools and activities, some are adjusting existing ones. But some examples of things are working to create venues where state and sub-state actors can share approaches and engage with one another. I think that reflects the understanding that Quacy identified in terms of the modern African state and its distance from the people at times. Prevention includes work on communications and social media, working with partners on criminal justice and all different aspects of that, working to strengthen institutions of civil society in particular, the roles and opportunities for youth and women. So really multi-faceted activities involved in U.S. government support on the prevention line of effort. A lot of this work is very new and I think it's difficult to judge the effectiveness at this time. And that's really George the question that you have asked. And I think it's going to be difficult even five years from now where we have even a greater track record to be able to test the preventive interventions that really are happening down at an individual level and a community level. And I know there is an entire universe of people working on monitoring and effectiveness of activities that are trying to crack this nut and figure out how will we demonstrate the effectiveness of these approaches. The second aspect of U.S. support is with respect to disruption and degradation of those who have radicalized. And the leads for this are those U.S. government entities who are engaging with law enforcement and other elements of the security services including the militaries of African counterparts. State Department has the lead for the law enforcement dimension and that's something that General Waldhauser touched on in his earlier comment. And Department of Defense takes the lead when it comes to engaging with African militaries as you know. The basic tools at our disposal include training activities, equipping activities, advice, assistance. Additionally at operational and strategic levels there are opportunities for education and institutions strengthening. So your question was how would you evaluate the effectiveness of our engagements? I think it depends on what you want to use as the yardstick. If you're judging from a perspective of preventing the fall of governments to non-state actors who have ambitions to establish alternative governance structures or if you're judging by the yardstick of creating time and space for political and diplomatic efforts to address sources of conflict, we can see some signs of success. And the examples that come to my mind, some of these have already come up with General Waldhauser earlier, but the CERT campaign for example has created time and space for the Libyan protagonists to engage with one another on a solution to their political challenges. Similarly, this degrade and disrupt activity has created an opportunity in Somalia for the government there to extend its governance outside of what used to just be Mogadishu and to many other parts of Somalia at this point. A different example would be the French prevention of the fall of Obama-Co to AQIM and affiliates and essentially underwriting the continued existence of Mali as a unitary state at this point, creating the time and space for political solutions to take root. So that's one yardstick you could use to measure effectiveness. Another yardstick could be preventing attacks on the United States homeland as well as harm to Americans and U.S. facilities overseas. I would say we have a favorable track record for the former and a mixed for the latter. So the only incident that relates directly to the U.S. homeland was the infamous 2009 Underwear Bomber episode, which was disrupted because of the failure of the bomb device itself. Clearly, some issues there in terms of the ability of screening when it came to air travel to the United States. But there have been no other incidents with respect to the U.S. homeland. When it comes to Americans, American facilities overseas is a mixed track record. Everyone's familiar with the attacks against our diplomatic personnel in Benghazi as civilian deaths that have happened in the hotel attacks in Mali and Burkina Faso, the occasional kidnapping of an American and the very regular attack plotting against U.S. embassies in many different locations. So that is a constant challenge and that's a yardstick by which to measure disruption of violent extremist organizations as well. The final yardstick that I put out there is really the most concerning from the perspective of the number of VEO groups, the number of civilians killed or injured by VEOs, the number of attacks, the amount of terrain that is contested between governments and VEOs. And this picture is very concerning with increases across the board. VEO groups are continuing to morph and splinter and fuse to form new groups, JNIM being the most recent of those and surely not the last in affiliation variously with Islamic State or Al-Qaeda in a major contestation for terrain and power in various parts of the African continent. Islamic State having gained more ground in the Maghreb at this point and Al-Qaeda affiliates more prominent in sub-Saharan Africa but important inroads by Islamic State in Lake Chad Basin, Horn of Africa and the Sahel. I'm very appreciative of the different academic groups that take the time and make the effort to try to track all of the incidents of either political violence or terrorist attacks. Some of these are happening on global scale. Some of these are more focused. University of Sussex and University of Maryland have two of the most prominent of those databases but overall the deaths have decreased relatively speaking from a high point in 2015 if you look at it on an annual basis but I was very taken with a recent report that was released by UNDP in the context of their extremism in Africa study and they used a figure of 33,000 African fatalities, 4,000 attacks over the last five years. So even if you want to be quite equable with the data which always happens, those are huge numbers and by that guard stick I think there's a problem. So your second question was from the US perspective how effective are African multilateral arrangements such as those cited above in improving security and how can the United States and Africa's other partners best promote the success of these arrangements? I would say from a US perspective the existence of multilateral arrangements are unparalleled when it comes to a high degree of legitimacy and of ownership and that's really what makes them very attractive. The effectiveness of these arrangements can be correlated from my perspective with the number of actors or participants involved because you need an alignment of national interests and of resources. In other words, a level of political will for the partners to work together effectively. So some examples of these types of arrangements, the multinational joint task force has already been mentioned that's focused on Boko Haram with four primary partners and Lightshed Basin, a central headquarters where they are working together and where external partners have been able to plug in. I would mention as well the G5 which has been evoked already that's addressing JNIM and other AQIM affiliates in the Sahel. This is a new entity, a very deliberate effort being taken by those governments to address a comprehensive approach to violent extremist organizations. So not just looking in the security space but looking in the development space as well. And then the third I would mention, of course, at the continental scale, the African Union, which gives the greatest level of legitimacy, sometimes takes the most amount of time to align all of the various interests, but faster than the UN. And I think that's one of its great advantages for the various African crises that manifest from time to time. I would take as an example where before you had the UN mission in the form of Manusma and Mali, you had, of course, the AU mission in the form of Vifisma. Similarly with respect to Central African Republic, and of course, Amazon has already been invoked earlier today as well. I think there's an opportunity that we need to continue to focus on with respect to burden sharing between the United Nations and African Union. That's very important. The special rep for the Peace Fund, Donald Kauruka, I'm sure is working overtime up in New York the next few weeks on this subject in the context of the UNGA. In terms of external partners, the things that we can do, we focus on sharing institutional expertise, providing information and intelligence, and I think importantly, avoiding contributing to distortionary resource flows. So in that regard, I wanted to quickly mention a trip that I was pleased to be part of that was led by the State Department to visit the G5 secretariat in Noakshot earlier this year as part of a fact-finding mission by the U.S. government to understand the G5 and its aspirations and to identify ways that we could be supportive. And there were a couple of things that impressed me about the G5 Sahel approach. The first I mentioned already was the comprehensive approach not just on security but development as part of this approach to addressing insecurity in those five Sahelian nations. The second was to have a lean structure with a secretariat to avoid creating its own dynamic and resourcing needs to just simply staff up a secretariat headquarters and their decision not to manage money at the secretariat level but to continue to have resources come in to the partner member states where they can be absorbed and managed there. And then the third dimension was the cost sharing that had been put in place both in terms of member states contributing forces and their contribution at this point of 10 million euros each into a common resource pool demonstrating that there is not only political will but resources that are being brought to bear. I think in the interest of time I'll leave African security challenges of the future to the Q&A discussion and give the ambassador a chance to speak. Thank you very, very much. And we'll turn to Ambassador Mula Mula. Thank you very much. And you promised what we know most is to thank and thank and thank again. Allow me to really thank the African Center for Strategic Studies, the Institute for Difference Analysis. I don't know how they fished me out with my hideout. So I'm so pleased to be here but I'm also very pleased to see in the room many of the retired ambassadors that gives me hope and inspiration that there is life after retirement. I see ambassador Cassaud, I see ambassador Judy, I see ambassador Linda, I see ambassador Gengenhei Fraser. All the ambassadors retired. So I'm really quite pleased that in the midst of the swamp in Washington, we are all swamp creatures but then you came out with this very good initiative to bring attention of Washington and the international community. Of course, with the social media, I think this I think is which is beyond Washington on this important subject of U.S.-African partnerships advancing common interests. When a doctor's question started, of course, he was saying he can say anything he can be blunt because he's not an ambassador or a diplomat. For me now as a retired ambassador in the academic world, I could also try to be blunt but I want to put a sweetener and as you say the ambassador George Ward that I clean up. Let me try to clean up. You posed to me before you gave me the task of cleaning up some questions. I would try to address them as I clean up.  By then, of course, I was in the minutes of foreign affairs and when Africa came and wanting partnership, but with the conditionality. I think you remember very well about the Rome statue at Coutain and all those stuff. But I'm so happy that we are now celebrating 10 years of partnership which actually has opened opportunities for so many countries of our countries in the defense security sector. Again, let me also be blunt. When I was listening to the general, he just chose only two countries for Africa that for the entire year you are focusing on Somalia a