Clinton’s Africa Trip Is an Opportunity to Spotlight Poverty Hurdles
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s seven-country Africa tour is an opportunity for the United States to engage the continent’s most powerful leaders and spotlight the challenges faced by impoverished and excluded Africans. ActionAid is calling on Clinton to explore opportunities to increase incomes and to end violence against women while visiting.
Clinton’s trip comes shortly after President Barack Obama paid a visit to the continent; both signaling a new space being carved out for Africa in American foreign policy. ActionAid is calling on Secretary Clinton and the Obama Administration to turn diplomatic exchanges and good will into actions that will address key issues in Africa such as poverty, HIV and AIDS, food security and gender inequalities.
On Aug. 4, Clinton touched down in Nairobi, Kenya. ActionAid is urging Clinton to focus on the poorest Kenyans by providing opportunities beyond oil, timber and gas.
“For Obama’s Aid for Trade concept to help the poorest people to plug into the market opportunities created by the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) the U.S. government must slash hefty farm subsidies that make its goods artificially cheap, as well as trade barriers on all products exported from African countries,” said Brian Kagoro, ActionAid’s Pan-African policy director.
“The Nairobi AGOA Forum must address the twin challenges of increasing Africa’s competitiveness and relaxing stringent market rules,” he added.
The U.S. government, as well as African governments, must ensure that AGOA provides decent jobs that bring prosperity, dignity and respect for the workers.
Kenya’s sale of textiles and apparel to the U.S. market has been steadily declining since 2003, marked by a sharp drop of over 20 percent at the end of 2008. Kenyan manufacturers currently buy cotton from South East Asia. This makes the manufacturers ineligible to export to the United States because they source their materials from outside Africa and the United States.
“Relaxation of the rules of origin under AGOA and increased efforts to revive the textile sector by the Kenyan government will lead to employment and business opportunities for ordinary Kenyans not just precarious jobs with meager incomes in export processing zones,” said Kagoro.
Clinton has also visited Goma; the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). ActionAid is calling on Secretary Clinton to draw attention to problem of violence against women and girls in the DRC.
Over 600 civilians have been killed in the country, thousands of women and girls raped, dozens of villages burned to the ground and over 800,000 people displaced from their homes since the start of military operations in the DRC in January. An estimated 80,000 people fled their homes in June alone.
In such a volatile situation, women and girls are at an increased risk of violence and being infected with HIV.
“Women and girls have been bearing the brunt of this war for close to 15 years,” said Bibiane Mbaye, ActionAid’s Policy Coordinator in West and Central Africa. “The culture of impunity in the face of gross violations against the rights of women and girls must end.”
Mbaye applauded Clinton’s support while she was in the Senate for the International Violence Against Women Act. That bill would incorporate comprehensive responses to violence against women into U.S. diplomatic and foreign assistance programs.
Clinton’s trip marks an important step in the administration’s efforts to re-engage with the world and find new solutions to the vexing problems of poverty and hunger. Join ActionAid and our work with partners in the developing world to end poverty.
