World Summit on Sustainable Development Outcomes

I’d like to spend just a few minutes talking about what the United States’ priorities are in Africa and then talk a little bit about how those priorities reflect in the partnership that we’re all here today to talk about.

We essentially have five priorities for Africa and they’re all inter-linked and they do change, because events in Africa obviously change. But the basic motivation for those five priorities remains the same. They go something like this.

The first priority is to help Africans have a better life. Some people call it GNP per capita. Others call it standard of living increase. However you want to measure it or however you want to call it, it’s making the environment a better place for those that live in Africa. We think one primary way to do that is activate the private sector. Certainly, official development assistance is very important, but ultimately, we’ve got to get the private sector involved to really bring the potential of Africa to its fullest. In that light, I’m also here in South Africa today leading a group of private equity fund managers looking at private equity deals; talking to African entrepreneurs on what their capital requirements and capital needs are and seeing if there isn’t a match -- if there isn’t a partnership -- between some American capital and some very good African business plans that they can link up and be good partners in.

The second area that we are concerned about and prioritize is democratic institutions. You know, we always talk about good governance -- and we need to talk about good governance -- but behind good governance is an institution that will be there day in and day out. Those institutions that contribute to good governance are things like independent judicial systems, like a free media and free press, all of the building blocks of civil society. We’re interested in how we can support African governments and African civil societies in building and sustaining those institutions and building blocks.

The third area that we are focused on is HIV/AIDS. It is the pandemic that we all know about and certainly this country is fully aware of it, as is this entire Southern African region. We spend a lot of resources -- cash -- and we spend a lot of human resources on it, too. Ambassador Hume has quite a few people in his Embassy here in South Africa working on nothing but HIV/AIDS. It is a critical focus that we are going to have with us, unfortunately, for some years to come.

The fourth area is the environment. Africa is blessed with some unique ecosystems. These are the ecosystems that we all have to protect. You remember, in one of the early drafts of NEPAD [New Partnership for Africa's Development], President Mbeki very articulately wrote about how Africa is the lung of the world. And it is. The open spaces of Africa, the rain forests of Africa, that’s what the rest of the world is breathing. That’s the oxygen we have. And we have to recognize and hold up that unique ecosystem and we need to help African governments protect those ecosystems.

The last area is conflict resolution, and that’s a kind of Washington, D.C., academic way of saying, "Stop the wars." Africa’s got too many wars. And you know, we can’t protect the environment and we can’t really do HIV/AIDS assistance and we can’t build independent judicial systems and we certainly can’t draw American investment if there’s a war going on. So, we spend a lot of time looking at conflict resolution and how to stop those wars and how to prevent new ones from happening.

So those are the five priorities and what we are constantly looking for are, what are the bridges, what are the partnerships that we can build with Africans to make those five priorities a reality.

And what you’re going to be doing here in August is an excellent way to start building that bridge. We are looking for the deliverables, as we say, what are the concrete things we can do together. Yes, it’s doing things like bringing private equity fund managers here to invest. And listening to the deal flow that African entrepreneurs have. Yes, it’s the Millennium Challenge, which President Bush announced in Monterrey just a couple weeks ago. It’s an exciting challenge and we, quite frankly, haven’t worked out all the details of it, but I think it’s very good news for Africa. It’s based very much on the NEPAD good governance and good economic policy kind of criteria. We’re going to be working with NEPAD and figure out how those criteria are developed and then we’re going to start looking for vehicles to deliver that. We’ve announced that it’s going to be a five billion-dollar per annum Millennium Challenge, and that’s terrific. So, we look forward to working with WSSD and all the participants in how we put that money to good use.

Thank you all very much.