Obama’s Charm Offensive in Africa

[unhappycamper]

http://watchingamerica.com/News/243919/obamas-charm-offensive-in-africa/

Obama’s Charm Offensive in Africa
Le Point, France
By Mireille Duteil
Translated By Stuart Taylor
8/1/2014
Edited by Emily France

Washington has been the last capital to organize its summit with Africa. France launched its own over 40 years ago, and since then, the Africans have experienced deterioration in their relationships with China, Turkey, India, Japan and Brazil. It is now Barack Obama’s turn.

~snip~

Looking beyond the heads of state, Obama is also targeting future African business leaders

Forty-seven heads of state were invited to Washington on August 4, 5 and 6. Only three were “forgotten,” namely those of Sudan, Zimbabwe and Eritrea, who are shunned by the international community because of their countries’ massacres (Sudan), ruthless dictatorships (Eritrea) or senseless election rigging (Zimbabwe). The heads of state of Sierra Leone and Liberia will be absent due to the dreadful spread of the Ebola virus, which has become uncontrollable in their countries. The epidemic will obviously be on the agenda for the meeting in Washington.

Barack Obama will have to make the Africans forget their disappointment after they pinned their hopes on him during his first mandate. They anticipated that the “dark continent” would be his priority. This was not the case, but has it become so? Obama is still looking toward Asia and the Pacific, but Africa is in fashion. It is the continent of the future, rich in raw materials (which may also be the cause of its misfortune, as these resources are exploited without the population seeing an increase in its standard of living), rich with its young and plentiful population – that needs to be educated – and with a significant middle class, a future market to which Westerners are paying close attention.

Obama is aware of the potential that the “dark continent” represents. On July 28, he gave the go-ahead for the weeklong African summit by gathering 500 young entrepreneurs from the continent in Washington as part of the Young African Leaders Initiative. He won them over with his jokes and earned himself a standing ovation. The topic of the meeting was investment in the next generation. The American president announced to his young and delighted audience that, in the next two years, 2,000 young African business leaders could come to American universities to improve their skills. Obama knows that securing the future generation of African entrepreneurs means building a captive market – they will be forced to give priority to the United States when they wish to import goods and machines from the West.

[Scootaloo]

1. Oh good, next-gen international piracy

Because what developing economies need are more "leaders" educated within the echo chamber of Austrian hyper-capitalist economics.

[4139]

2. Why is Obama's charm "offensive"?

Headline writer need more coffee