Rice and Frazer for Africa

I caught some interesting verbiage in a Ghanaian editorial while updating my Somalia notebook.

Within the past 15 years, United States, for the first time, has implemented comprehensive Africa-wide policies that affect more people positively on the continent: President Bill Clinton left “Africa Growth and Opportunity Act” as United States’ legacy during his presidency and Pres. George W. Bush can make claim on America’s contribution towards Africa’s struggle with malaria and HIV-AIDS as his legacy. Thus, a question to ask, relevant to the discussion in this commentary, has to do with whether “President” Barack Obama would be willing, politically, to match or better what his previous two predecessors offered Africa.

The last time I was engaged with the issues of South East Africa, I was getting some BDS flack about how the US was only interested in destroying home rule in a 'clash of the civilizations' attack on Islamic courts. But Somalia's home rule has run amok and that apparent collapse of order has prompted the greatest increase in piracy we've seen in quite some time.

First world countries have tasked some serious ships to avert all that and protect trade.