TRANSCRIPT: Kenya-Born Harvard Professor Speaks at U.S. Africa Command Headquarters
By Professor Calestous Juma, Harvard University U.S. AFRICOM Public Affairs
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STUTTGART, Germany,May 21, 2009 — U.S. Africa Command kicked off its first command speaker series May 21, 2009 with a presentation by Kenya-native Calestous Juma, Harvard University professor of the practice of international development.
The command speaker program is part of a U.S. AFRICOM initiative to bring in top experts on a periodic basis to increase cultural awareness of Africa-related issues among staff with an emphasis on adding African voices to command discussions.
Juma's presentation on "Security and Development in a Turbulent World; Safeguarding Africa's Prosperity" focused on the linkage between security and development, as well as the role that emerging technologies can play in fostering economic growth within African nations.
"For most developing countries in the early stages of economic development, it is not easy to separate security and development," Juma explained. "By improving economic performance of countries, you also provide a basis for stability which contributes to security. And on the other hand, by supporting security, you also provide a basis upon which economic activities can take place."
Juma is a recognized authority in the application of science and technology to sustainable development, and is an influential senior advisor to various governments and international organizations. He serves as a professor and director of the science, technology, and globalization project at Harvard University.
The video of Professor Juma's presentation is posted on the USAFRICOM homepage in the multimedia section.
The complete transcript of Professor Juma's presentation is available below:
RAY KIRKLAND: We should probably get started. Good morning. Thank you for coming. On behalf of General Ward I'd like to welcome you to the inaugural presentation of U.S. African Command Commander's speakers series.
This program, which will bring various distinguished speakers to the command, is intended to raise the awareness of U.S. African Command staff on important issues and concerns on the continent of Africa and to help stimulate our ideas of how we may more effectively meet the challenges we face here.
General Ward sees this series as a critical contributor to our work, and one which he strongly feels will benefit the entire command. In inaugurating this speaker series, I believe we have attained the ideal person, Professor Calestous Juma, who will talk to us today about security and development in a turbulent world -- safeguarding Africa's prosperity.
Professor Juma brings with him a tremendous array of knowledge and experience, which makes him the leading expert in the area of linking science and technology to development. In fact, I discovered last evening that Professor Juma was the inspiration for my son Nicholas' master's thesis on the use of Internet and communication technologies to deliver and expand engineering education on the African continent. Calestous Juma is currently professor of the practice of international development, and director of the science technology and globalization project at Harvard University. He is a former executive secretary of a United Nations convention on biological diversity, founding director of the African Center for Technology studies in Nairobi, and he has served as Chancellor of the University of Guyana.
Professor Juma has been elected to the Royal Society of London, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World. He holds a Ph.D. in science and technology policy studies, and has written widely on science, technology and the environment. He also is editor of the International Journal of Technology and Globalization, and the International Journal of Biotechnology. It gives me great pleasure to welcome Professor Juma to deliver his presentation.
(Applause.)
CALESTOUS JUMA: General Ward, Ambassador Yates and Admiral Moeller, I am very grateful to be here. As you can imagine this is my first opportunity to speak to a military audience, so I am under tremendous pressure. (Laughter.) I was given a little bit of that yesterday from the briefings and so I spent last night really worrying about this talk. (Laughter.) And probably because I am also hoping that you can be a captive audience because I would like to use this opportunity essentially to learn more about your work and establish a basis upon which we can continue to exchange views in thinking about the future - the future of Africa.
I, first of all, heard about AFRICOM in the context of criticism, that's the first thing I heard about it. And I deal a lot with the criticism especially challenges to new ideas. So I got really interested in trying to find out why everyone was so concerned about AFRICOM. And I am delighted to report this morning that we are over that phase, that we have entered a new phase of really thinking about how to make the command really supportive of Africa's future.
And so I'm thinking really about putting this in the context of recent statements by the president, in terms of how he thinks about the future of developing countries. And I think of AFRICOM as central in the context of its ability to contribute to efforts in Africa to expand prosperity - this is really the context in which I want to make my presentation today.
And there are two elements to this: The first one is really about what I think are the central elements that will help to drive Africa's economic transformation. There are really three critical areas. The first one has to do with infrastructure, and I'll get into details of that one. The second has to do with the ability of the continent to expand both internal trade but also external trade.
And the third one has to do with the ability of the continent to take advantage of emerging technologies as a foundation of economic transformation. So I think that AFRICOM can play a really important role especially by keeping within the context of its mandates, to contribute to those elements. My claim is a simple one, that for most developing countries or countries that are in the early stages of economic development, it is not easy to separate security and development. That security and development are intimately intertwined - that every time you do one you are contributing to the other. By improving economic performance of countries, you also provide a basis for stability which contributes to security. And on the other hand, by supporting security, you also provide a basis upon which economic activities can take place. I also speculate that as countries become more advanced, you start to see a decoupling of security from economic development, that you can reap economic development without really dealing with the security concerns, totally separate lanes. In the case of Africa, I think that security and development, the lanes are a bit close to each other. And that basically in my view offers a new opportunity to define the mandate of the command in such a way that it contributes effectively to the transformation of the continent.
The second part of my presentation has to do with what to do on the African side. I hold the view that, given that claim that I just put forward, that African countries also need to think very carefully about the role that their militaries can play in economic development. In fact, many of them already do, but they do it in the context of emergencies or relief operations.
I would like to argue, and I have publicly argued that in fact the militaries in African countries need to play a much bigger role in providing the foundation for economic transformation. A lot of it has to do primarily with the first part, which is infrastructure development. Secondly, the ability to safeguard trade routes; and thirdly I think that really there is a very important part to play in the area of technology transformation.
The one thing that I think basically unifies the interests of the development sector and the security sector is that both of them have very near interests in the use of emerging technologies either for security management or for economic transformation. Economies grow because of the introduction of new knowledge into the economic system. And that knowledge is imported essentially as new technologies.
And one of the most important areas of interest, especially among African presidents - and I've had the opportunity in recent years to work with most of them as part of the preparation for summits, very conveniently in early of 2007. They are very keenly interested in how to use new technologies to transform their economies. Many of those technologies, in fact, originate from a defense, research and development. But more importantly, you cannot conceive of a defense or a security sector without a clear understanding of the use of emerging technologies. So I think that the technology area might be the one area that brings the two areas very closely together.
So my view is that the timing of the creation of the command offers both the United States and Africa an opportunity that is only paralleled by the creation of NATO after the Second World War. One has to take into account the needs of the continent at the moment and think through how best to ensure that activities of the command, within its limits, really contribute to the expansion of prosperity on the continent.
That's essentially the summary of my presentation this morning. And what I'd like to do is cover four key areas and I'll try to do this as briefly as I can. I'll probably skip some of the slides. They are all public. They'll be available for you. Basically the critical role that the two play - interactions between security and development - especially in the context of the current economic crisis, that that crisis has offered us new opportunities to really think a bit more clearly about interactions between those two.
And I also want to claim that the responses that have been introduced by many industrialized countries as they respond to the economic crisis start to look very much like the policies used by developing countries to stimulate economic growth. It's ideas about investing in the infrastructure, in health, in education - so we start to see convergence of policies in ways that we haven't actually seen this happening before. And then I would like to talk a little bit more about the significant role that advances in new technologies play and opportunities that exist and give some examples of that.
And I'll conclude by offering some of my own thoughts on what will be done as part of the development of the command and also the activities that are taking place in Africa. I have to report also that you are one year old, essentially in terms of your operation. So you are entitled to all the mistakes you can make - (laughter). Somebody advised me some time back that success is making all your mistakes when nobody is watching. The trouble with you is that everybody's watching - (laughter) - so you have to make your mistakes in public and learn from them.
You, obviously, you've inherited a big continent - most people think of it in terms of the number of countries, 53 or 54; 53 countries. And people rarely appreciate how large and how complex this continent is. You can actually fit a lot into it. You can fit the U.S., China, Europe, India, Argentina, and have enough room to sneak Great Britain in - (laughter). So people, just three times the size of the United States - this kind of gives you a sense of the magnitude of the challenges that we all have to deal with, both on the African side but also as you start to develop your activities. And of course, you develop this view that you respond to requests - so you'll be responding to a lot of different requests, but it's very hard to be focused when you also are responding to requests -so that's something that we can talk a little bit about when we come to the time for discussions.
It is a continent that is characterized by very poor infrastructure investments - (inaudible) - very limited supply of - (inaudible) - in terms of main-power transmission lines, very limited spread of primary roads - and roads are extremely important because economies grow because of their abilities to move goods, services and ideas. And if you can't move any of those, there is a little chance that an economy can actually grow.
The road to prosperity is simply that - roads, essentially. And that, in my view, affects - for example - agricultural production. A large part of Africa is in fact arable; it can support crops. But you can't move seed there and you can't move grain out - and that has led to a continent where communities basically rely on peasant production. They grow what they consume because they can't - (inaudible) - statement of fact in expanding agricultural production is going to be the expansion of transportation networks.
That also gives you the capacity to start processing food, and start to develop investments in storage technologies, which currently don't exist. We've got other limitations that have to do with water and sanitation that are probably very well known to you - which again are part of the infrastructure limitations on the continent.
And all the projections basically about climate change that we know, including some of the current impact arising from drought, and other ecological degradation trains suggest basically a future in which the continent is going to have to invest a lot more - (inaudible) - money. And a large part of that's going to be infrastructure investment for ecological deprivation.
And the democratic issue has been debated a lot - most people talk about it in the context of just trends in - (inaudible). But I think what's most important for the future of the continent is the changes in the age structure in the next few decades where Africa is going to be the one continent with a very large proportion of its population under the age of 30.
And that process brought new challenges, but also unique opportunities - (inaudible) -part of the population that is generally most creative and most active and most open to new ideas. And I am interested in ways by which one can start to look at this population, but especially the youth, as an opportunity. But it has to be addressed in a special way, because it can also become a challenge. There's evidence of that already happening in a number of African countries. This is why the importance of educational institutions actually comes in, in that one way by which you harness this resource is making sure that you have the appropriate institutions that respect the aspirations that are reflected - (inaudible). And so I am very interested, for example, in the role of engineering schools, as a way of tapping into this resource base that a country has.
Of course, everybody tends to think of Africa largely in the context of its poverty, income per capita. Whether you look at it geographically or whether you look at it in terms of countries - but what's interesting is that in the last decade or so, Africa has recorded very significant growth rates - in fact growing between 2001 and 2007 - growing faster than the world average growth rates.
And this has gone almost unnoticed because we focus mostly on the poverty side and less on the positive stories that are coming out of the continent. It was only sub-Saharan Africa grew faster than any other region of the world except the developing - (inaudible). And this has given the continent a new view about the future that basically is a positive one.
Think about the possibilities of growth prospects that they hadn't really - that countries hadn't been thinking about in the past. What you have now is leaders which, at the executive level, are very interested in figuring out how to - (inaudible) - those growth rates, but also enhance them. And this is also the reason why there is a strong interest amongst African leaders that - (inaudible) - innovation and development, because they have seen the potential.
Of course, a large part of it has been driven by export of natural resources, but it has given a signal to the leaders that the prospects for growth for a continent that has always considered to be the capital of transforming society. They see that as something that signals hope for the continent as a whole. And it is clearly reflected in the decisions there, of African leaders - especially under the African Union.
Some of the fastest growing countries in the world have been African countries. You can see Malawi and - (inaudible), Ethiopia, Congo-Brazzaville, Djibouti, Tanzania, Gambia - an amazing list of countries - the fastest growing countries - at least recently - and this is based also on projections before the economic crisis - have been African countries.
And I think that is the context in which we should be thinking about how to ensure that these interactions between security and the development are self-reinforcing.
It's also the region where you find most conflicts - I think battle leaders, as I said earlier, are driven by lack of opportunity in many regions of Africa. And characterized by widespread political instability - which I think is associated with the nascent character of democratic institutions. I mean, countries have gone through electoral reforms, have had elections; but most of them don't have stable economic systems - sort of political systems entrenched in their constitutions. They don't have political parties; they are still relying on their ethnicity as an organizing earmark for political activities.
And I think as democratic institutions continue to mature, we're going to see a significant reduction in political instability. It is really a matter of time, because institutions take time to mature. I should say, I've done some other observations of calculations showing that in fact Africa has democratized much faster than Latin America did. What Africa did in a decade it took Latin America about 40 years - basically the transition from military dictatorships to more democratic states - took 40 years. (Inaudible) - in Africa - other than - (inaudible) - some of the dictatorial atrocities, much of Africa is really on the path towards the political stability. And what's holding it back is fiscally maturity or the nascent character of democratic institutions.
This is basically an expression of the same idea - and of course that debate is about other factors in addition to ethnicity that might really contribute to instability possibilities for religious conflicts as well. We can talk a little bit about that later on. And some of these differences are also reflected in diplomatic arrangements, which have to do with nearly half of the members of the organization of Islamic countries and African countries, so African countries in fact play a very important role in decision making among Islamic leaders - and that is a resource that I don't think we have figured out really how to effectively utilize this.
And more essentially, one of the things that has attracted my attention and I have been looking a little bit at is this growing fascination among African leaders with the countries are based on one - particularly China and Japan. And a large part of its expenses - if I'm thinking about the needs in these countries in terms of natural resources, which is to some extent true, because it is reflected in the level of investment of China in Africa.
But what I also have found, which is extremely interesting, is that African countries are looking to China, and particularly not so much in terms of natural resources which they appreciate as being an important part of their trade with the rest of the world, but also as a role model of a country that not long ago was just as poor as Africa.
And so you find a country that doesn't have any raw materials - don't have really significant trade relations with China, still really fascinated by China because of the development model. And it is interesting when I talk with the leaders, African leaders, about this is that they are very clear with what - for example - the role of China's investment in infrastructure and the contribution to that to the transformation of the Chinese economy - they are looking to that as an example.
I had not long ago a conversation with an African president who had signed a deal saying that he himself was unhappy with - (inaudible). And I asked him, I said, if you aren't happy with this deal, why did you sign it? And he said - at least they are training my engineers - that was his response.
So I checked with a colleague of mine, the minister of science and technology in Beijing, and it turned out then that China was admitting roughly 2,000 African students a year into its schools - a lot of them in engineering schools. And that figure now stands at roughly 3,000 African students - in fact China is now building language schools in Africa to be able to facilitate the movement of African students to study in China.
And that's a very important lesson which is that Africa is starting to pick its friends based on the extent to which they contribute both ideas as role models, but also in terms of what they contribute to Africa in terms of building up the scientific and the technological capabilities, especially in engineering sciences. And I will talk a little bit more about this purpose later on.
Similarly, we're noticing new relationships emerging between Africa and Japan. It is beyond just trade, which has to do with Japan starting to partner with Africa - but mostly in the area of science and technology policy, the relationships. Japan has created a new cabinet office, a section called science and technology policy, which is a very elaborate mechanism of finding good foreign relations with the rest of the world in the context of the scientific communities.
One area of that is interesting enough, which also happens to be Japan's relations with countries with which it has strong trade linkages. Some say the areas where it has established from science and technology cooperation programs - South Africa being one of them; Egypt is another one. Right now there is a process underway to establish a university in Egypt - a science and technology university in Egypt that is designed specifically because there are technological cooperation between those two countries.
Even in terms of their thinking about what areas to focus on, we are starting to see a new focus not so much on - (inaudible) - minerals, which is what China's interest has been, but in fact an area of land materials, because of advances in land-technology there is discovery that another level material behaves quite differently, has different properties. Japan is starting to invest quite significantly in that area and looking to Africa because of its abandoned natural resources and the possibility of the existence of a lot of varieties of rare minerals. This is starting to create a whole new area of relationships between Africa and Japan.
And interestingly enough, African countries are also starting to respond to by being very careful in the selection of their ambassadors to these countries. Recently South Africa's ambassador to Japan was the country's former minister of science and technology - and that was not accidental. Rwanda's ambassador to Japan is the country's leading medic and the former president of - (inaudible) - of Rwanda. Again it is not accidental that that is happening.
Last year, October 8th, Japan hosted the first ministerial conference on science and technology with African countries, and this is going to be a standard feature of Japan relations with African countries. They are going to be - (inaudible) - to see a (segregation ?) explore other areas of technological cooperation. I'm giving you these examples because they are really a good indicator of both how Africa thinks but also how other regions of the world are starting to think about how to relate with Africa.
The current crisis I think is a very unique opportunity in my view in terms of this idea of convergence of policies in areas - most people think of it in terms of a credit crisis or the mortgage crisis. I speculate that we are really - it's a much deeper problem than just the credit or the mortgage crisis. That probably at the end of these long waves of economic transformation - (inaudible) - something that was initially, a phenomena that was initially observed by Russian agricultural economists, was that in countries or regions of the world go through these 50 to 60 year waves of economic prosperity and decline.
And what was interesting with observational that every facet of renewal was essentially associated with the new investments, largely in infrastructure, as you can see from that slide, that you have this steel engine, the railway, electrical engineering, the bottom of an industry and more recently commercial telecommunications technologies - these are all infrastructure investments.
It is an observation that - (inaudible) - one other observation that we've been able to make is that every new wave of renewal, you have an increase in the number of countries participating in the global economy. It's a recruitment process; its not just the same old countries that are growing. They grow by including new players. And I think that we are entering a phase in which the renewal of the global economy will have to include a lot of new players, and I think that many of those players are going to be African countries.
And this is, I think, a very interesting way of thinking about the place of Africa and the future economic recovery. It is also notable here that Africa's growth has been driven almost entirely though indigenous growth, not so much because of international trade but because of external linkages. And that's why it's a very interesting indication of what's happened - this is around December at the height of the financial crisis, when most countries were experiencing serious difficulties, many African countries continued to grow, because a large part of their growth was indigenous - (inaudible). And that's why I think that the prospects of getting Africa to become part of the global economy are much more significant, and that is an area that I think we have to directly connect to the way we think about security considerations.
Energy of course is an important area which has been highlighted by the U.S. administration, the Obama administration, and have been following closely what's happening, particularly in the area of advances in - (audio break) - wind power. You have countries like Ethiopia that really look to a future in which a large part of their economic transformation and growth is being driven by investment in wind energy. And that gives us this opportunity to create new partnerships, with particularly in the U.S. given the growing interest in the U.S. in the transition towards new, organic sources.
There have been significant improvements in the way we think about design characteristics about new wind turbines, new concepts. This is true not just in wind energy but also in a lot of other fields, solar energies. There is not sufficient evidence but we are very close to having solar energy.
I participated recently in a study of the - (inaudible) - mechanical engineering, in which we highlighted solar energy as one of the most important areas that are going to be driving future economies - a large part of this research has been done in this line and I wouldn't be surprised to see in the next few years - (inaudible) - of this technological capability as an instrument for international relations especially among the Third World countries.
Other areas of technological advances that really give opportunities for Africa include areas like the LEDs, which until recently were considered to be uneconomical, but if you look at the traits in terms of improvement in efficiency we are starting to see, this type of efficiency of LEDs happening over six months. So I am - (inaudible) - that in the next five to 10 years, we are going to see new building codes that incorporate LEDs as part of the standard lighting.
And this will give Africa a place to leap from - go straight into the new emerging technologies. About 15 countries around the world have already banned or restricted the sale of incandescent lamps because of their interest in seeing their countries make the transition to the new lighting technologies.
Africa doesn't have to do much at that because it is not locked into the old technologies, socially. There are other areas which include - in the health sector - significant advances in diagnostics. You needed a car not long ago to transport your centrifuge around. In a couple of years, there will be a centrifuge that is the size of a CD drive, which means instead of selling your centrifuge, selling precious hospitals, will send diagnostic use to the patients. That totally changes the way you provide healthcare.
And that part of healthcare is supposed to become more - (inaudible). Ultrasound equipment, you needed a whole room to store them. Not long ago we had - a couple of years ago - I'd say five years ago - you had this organized - (inaudible) - developed initially for the military. As of two weeks ago, they are obtaining a new ultrasound equipment that can transmit the image via cell phones.
I have to confess the person doing that test is only obviously not a doctor, because that is not a place to look for pregnancies. (Laughter.) This phenomena offer that technology codependence - which is really the doubling of knowledge - technical knowledge - every 14 months, greater connectivity between the nations, wide linkages among diaspora communities around the world map - my apologies to people in the audience of Irish heritage here.
And basically what we see is the shortening of time frames between research and commercialization of products. We don't have to wait a whole generation to see new products come to the marketplace. They're rapid phases of technological succession. We've seen it even in traditional technologies; we've seen it in electronics - that may be where it's most dramatic. But one area where we've had a real impact of this phenomena of technological abundance has been in the area of telecommunications. Mobile phones are growing at - in Africa the rate is the highest growth rate in the diffusion of mobile phones recently. (Laughter.)
They have become almost ubiquitous. Not long ago there were simply a dream that kids aspired to. But we've forgotten that when the first mobile telephone was developed by Ericson in 1966, it weighed 40 kilos. And the reason that it was called mobile telephone is because for the first time you could actually transport it and it worked. People think it's called a mobile because we put it in our pockets - we couldn't have put that in our pocket.
Then you had car phones - I doubt if anybody here is old enough to have owned one of those. This is roughly around 1992 where they weighed about 4 kilos - costing about $2,500. (Inaudible) - advocating that this would become a technology that would diffuse well widely in Africa, and suggest that A, that was technological determinist or I was lunatic. Or both. (Laughter)
This is the first derivative I could find where somebody had thought of a new business because cell phones are available. That gentlemen in Ethiopia was actually selling rubber bands. (Laughter.) That was the business. Now we have a whole new industry of transmitting basically money through cell phones. Where basically we have an electronic standard where airtime is now currency, to the point where banks are now starting to think about owning cell phones and vice-versa. In fact, cell phones are becoming the new banking system in much of Africa. This was not something you thought would happen not long ago.
Of course the limiting factors have been the speed at which the connectivity - because most of the Africa's linkages to the rest of the world are defect, at a very high cost to the system. The - (inaudible) - cost of accessing the internet in West Africa and the bottom one is the cost at the cost of an American university you can see the difference--the poorest people are also paying the highest.
And that is because of the limited access to undersea fiber-optic cable. This is now starting to change, partly because of significant reduction in the cost of laying fiber-optic cables - the reduction of - (inaudible) - $350 dollars compared to $5,000 per kilometer 10, 15 years ago. So the whole of Africa is now being essentially wired at once. The most advanced is this company called SEACOM, which is running a cable from South Africa all the way through the Red Sea to Europe. It will become operational in July. But the driving force there has been, in fact, the desire to watch the World Cup. (Laughter.) That cable is not - doesn't get functional on time; but you know, the World Cup in South Africa. (Laughter.)
So that - working in development, I would never have thought that the World Cup would be the one factor that would lead to this, the largest investment in Eastern and Southern Africa ever since the construction of - (inaudible) railways. This is a $700-million investment driven by sport, and not conventional development kind of activities. The countries are now wiring internally and some African countries, in fact, have a legitimate capability in the military to help extend fiber-optic cables within their countries.
Others are thinking about how to extend connectivity through the use of electric cables as a way to transmit data as well, so there's just really very, very fundamental changes taking place, just on the basis of one technology, which is telecommunications. And if you can think of possibilities of extending infrastructure in terms of roads, railways, airports and others, the potential is enormous. Google and other companies have moved in. They plan to launch 10 satellites - (inaudible) - so they will see if this will actually work. This is a -it's starting - (inaudible).
The interior of Africa is kind of connecting it through a new generation of satellite connections, whose coverage will be in the range of 8,000 kilometers. And this is a satellite that has 12 antennas - one of them has 12 antennas that can be tele-directed to a particular location, so you don't have to go and do physical surveys. And so the combination between the fiber optic cables and the new satellite, for investment, this is going to open up the continent quite significantly, both in terms of their ability to manage security issues, but also their ability to transform economic growth.
And I want to just give you a little - two quick examples of what this means in terms of technology. The first one is the area of education has started to transform - to transform education. I've been working with it, because in - (inaudible) - at MIT, I sat on the board of directors of the One Laptop Per Child, which is basically to bring mobility to primary education. This has been possible because flash memory has - (inaudible, background noise). You can saturate a classroom and all the kids will be able to connect to each other. The teacher can work from one of them, and the all the kids have access to what the teacher is working on.
It has a range of about 2.4 kilometers - they talk to each other through their meshed network. And the advantage is that, because it has no moving parts, it's actually rugged. So you can throw it around with no risk that you're going to break it. And the kids don't do that, by the way. (Laughter.) They really look after them. And we've distributed this immediately and it's mostly in South America - this is Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Iraq, Rwanda, and a very small market in the Vatican. (Laughter.)
One of the most interesting breakthroughs recently reported was in Colombia, where we worked with the Colombian military, actually the minister of defense to go in the guerilla-held areas and drop off thousands of these laptops to kids who had never seen a TV or anything for them to understand - connecting them to the rest of the world. And I'm hoping that we could do this kind of work in Africa, because there are lots of areas where you sort of have a school-in-a-box with that.
We're now starting to shift these computers with their textbooks - they are better than them. And so essentially, education is becoming mobile. In aid of higher education, we are starting to see new telecoms universities being developed. This is Sinai University in Egypt, which is embedded in the midst of telecoms to train for a career in the telecom market. Ghana has one and more recently, Ghana created a telecoms university. And that has led me to thinking about how we could start creating new technical universities and other ministries. And I'm already speculating, as you would expect, the ministries of defense having universities that works specifically at this interface between defense, security and development.
And that's actually my house in Western Kenya, which I decided to turn into a little college for the moment. So I'll get to the last part of this presentation and then we can have a discussion if you don't mind. I'll come back to these slides later on, in terms of other advances in technology that can transform African agriculture. I envisage this, specifically, as an opportunity to have a new posture of the U.S. presence there on the continent, one in which traditional roles that have to do with U.N. mandates in terms of what you have created and there and while you are on the continent.
But I also envisage new roles that have to do with support - working with Africans, particularly the African militaries, in the infrastructural management projects, because I think this is an area that will give you a new posture on the continent. Drawing on your expertise in terms of universities I've been looking quite closely - (inaudible, background noise) - to see the potential of leveraging that capability in partnership with America's land-grant colleges to really work towards a bringing the security and development elements together. The area of medicine is one area that we've worked on in the past.
And finally, the research right now you are already doing at DOD has enormous potential in terms of being able to harness some of the technologies developed for defense purposes, a lot of which, in fact, have direct application for development, but it is in the mechanisms, so we're actually checking that out and assessing it hard enough so that it will have good effect - like dual-use, as opposed to negative dual-use. In fact, the head of this met in calling conference with the Department of State - with the office of the chief - (inaudible) - of the Department of State to look at the potential use of the geographic information sciences for management of environment, water resources, and other economic activities in Africa.
And as I mentioned earlier, this also requires changes in the way we think about the future of the African militaries, where it's not the classical way of demolishing or abolishing armies, as was done in Costa Rica in the late '40s, but thinking about, really, new roles by which you can have this convergence of names in each of the forces. So it's a natural transition from peacekeeping back to more of a development objective. (Inaudible) - this is a conversation, probably, I should have, actually, on my end, which is the African side. And I've been having this conversation already with my colleagues on the African side in terms of having new roles for the military.
But I think that it will be significantly reinforced if there was a good signal that if they moved in that direction, they would get the support needed to actually make it happen. And I see your regional integration bodies as, really, a starting point - an entry point - for starting to think about new roles for the military. We have these eight or so regional economic integration bodies, of which ECOWAS, the West-African one has the largest, probably - has the longest record of peacekeeping activities. But this is very highly specialized today. ECOWAS does very little economic issues, but does a lot on security.
Then you have the reverse, which is the economic - (inaudible) - for Eastern and Southern Africa, COMESA, which is covering 20 African countries now. That's all trade-oriented, and most of the East African community activities are focusing more on trade and less on security. (Inaudible) - on the trade side, for the eastern side of Africa, and on the security side, on the western side. And they're first starting to think about really new partnerships that can be created between the U.S. and Africa as we move towards really making these two areas mutually reinforcing.
I think there's the Somali case, which is very well-known, is yet another indication of the urgency to really start thinking very carefully about the connections between security and economic development. (Inaudible, background noise) - I think I've lost the image - this is my computing - oh, you have the image. (laughter). Someone hacked my slides. (Laughter.) But I think on that note, I'll just - I couldn't resist the temptation to give kind of a graphic expression of why it's important to move quickly. (Laughter.) So I'll close on that note. So I'll thank you so much for your attention. (Applause.) And I am open for questions.
Q: Question.
MR. JUMA: Yes?
Q: Lieutenant Colonel Franklin (ph). Thank you very much for sharing - (inaudible). My question: In terms of the unification of the countries, where a central government will be necessary, particularly in the area of infrastructure, what role do you see, maybe, if the countries come together under one central government? For example, the state of Kenya-Uganda. If you're going to build a road, who's going to pay for it?
How much is one particular country going to contribute? I see, in a central government, resources could be moved around to do that infrastructure development. And secondly, my other question is, if Africa is going to develop the resources that it has, it's going to need them for its own development, and what impact will that have on countries like China? Thank you.
MR. JUMA: Yeah, on the first one, I tend to think that infrastructure is going to be the one thing that will force this conference to actually integrate economically, because it works both ways, that to integrate economically, you need to be able to move resources and ideas across the borders, so you need infrastructure. On the other hand, if you're thinking of building infrastructure, you have to think about setting common standards so that when your railroad reaches the border, you don't have a different gauge. And so if you look at the details of the treaties that have been signed for the regional economic integration, in all of them, I think 40 percent of the content is about standardization.
And so the question then becomes the area of how to leverage resources, doing that, and this is why I have this hypothesis that maybe one way to do that is for some countries to start thinking about their own domestic budgets so they fund traditional military activities - to put that into infrastructure investment in exchange for a commitment to be supported in the event of a conflict. And so I envision, in fact, the potential - this kind of military arrangements that would have those kind of attiributes. Countries said we want to put our money in infrastructure projects but we also want to be sure that if our neighbors create problems for us we can get some protection.
And I think this is where there might be some real potential for AFRICOM. I think that in the case of Costa Rica, this has been a very interesting example by a country that doesn't have an army. And precisely because it doesn't have any army, it has been able to pull some of its resources into health and education. In the mid-'40s, Costa Rica had the highest per capita birth rate - death ratio in the world. It has transformed itself into the so-called - (inaudible) - of Central America. But its security is not in doubt at the moment. And so I would envisage those kinds of arrangements over time as you develop, start building those kinds of precedents.
What was the question about China? I'm sorry I missed -
Q: If Africa is going to develop, it is going to need its own resources for its internal use. And what impact that would have, for example on China is that at the end of the day, I mean, China is looking out for its own interest too.
MR. JUMA: Yeah, this a very good question, which is that as African countries think in the long term, they really need to be very sensitive to the fact that at some point they are going to need those resources. One area I've been interested in, you know, is the extent to which African countries have capability for strategic thinking. They have tended to think mostly in the short term.
When the president that I referred to earlier, he also told me that when I got elected that I promised growth, and I have only five years in office so I must show some growth. Therefore I am going to sign this deal. I sign this deal so that I can get some revenue to show specifically, signs of growth. And that is, to me, the absence of the strategic long-term strategic thinking, that that is going to have to be integrated into the way African countries think about their trade relations with anybody else who is importing natural resources.
It's a culture that is going to be very tough to go around because it has a long history - the continent has a long history of defining itself as an almost - a kind of highly infinite supply of raw materials. That's been its identity. But what I am finding out already - in fact I've had the conversations with a number of African leaders on these that when you start to think about the role of science and technology development, they are thinking about how the technology can be used through our development of the natural resources.
And so they wouldn't be thinking about it if they are selling off all the resources - they are now starting to think about how they add value to their natural resources. And I think having that technological capability to add value to their natural resources is going to change the way they think about their interest to simply export. And this is a - I think - an area where the United States could have very important contribution to many because of its technological preeminence of working with African countries, teaching them to add value to their natural resources.
It is starting to happen in limited areas. I'm wearing a tie right now that is made out of silk produced in Rwanda. It is not an accidental that I'm wearing this, I'm advertising - this is an example of adding value to natural resources. Five years ago we wouldn't have thought that Rwanda would become Africa's leader exporter of silk products - but the tie is actually made in Rwanda - they are not exporting the raw material. I'm raising this - (inaudible) - as an inspirational model of what could actually be done.
I've been having similar discussions with colleagues of mine, for example in Botswana, about thinking about having adding value to their resources. And in the case of the Botswana, it's interesting because they realize they couldn't do it without significant investment in the engineering sciences. And so they are creating a science and technology university specifically for that purpose. So one way to signal, to support for that process would be to support African countries in building their capabilities in the engineering sciences; then they will start to think differently about natural resources. But it is a very, very, interesting strategic question.
Q: This is - (inaudible). Going back to my first question, having that central sort of government, let's take the United States. With 50 states, each state will look out for its own interest. It took a federal government to get states to sort of come together and build that infrastructure in place.
MR. JUMA: Yeah, I think that we are going to see that probably the most advanced along this lines in terms of commitment to regional integration at the political level is the East African community, complete with the parliament. And so that is an area I would say we should really look into how to strengthen the capacity of the East African countries to start planning regionally. And when that starts to work, it will serve as an example for other regions in Africa as well. But it is an important area because you can't do this on a country-by-country basis - you actually need to develop it collectively.
Of course, there is this huge debate taking place in Africa at the moment whether you do it through this regional integration bodies, or whether you declare the whole continent as one United States of Africa. This is the debate between President Qaddafi and President Usevitt (ph). I've been caught in the middle of this debate on a number of issues, I was asked by the African Union to prepare.
Its first technical advisor - (inaudible) -suggested that they should build these capabilities within regional integration bodies. And this has been a very problematic report for the African Union to handle because of these differences between whether to go regionally or whether to go pan-African right from the beginning.
I can offer an opinion - I think that it's going to be very tough to do it on a continent that big right away. So I think starting off with just blocks. But really I think they key areas are going to be starting with the infrastructure.
The case of Europe is a good example - Europe's - the treaties that created the European Union were made around infrastructure - around steel and energy. I don't see a way by which Africa would avoid that scenario, and they would have to start planning collectively. And to start planning collectively they need to start governing their resources and your investments also collected.
But my third - my main message here - is that this is the area where supporting, say, the most advanced of the regional bodies, to start investing collectively is a very important first step. I do not want to belabor this point, but it also will take the forms of the way development aid agencies function, because they all work with individual nation-states. I've been having this conversation with my colleague, the President of the African Development Bank - have started to move more and more towards regional funding of programs - and that requires changes in the way the agencies actually operate.
That they also start also demand to the regions are supposed to - in addition to nation states. And there some areas where it makes more sense because of economies of scale to lend to regions. Infrastructure is one of them.
Q: Are we concerned that the health challenges are going to blunt any of the advantages technologies you have provided. Two examples: HIV-AIDS; South Africa 30-plus percent prevalence - (inaudible) - demographically. Second: global warming -
(Audio break.)
MR. JUMA: The HIV problem, this is a problem where I think public education is a very large part of the solution. And I've been speculating also on the possibility of starting to create a new, basically coming up with innovations in the way we organize healthcare and education, but in some cases it may make sense in fact to start integrating health education activities into schools.
Including core location of health facilities with educational institutions to achieve a cost-effective - and the possibilities of catching things aren't enough. And I'm also very interested in our advances in genomics, particularly in being able to pick up infectious diseases are a large part of my work - my colleagues in - (inaudible) - has been just on a diagnostics. At least even if you can't cure it, you can pick up the indicators early enough and be able to manage it.
But I see it mostly as a way - as one of those areas where the breakthroughs are going to come through reform in health care systems. And combining education and health or integrating a large part of the health curriculum into educational institutions is going to be a critical part of responding to the challenges. And the same goes to global warming. Decades ago - it was exactly 20 years ago - they published the studies in Kenya showing the all the impacts of - all the projected impacts of climate change, based on modeling, were already being experienced as a consequence of the droughts and the Sahel and the other domestic political programs. And Africa's countries needed to start investing in adaptation programs already, without having to wait for the long-term impacts of climate change.
And again, that's an area where engineering capabilities have become absolutely essential, both in terms of physical engineering, protection of coastlines, but also investment in flood-preventing activities. I didn't show my slides on that, potential form of genetic engineering, for example - that's the quickest way by which you can adapt new crops to the changing ecological conditions. So they are very controversial, but I am hoping, and I plan, when I talk to my African colleagues, to suggest that, in fact, this is an area where maybe some of the research could be done on public lands - special public lands that are owned by the military, because I consider this, basically, a security question.
And it's been great for public debate. I have been debating it - I published my first book on the subject in 1989 and we've debated it for 20 years. They're holding out. Three African countries that have adopted genetically modified crops are Burkina Faso, Djibouti and South Africa. But the potential, for example, in total expulsion of drought over our crops, for a dry continent, is enormous. But it's been brought down by debates - mostly debates exported to Africa from Europe. But this is - I am opening up, now, my other front. (Laughter.)
This is - again, my main message on that is that the way we think about technical education is going to be very central to how we deal with both the health challenges and also the political challenges.
MR. KIRKLAND: We have time for one more question. (Pause, laughter.)
Q: Sir, if I could summarize your talk here, it would probably be that Africa needs economic and technological development, and it's getting that and so Africa's going to be okay. If that's not an accurate summary, please correct me, but my question would be, what could go wrong, what could go tragically wrong, and what are the indicators of that?
MR. JUMA: What could go fundamentally wrong is where the continent does not have long-term strategic thinking, because all these ideas I've mentioned, we're talking about 10-year time horizons. And what has happened in the past is that, whenever you talk about 10-year time horizons, people look at you and say, oh, that will take too long to see results; therefore, we shouldn't do it. And then there is - they deal mostly with the short-term responses, which is food aid, and investing in long-term agricultural research.
And so the thing - the biggest risk, really, is the failure to adopt a long-term, strategy. Also, if you adopt a long-term strategy, it changes your initial activities. You can start to think about fair trade over the long term, if you think that is important. We will look at the example of this and I will close and say, after the genocide in Rwanda, when many Western countries had this view that it was impossible to rebuild the country and that maybe you should just write off the country, or it may be integrated, part of it, into other countries, then a few people came together and said, no, we really want to rebuild it.
It's really notable that one of the first things they agreed to do was to build an engineering school, which is now the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology. But when they are doing that, everybody said, universities take too long to show results, don't do it. And they proceeded to build it. That single institution has played a very important role in the construction of the country - started showing results almost right away. It was built - started in 1997 - actually, it's located in what used to be the barracks of the former military. And this is an example of the strategic thinking.
We've also seen it in the case of Northern Somaliland, after the collapse of Somalia. The people of Northern Somaliland came together and were visualizing the future, because they were now not tied to short-term, immediate responses. And the first thing they agreed on was to build a university. They built the University of Hargeisa. They have now built three universities, and almost everybody who is involved in the management of Northern Somaliland is a graduate of these universities. So the answer to your question of what could go tragically wrong is what is already happening, which is this kind of non-commitment, short-term thinking, which affects you also, because everybody's calling you for short-term interventions.
And this is the area that I think you can bring to your relationship with African countries, is the strategic thinking, building up planning capabilities, and the discipline that is associated with logistical activities - if it's going to take five years, you want to follow this routine, something actually productive happens. And this is a mindset that is not really embedded in the way our African governments actually function, because they're much tied to short-term commitments. This is why I really think that the timing of your arrival as a command and your orientation and the way things are done is going to have a huge, inspirational difference, without having a presence everywhere, but purely by demonstration, you are their role models.
This is, I think, what you can offer us, to that extent, not so much the material assets, but really a lot more on how things get done. I think we have the case of having a central government, the United States will have - (inaudible) - government. Africans are thinking about federation, but they're not looking to the U.S., yet, as a model, because they think it is too - when that model was created, the U.S. was a developing country. As very much like Africa is today. So I would say just technological innovation and that's - I use that as a metaphor. It's about this continuous improvement in performance, whether it's at the technological level, at the -inaudible- level, a commitment to continuous improvement. That's what I think of as innovation.
And this is the one thing that unites both the military and the development economic sector, it's all about continuous improvement in performance. So thank you all for your attention and I look forward to interacting with you in the future.
(Applause.)
MR. KIRKLAND: (Inaudible.) I wanted to thank Professor Juma for a very interesting, a very informative and, actually, a very thought-provoking presentation today. I'm not going to try to summarize his presentation, but I would like to say a few things. I found it very inspiring. I've worked in Africa many, many years, and we often focus on the obstacles and the problems. Actually, I found his presentation a presentation of hope for Africa. I was really inspired by it. There are a number of reasons - he compared what has happened in Africa in the last 10 years to what it took 40 years in Latin America to achieve in the democracy area. You know, we never kind of think about that. We think of all the problems here, but when you really think of it in those terms, Africa is making some real headway.
I like the idea of seeing the increasing percentage of youth in the population as an opportunity. I'm a demographer - we always look at the dependency ratio - I mean, there are more kids in the population and more people to feed and to support.
But looking at that increasing percentage of youth as a real opportunity in Africa - something I never really had thought about - I probably should have, having kids who are light years ahead of me in technology. And I'm sure that's true with anybody who's over 40 here, or 50 - but I think that is something that we really need to think about. The children are the future - they're the ones who can master the technologies.
People like me - I'm lucky to hold this. I think that that is something that really is a very interesting way to view it. The capability of new and emerging technologies, to have helped African countries leapfrog ahead - and Professor Juma mentioned in a number of areas - the energy sector, the health sector, telecommunications - his last comments.
To add value to resources in Africa. Africa is very resource rich - by using technologies to do that. The convergence of policies that support embracing new technologies and enhancing Africa's economic development. I hope I'm not leading you astray -
(Cross talk.)
MR. KIRKLAND: That's again, that's something that I had not really seriously thought about. Policies are coming together which - and I think there's recognition at the most senior levels in governments in Africa of the need to embrace new technologies - and also they are producing policies to do so.
The capability of using new technology to dramatically expand education opportunities - I'd like to have one of those things, I'm always dropping things, if you notice. But, yeah, that is - I think with the internet, expansion with the internet, and computer technologies which could be produced very cheaply, it's unlimited what can be done in the education sector.
Professor Juma also pointed out I think some real challenges which we need - we, and by that I mean U.S. African Command and the interagency - we need to seriously consider and work out ways to beat these challenges. To ensure that our engagement with African countries is relevant and perceived to be so by them.
Your discussion about African countries viewing China as a role model is I think a good example of the kind of challenge we face - we have to also be relevant.
(Cross talk.)
MR. KIRKLAND: Yeah.
You also mentioned how it is to think about how U.S. African Command might support kind of the positive trends that are taking place, and I took away two - (inaudible) - points. One was the possible larger role of African militaries in infrastructure development - and I don't mean just building schools and latrines.
I think what we're talking about here is can African militaries really play a larger engineering role with respect to communication infrastructure, roads, et cetera. It's something to think about, but I think we do need to consider that.
I think the strengthening of regional entities which we're already about, such as SADC and ECOWAS as engines for increasing trade and prosperity. Now we're doing it through the military, but that, I think, is again a very important initiative to help strengthen those regional organizations which can play a much larger role - and I think that's also a very important point.
Anyway, I'm not going to go on. Again, I thank you tremendously - I'm leaving with many, many ideas - I hope that we can continue discussing these over the coming weeks and month.. I really appreciate your vision and I think we have a little something we'd like you to leave with from the U.S. African command.
(Cross talk.)
MR. KIRKLAND: It has the logo. (Laughter.) Anyways, thank you very much.
On 7/7/2009 4:09:17 PM, Anonymous in Unspecified said: Would be too much to ask that you provide a Video icon button or a URL next to this—The video of Professor Juma's presentation is posted on the USAFRICOM homepage in the multimedia section.
It took me some time to find since I'm not quite familiar with your 1996-ish look and feel website.
Cheers.
On 6/18/2009 3:33:00 PM, RANDRIMAMPIONONA SOLOMON in MADAGASCAR-ARICA CONTUNENT said: Mr Commadeur of the United Africa Army
To be we need Remove and confurme us confidence and brotherly of you and me and the Peace World and we need confurme us Unit on politic and diplomacy use for we can Iself and to defend the Africa contunent and for we can participle for execution us hard war on terrorism in ter-contunental.
For the event problem politic in Madagascar and in Africa we ned rest neutral and not lauch us atack and wait us give ordeur high precision for to beging us hard war on terrorism.
to be the security defence of Africa contunent and us defence on Inter-Mussil are anssure and waranty total.
when I'm need support and help urgent,I'm contact you and us Army direct.
Thank very much for us coowork. The God us protege RANDRIAMAMPIONONA SOLOMON PEACE WORLD
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AFRICOM History, Background
