Africa must define its interest – US delegate

Mrs Monde Muyangwa, Director of African Progress at the Woodro Wilson Centre, US has urged African countries to define their own interest and fight towards achieving it.

She said it is problematic to sometime define the true needs and interest of some African countries because they cannot clearly define what they want from integration with another country.

“As African countries, we continue to educate our people for the Africa we were yesterday and not for the Africa we want to be in future which is a very big problem,” she said.

Mrs Muyangwa said this during a stakeholder forum in Accra yesterday to define and strengthen US-African relationship.

She explained that “understanding foreign policy means knowing your interest and that of your partner and negotiating for a desired beneficial outcome”.

Speaking about the US African policy, the Director urged African countries to understand the evolvement of the US as well as their vision to strengthen relations.

She commended Mr Barack Obama, US President for his effort to change the negative perception of some foreign countries over Africans by identifying the potentials in Africa and putting measures in place to reinforce the US-Africa socio-economic discourse.

However, Mrs Muyangwa noted that she thinks the plan by the US to have a US-African policy would be difficult to manage because the interest of each African country differs from each other.