Bush administration Security Assistance Programs for Africa
By Daniel Volman | 8 July 2008
For Fiscal Year 2009 (which begins on 1 October 2008), the Bush administration is asking Congress to approve the delivery of some $500 million worth of military equipment and training to Africa (including both sub-Saharan Africa and north Africa) in the budget request for the State Department for Fiscal Year (FY) 2009. The administration is also asking for up to $400 million for deliveries of equipment and training for Africa funded through the Defense Department budget and another $400 million to establish the headquarters for the Pentagon’s new Africa Command (Africom).
AFRICOM: The New U.S. Military Command for Africa
By Daniel Volman | 8 July 2008
On 6 February 2007, President Bush announced that the United States would create a new military command for Africa, to be known as Africa Command or Africom. Throughout the Cold War and for more than a decade afterwards, the U.S. did not have a military command for Africa; instead, U.S. military activities on the African continent were conducted by three separate military commands: the European Command, which had responsibility for most of the continent; the Central Command, which oversaw Egypt and the Horn of Africa region along with the Middle East and Central Asia; and the Pacific Command, which administered military ties with Madagascar and other islands in the Indian Ocean.
Africa Focus: Kenya: Post-Crisis Agendas
By ACAS | 20 March 2008
“The Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation between the political parties provides Kenya’s leaders with a historic opportunity to step back from the brink and to reform and establish institutions that can help build long-term stability. … However, challenges remain in ensuring that the institutions created actually deliver accountability for recent and previous violence, correct injustices ignored by previous administrations, and tackle the systemic failure of governance that gave rise to the recent crisis.” - Human Rights Watch
ACAS Press Statement on the Crisis in Kenya
By ACAS | 5 January 2008
The Association of Concerned Africa Scholars (ACAS), an organization of United States-based academics and activists, today rejected superficial and misleading popular and media portrayals of the post-electoral violence in Kenya as “tribal.”
U.S. Military Activities in Kenya
By Daniel Volman | 5 January 2008
Now that President George Bush’s special envoy to the Kenyan crisis, Jendayi Fraser (US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs) has admitted that the elections in Kenya were seriously flawed (a polite way of saying they are fraudulent) and ordered President Mwai Kibaki to meet the opposition leader, Raile Odinga, it is easy to forget that the United States Ambassador in Kenya only weeks ago declared the elections free and fair.
U.S. Military Activities in Kenya
By Jesse Benjamin | 1 December 2007
Once President George Bush’s special envoy to the Kenyan crisis, Jendayi Fraser (US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs) has admitted that the elections in Kenya were seriously flawed (a polite way of saying they are fraudulent) and ordered President Mwai Kibaki to meet the opposition leader, Raile Odinga, it was easy for the corporate Western media to forget that the United States Ambassador in Kenya only weeks earlier had declared the elections free and fair. Bush and Fraser’s hands were pushed by the emerging evidence that the elections were illegitimate and that the violence, on both sides, had been orchestrated.1 Maintaining a lopsided alliance with the Kibaki government would not be so easy in the glare of public opinion, now cast briefly on the Kenyan nation, and so we saw a total flip-flop in US policy. But neither position is contradictory as the US is heavily invested in stability in Kenya.
Action Alert : Ngugi and Njeeri Wa Thiongo Wa Ngugi
By ACAS | 14 January 2005
Association of Concerned African Scholars
January 14, 2005
Dear Friends,
As you may already know, world renowned Kenyan playwright, novelist and social critic Ngugi Wa Thiong’o and his wife Njeeri Wa Ngugi were brutally attacked on August 11, 2003 in an apartment in Nairobi, Kenya. Ngugi was severely beaten and burned with cigarettes, and his wife, Njeeri, was [...]
The Case Against the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act
By ACAS | 8 March 1998
Since the end of the Cold War, US policy toward Africa has drifted and become increasingly erratic. ACAS thus welcomes new thinking and initiatives. Unfortunately our analysis suggests that the new Africa Growth and Opportunity Act does not represent a step forward in US-African relations. And many Africans agree.