Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The Carnegie Africa Program, based in Washington DC, provides analysis and insights on the economic, political, technological, and transnational issues shaping Africa’s future.
In a post-pandemic world, challenges and opportunities await the African continent. Investment flows will shift as African countries rethink foreign aid, strengthen regional trade, and support home-grown enterprises. At the same time, African leaders need to grapple with global efforts to combat climate change and an ever-changing digital technology landscape.
The Carnegie Africa Program engages policymakers and scholars to shape global discourse and policy in the region and to amplify the voices of African experts on the ground.
With the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, Washington appears to be finally reframing its relationship with Africa in largely positive terms. Yet much hinges on the financing and implementation of the dozens of initiatives announced at the summit.
The Biden administration wanted to send a clear message of strong re-engagement in Africa.
Instead of fixating on infrastructure, African countries should look to the experience of Latin American countries with similar resource endowments: a greater relative abundance of land than low-cost labor.
The agreement on a new loss and damage fund is one of the summit’s bright spots, but more needs to be done to deliver the trillions of dollars needed to finance the low-carbon transition.
Unfortunately, those Western governments with decisionmaking power and resources to help vulnerable countries respond to the polycrisis are not inclined to use it, given domestic cost-of-living crises in G7 countries, the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, and limited domestic political appetite for international initiatives.
This database contributes to increasing the visibility of African climate research organizations and thereby will help ensure that the priorities of African countries are represented in global climate debates.
Every month the Carnegie Africa Program produces an infographic to highlight a key trend impacting African countries. We often invite scholars and policy experts to contribute to the discussion by writing a short piece to complement the Chart of the Month.
Katie Auth is a nonresident scholar with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Africa Program, where her research focuses on U.S. government policy on Africa and evolving relationships with African partners, particularly related to climate change, energy, and investment.
David McNair is a nonresident scholar in the Africa Program and the executive director at ONE.org.
Jane Munga is a fellow in the Africa Program focusing on technology policy.
Folashadé Soulé is a nonresident scholar in the Africa Program and a senior research associate at the Global Economic Governance programme (Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford). Her research areas focuses on Africa-China relations, the study of agency in Africa’s international relations and the politics of South-South cooperation.
Zainab Usman is a senior fellow and director of the Africa Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. Her fields of expertise include institutions, economic policy, energy policy, and emerging economies in Africa.
Gilles Olakounlé Yabi is a nonresident scholar with the Africa Program and is the founder and CEO of WATHI, the West Africa Citizen Think Tank which launched in 2015.