Vital Interests: Judd, thanks very much for joining us today on the Vital Interests Forum. This forum looks at the challenges the Biden-Harris Administration faces as it re-engages with the world with an attitude that differs from the Trump administration's “America First” agenda. One significant region that certainly needs more American attention is Africa and we are fortunate to be able to discuss African issues with you. Currently you are the director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and have previously had policy positions focusing on Africa. 

For the purposes of this conversation we will be talking about Sub-Saharan Africa. To include the North Africa nations of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco would require a separate conversation. 

Judd to set some context for our readers could you give us a brief overview of what constitutes the regions of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Judd Devermont: Thanks for having me. Sub-Saharan Africa currently consists of 49 countries. Some of them have very large populations, for example Nigeria by 2045 will be the third-largest country in the world, surpassing the United States, but there are also small island countries like Mauritius, Seychelles, and Cabo Verde.

A good way to think about the continent's diversity is to tackle various regions one by one. Let’s start perhaps in West Africa where there was an important democratic revival in the1990s and in the mid-2000s, followed by a plateau and reversal.

We have seen a couple of countries where just in the past six months there have been coups, including in Mali and Chad, and problems where former opposition leaders took power and then decided to hold on to power changing their constitutions. That would be in Guinea and Côte d'Ivoire, for example.

West African countries have large populations with economies that have global importance, such as oil production in Nigeria or key resources such as bauxite in Guinea. There are security challenges in West Africa. For more than a decade Nigeria has been dealing with the problem of the insurgent group Boko Haram, and also an ISIS affiliate.Insecurity and criminality now plague the entire country. In the Sahel -the five countries of Mauritania, Senegal, Niger, Mali, and Chad - there are several Islamic insurgencies that are operating there and wreaking havoc.

Then you have the coastal countries which have so far had minimal exposure to Islamic extremism, but there are growing concerns about the safety, security, and the democratic vibrancy of these countries with the exception of Cabo Verde and Ghana.

Moving to Central Africa, this is the site of Africa's First World War, where nine countries invaded the Congo in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In some respects, it is still suffering under autocratic regimes in countries such as Burundi, Cameroon, the Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda. There was a flawed democratic transition in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and continued instability in the Central African Republic.

Moving eastward, the Horn of Africa has been witness to some very important transitions including the overthrow of the long-time strongman Omar al-Bashir in Sudan. Initially, there was a hopeful transition in Ethiopia when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took power in 2018, but it has has now devolved into a devastating civil war in the northern Tigray Region with serious human rights abuses, including the use of rape as a means of war.

Finally, moving further south, this is where liberation movements are still largely entrenched in power. The ANC in South Africa, SWAPO in Namibia, MPLA in Angola, and FRELIMO in Mozambique. The government in  Zimbabwe is authoritarian and oversees the country’s economic ruin.

South Africa is a vibrant democracy with the second-largest economy in Africa and it is probably the most mature with an industrial base. South Africa is still trying to address the inequities of apartheid and confronting the widespread corruption of the previous Jacob Zuma government.

That's probably insufficient to cover the continent but it gives you some idea of the political, security, and economic variation found in Sub-Saharan Africa.

VI: Thanks, it does provide some reference points. Before we get into the details of US involvement in Africa, can we discuss the flashpoints you briefly mentioned. There are numerous Islamic insurgencies and then there are internal conflicts - recently in Ethiopia with the Tigray situation, but also warring factions in South Sudan and other areas.

Are these flashpoints the consequence of religion issues - Islam vs Christian as seems to be the case in Nigeria. Or are these tribal rivalries and left-over colonial border issues? What do you see feeding the flashpoints in Africa?

Judd Devermont: These are failures of governments. First and foremost, whether armed groups subscribe to Islamic extremism or they present themselves as ethno-nationalists, in all cases, at root is a failure of governance and disaffected populations looking for alternative ways to reimagine the state and protect their personal and sectarian interests.

There was a study from the United Nations on Islamic insurgency in Africa and the finding was, the most important tipping point for joining an insurgency was abuse by the government.

71% of militants said they joined because a family member, or a friend had been harassed, and some of them killed. The government, in other words, often pushes individuals into these groups.

In other instances, such as in South-East Nigeria where there is a lingering secessionist movement dating back from the Biafran civil war, many ethnic Igbo leaders see that as a panacea for their problems.

In East Africa, it is really the stresses and strains of Abiy’s reforms, but also his authoritarian and autocratic approach to dissidents and a misjudgment by both him and the former rulers, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) that has led to this explosive civil war. 

I am convinced that governance (or the lack thereof) is more consequential than any other particular driver.

VI: Isn’t part of the governance problem corruption? We hear all the time about the corruption of African leaders and elites and how that hinders good governance.

Judd Devermont: There tends to be some enduring stereotypes about corruption in Africa that other regions somehow don't get slapped with even if corruption is just as much of a problem in the United States or in Asian and Latin American countries.

It is true that there are challenges around accountability in many of these countries. It is also true that politicians do use corruption to enrich themselves but also to provide resources to their communities.

It’s not intractable, and we have seen different anti-corruption efforts succeed on the African continent, usually led by individuals who are reformers. Sometimes the anti-corruption fight is not institutionalized, which I think is one of the problems. And sometimes populations don't have confidence that the economy will work for them unless they engage in corruption either to survive or to take care of their families.

It’s a deep structural problem that isn’t unique to Africa, but I think it often is one of the negative shorthands that is used to describe African economies and is probably overdone. 

VI: Don’t extremists groups, often radical Islamists, use rhetoric about anti-corruption in their appeal for popular support? They promise justice for the people - quickly setting up sharia law courts to hold accountable leaders who engage in corrupt activities.

Judd Devermont: Yes, corruption undermines the fight against terrorism in two ways. First, corruption in militaries like Nigeria impedes their ability to arm themselves, leaving them outmatched by insurgents. It also lowers troop morale in cases where senior officers pocket soldiers’ salaries.

Second, it has enabled an insurgency to claim they can govern more effectively. While it is illiberal and often horrific in the way in which they dispense law and order, the records of many current governments have been dismal too.

VI: Looking a little deeper into the security situation, we also have heard a lot about ISIS coming into Africa, Al-Qaeda coming into Africa, establishing franchises if you will. Boko Haram once pledged allegiance to ISIS, as did Al-Shabaab in Somalia. Are foreign extremists like ISIS sending people down from the Middle East to start franchises within Africa or are these mostly indigenous groups that have their own grievances and just use the rhetoric of ISIS or Al-Qaeda?

Judd Devermont: There’s a symbiotic relationship between the local groups and the global terrorist networks. Let’s start with al-Qaeda, which conducted some of its earliest attacks  in Africa, including against the U.S.embassies in Nairobi and in Dar es Salaam. Bin Laden also briefly lived in Sudan.

What we find is that African extremist groups do have their own local agenda and for a variety of reasons they find it beneficial to affiliate themselves with these global networks. When a local extremist group ties the knot with al-Qaeda or ISIS, you tend to observe a couple of key effects.

First, their online media and propaganda becomes a lot slicker, more effective, more visually compelling. There are often improvements in their tactical sophistication and maybe their target selection as a result of these affiliations. Depending on which African extremist group we are talking about, they may agree to focus more on governments and less on civilian populations at al-Qaeda or ISIS’s behest.

There are  two other changes that are much rarer. Occasionally, there are money transfers between the global networks and their African counterparts.

Even less frequently, foreign fighters from outside of Africa come to join these groups. There was a brief period where the Somali diaspora and other foreigners linked up with al-Shabaab but there was a lot of infighting between the foreign fighter cadres and Shabaab’s Somali leadership. 

In summary, African extremist groups benefit from a higher media profile when they join al-Qaeda or ISIS and tend to improve their tactics and grow in sophistication. For the networks, the partnership is an opportunity to underscore that they have global reach. That’s been important in the wake of Bin Laden’s death and the loss of the ISIS caliphate in Syria and Iraq.

I want to make clear though that there is a push and pull between these groups. The African elements have disagreed within the global networks, ignoring directives. In some instances, the networks have fired the African group leaders and in one case, the partnership dissolved over disagreements. In 2016, Boko Haram severed its affiliation with ISIS.

There’s considerable variation between how these groups relate to al-Qaeda and ISIS, and whether the global networks have consistent influence over them. It is wrong to assume that once they become a part of a global network that they will carry out and mimic what ISIS does in other regions or what al-Qaeda does in other conflict zones.

VI: This brings us to another question. Often Africa has been seen as a continent where competing interests fought out their global ambitions. Certainly that was the case during colonialism with imperial spheres of influence There was a recent article in Foreign Policy by three retired US military offices, Marcus Hicks, Kyle Atwell and Dan Collini, titled “Great-Power Competition is Coming to Africa: The United States Needs to Think Regionally to Win.”

Let’s delve into this. The United States military has the African Command (AFRICOM) with bases throughout Africa to combat terrorism using primarily drone attacks - an extension of the Global War on Terror. China is also setting up a network of military and naval bases across the continent. And going back to Soviet times, Russia has always been active in Africa - now as a major weapons supplier. So is Africa a place where Great Powers can come in and carve out their spheres of influence?

Judd Devermont: Let’s start with why the US should engage in Africa and then we can talk about power competition and the threat of terrorism.

In the first instance, this is a continent that is 1.3 billion people that will double by 2050. It means that there will be an African dimension to every global challenge.

African countries represent the largest and most unified bloc within the UN General Assembly, they hold three seats in the Security Council, and Africans serve as the head of the WTO, the WHO, and as deputy UN Secretary General. Africans are playing more and more important roles globally. If you want to try to address climate change, establish norms for internet privacy, or tackle democratic regression, you need to involve Africans. That’s first and foremost why the United States should engage.

The second reason is that what happens in Africa doesn’t stay in Africa. The region’s challenges and innovations change the way the world works. Just look at the way in which maritime insecurity off the coast of the Horn of Africa has changed maritime commerce. Remember how the Ebola crisis --at least until COVID—has changed our approach to global health security. Recall how the surge in irregular migration changed European politics. Of course, there are positive effects too. East Africa has been at the center of the global fintech revolution.

And yes, great power competition matters too, Our adversaries see opportunities on the African continent but so do our allies. Between 2010 and 2015, 150 new embassies were established in sub-Saharan Africa. Before the pandemic, 65 countries had increased their trade. A lot of countries in the world, our partners and our rivals included, see opportunities for investment and political influence there. They are also, of course, concerned about the negative consequences of instability in Africa. Unfortunately, with regards to Africa, the United States has been on the sidelines -- at least for the last four years.

I think that’s really important framing before we talk about China in Africa, which is what everyone seems to want to talk about these days. I certainly agree that China presents a strategic challenge for the United States in Africa. I am most concerned about Chinese financing, construction, and operations of critical infrastructure, like seaports, which are built to PLA Navy specifications. There are also worrisome Chinese technological investments in the telecommunication network, in data centers, and in artificial intelligence.. We should also pay close attention to how the Chinese leverage African votes in global forums; about half of the African countries defended China when Washington and like-minded allies condemned Beijing for human rights abuses in Hong Kong and in Xinjiang.

For those reasons, it's very important to be focused on China. Beijing’s economic engagement in many African nations, which often sucks up all the oxygen in Washington, is much more complicated to unpack. We have to examine each case on its own merits and understand that Africans overwhelmingly approve of Chinese investments. 

Unfortunately, there isn't much of a U.S. alternative to what China offers African countries. China's trade with Africa in 2020 was $180 billion. U.S. trade with Africa in that same time period was about $32 billion. That’s a massively different scale. Much of what China does is infrastructure, which Africans need. They need between $130 billion and $170 billion worth of infrastructure per year according to the African Development Bank.

So we are going to have to be a lot smarter. We have to engage more Africans. Chinese President Xi has talked to three African leaders since President Biden's election; Biden has called one. The United States has to be more specific and strategic about its investment opportunities vis-a-vis the Chinese. We are probably not going to magically become a major supplier of infrastructure, but there's a range of sectors where there are alluring opportunities for the U.S. private sector.

We must seek to constrain or limit the most negative dimensions of Chinese economic engagement, but resist framing it as part of a new Cold War because the Africans are firmly against that. They don't want to choose between China and the United States.

I understand what’s behind that sentiment, but the Africans - and we can be helpful here - should do more than just say what they don’t want. African governments need to lay out their expectations, including quality standards and transparency requirements. They should hold all of their foreign partners to those requirements, which almost certainly will cut down on some of the secretive and onerous Chinese lending practices.

I believe these are sensible policy recommendations, and they are too often absent in the China-Africa conversation. 

VI: The Chinese have been involved in developing countries for a long time. With their Belt and Road Initiative, China entered another stage of involvement with massive loans for infrastructure - roads, railways and ports.  But as you said, there is also the promotion of Chinese AI and other kinds of high-tech infrastructure that's going to enhance China’s ambition to be a global technology leader. 

The United States’ involvement in Africa has been in aid-related kinds of projects - rural development, poverty reduction. This goes back to the time of President Kennedy and his Alliance for Progress program, in the 2000s there was the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), the Obama administration had Power Africa, even the Trump administration had something they called Prosper Africa. While there have been many attempts to engage with Africa, they all seem to be focused on aid for poverty reduction and not the kinds of things that are needed today. Are you suggesting a change in this approach?

Judd Devermont: I think that the United States is still incredibly important and the world leader when it comes to responding to humanitarian crises and to investing in development and health.

We have a long history of promoting trade and investment, from AGOA, which enables African countries to export goods to  the United States duty free and Power Africa, which seeks to transform Africa’s energy sector.Then there’s Prosper Africa, which has had a bumbling start, but there's some real value there, particularly to improve U.S. government coordination and support for the private sector.

The big problem is that we don't know how to talk about opportunities in Africa. Read any speech on Africa. Someone will inevitably say "seven out of the 10 fastest growing economies are in Africa." They may talk about mineral resources and they certainly will flag the region’s rapid population growth.

All of which is true, but clearly it's not moving the needle. We need to be more specific about what the opportunities are. Power Africa is a model, and I think you can do similar programs focusing on tech, agro-processing, services, and healthcare. It is vitally important to promote sectors where we have comparative advantage and then communicate those opportunities. 

Our companies have a choice. They can invest at home and they can invest in other developing markets. We need to address the value-proposition of investing in Africa, and make sure that we are helping the U.S. private sector think about the trade-offs. Why does it make sense to invest in Nigeria versus New Zealand? Why Ouagadougou over Omaha?

A lot of this boils down to how we frame these issues. And it will require more honesty about the challenges . The U.S. pitch about investing in Africa is overly bullish and breathless. I don’t think it resonates because many U.S. companies are skeptical and they accept that investing in Africa (or anywhere) has its share of setbacks and successes.

VI: The European Union has a model for helping their companies invest in Africa. A lot of the European countries are of course ex-colonial powers, so they have long term economic relationships in Africa tied by language, and in connection with the elites. There are European Partnership Agreements, EPAs, which underwrite European companies that invest in Africa. There are numerous BIT arrangements, bilateral investment treaties, that have been set up between European and African countries.

The United States has very few of these kinds of arrangements. I think the Millennial Challenge Corporation tried to encourage more private sector economic relations with some success. 

However, the economic landscape in Africa changed as of January 1, 2021 when the new African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) came into being. A surprising aspect of African countries is that most of their foreign trade was outside the continent with Europe, the United States, or China. There was very little inter-African trade because of various legal and logistical obstacles left over from their colonial past. This is a bold new initiative organized by the Africans to create an inter-African trade bloc. Do you see this as a major opportunity for changing the economic dynamics in Africa?

Judd Devermont: Yes, the African Continental Free Trade Agreement is one of the most exciting developments in Africa. It unites 53 countries and Western Sahara in this new free trade area.

The AfCFTA is the largest free trade area after the WTO. It will have a nominal GDP equivalent to that of India’s. As you point out, addressing intra-regional trade has been a long-standing stumbling block for economic growth in Africa. The markets are just too fractured and because of different rules, regulations, languages, currencies, there are a number of hurdles to economic growth.

I think it's very positive. I hope the Biden administration will do more to support the AfCFCA. The hard part, of course, is still ahead of us and that’s implementation. Even in the more integrated regions such as the East African Community, they consistently have problems with integration. In the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the protocols ensuring the free movement of peoples and goods are often not respected.

The United States, I would add,  does some of the things that the Europeans do. While we don't have EPAs, we do have BITs with several countries, a free trade agreement with Morocco, and we started negotiating one with Kenya during the Trump Administration.

One challenge for the Biden administration will revolve around the future of AGOA. In 2025, AGOA is set to expire, and there is a consensus that it is time to graduate from the AGOA framework at least for many countries. We are entering a new chapter where we have a patchwork of trade and commercial agreements, including AGOA, an FTA with Kenya, and the AfCFTA. Plus, the Europeans and UK have EPAs and China just completed an FTA with Mauritius.

We have to think through what all of this means, and accept that we can no longer have a one size fits all approach to trade and investment in Africa. What will it mean to have different trading relationships with specific countries, while individual countries will have the same trading relationships with each other because of the AfCFTA? There's some long hard policy work ahead of us.

VI: Was this African Continental Free Trade Agreement brought about because of cooperation and expertise within Africa? Did international organizations play a significant role in structuring this?

Judd Devermont: This is a dream that has been there since the beginning of the dawn on African independence, led by Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana. A huge amount of credit goes to Paul Kagame of Rwanda, who was the driving force behind this initiative during his African Union chairmanship.

It is an entirely African-run process, and they have surprised many of the skeptics with the speed of their progress. That's an important perspective to have, because as we look towards the next challenge, I am sure there will be a fair share of doubters. African countries, however, do surprise the jaded observers and rise above the cynicism that sometimes exists in the Global North.

VI: We're back to the idea of leadership. In Africa at the moment, there are established leaders and ruling elites who, as you have mentioned, are often reluctant to give up power. However, there is a new generation of talented and committed Africans who are working to promote a more progressive agenda for the continent.

President Biden is planning to call a Global Democracy Summit and invite leaders from around the world to participate. Who should President Biden invite from Africa?

Judd Devermont: Here's what I think. Don't go for the obvious countries, don't just bring in the countries that have received the highest scores from Freedom House. Invite countries that are struggling with their democracies, that are on the cusp of moving from a partially free to a free rating. Invite the civil society activists that are fighting on the front lines. Invite the legislators and the judges and the media.

It would be a shame if Africa just had token representation at the Global Democracy Summit. Afterall, African publics strongly support democracy by 68%, according to polling. Even if the supply is short, there is an admirable and dogged effort to deepen democratic practices and norms across the continent. African democracies are unfinished, just like the United States.

I hope we take this opportunity to rethink the way we talk about democracy at home and abroad and specifically in Africa.

VI: The young elites, the people that are in the bureaucracies and up and coming enterprises, many are now being invited to China, with opportunities for education, many also go to universities in Europe. I remember going to graduate school eons ago with Africans on US government sponsored programs. With all the visa restrictions and cutbacks in exchange educational programs, have opportunities for Africans to study in the United States been curtailed?

Judd Devermont: It has been curtailed to some degree. Our history here is really amazing, starting with the Kennedy air lift, where the Kennedy family and later the U.S. government brought Africans, particularly from East Africa, to the United States to study. President Obama's father wasn't officially in the Kennedy airlift, but he was inspired by it.

We have had programs where African students study in the United States for decades. Indeed, 20% of the 49 leaders in Africa have studied in the United States. .Under President Obama, we launched something called the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI). Not only has this been great for our relationships with African countries, It has  also been a boon for our economy. In 2019, African students contributed more than 1 billion to our economy. 

Unfortunately, under the Trump administration, YALI was shortened --fewer students, shorter stays. Trump officials tried, but I believe unsuccessfully, to curtail student visas in a way that disproportionately-affected African students. There was a very small initiative led by the State Department on African University partnerships, which surely can be expanded, but it's time for the Biden administration to step up on this really important issue that has political, economic, and soft power benefits.

VI: Within the Biden administration as it pivots to re-engage in Africa, by reviving existing programs or creating new programs, how is this coordinated?

How would all of the myriad agencies that have some involvement with Africa, be it the Commerce Department, Education, USAID, how would their efforts in Africa be coordinated?

Interviewee: This is done at the National Security Council. There are interagency deliberations. Either ideas are incubated in the White House or brought to the table of specific agencies.Sometimes one agency will lead with another supporting, and in other cases an agency will drive on its own with everyone tracking. But the big presidential initiatives tend to be led and coordinated by the White House.

Congress also gets involved. U.S.-Africa policy is proudly bipartisan. When one administration departs, the incoming team not only embraces the previous initiative and expands it. That's what's likely to happen with Prosper Africa, and Congress usually works to codify the initiative, adding funding to make it long-lasting and impactful. 

VI: There are many priorities this administration wants to address. Do you think Africa will be one of them?

Judd Devermont: Time will tell. It's clear that the Ethiopian crisis has been a Day One priority for the administration. Secretary Blinken has mentioned it when he talks about some of the biggest challenges that we have to confront.

But the problem is that what President Biden and his team need to do is reset the relations globally. The neglect of and damaging policies toward Africa under Trump was not very unique. The president has to reset the U.S. relationship with Europe and rebuild the Transatlantic partnership. He’ll have to do the same in Latin America and in Southeast Asia.

It is imperative that policymakers who work on Africa present a more compelling argument about why it's important to focus on African issues if they want to get time and attention from the president, as well as more resources in a time when the United States is dealing with the pandemic , grappling with economy, and pushing major legislation, such as the Infrastructure Bill, through Congress.

The Biden Administration has an opportunity to change the narrative and to think differently about Africa’s importance but they face some steep odds because other regions and domestic challenges are going to require the president's time and attention.

VI: One of the reports you recently published was on “The Great Cities Partnership” which addresses the growth of megacities in Africa.

I had a conversation about a month ago with Ran Hirschl who wrote a book titled City State: Constitutionalism and the Megacity. It was a startling discussion about just how enormous these urban centers are going to get in the coming decades - mostly in the Global South.

You write about how imperative it is to understand the realities of these megacities for the African continent, which is usually thought of as having rural people living in villages. When you really look at the situation, there are already enormous cities in Africa - you provide a list of the size of African cities by 2050 - Kinshasa 35 million, Lagos 32 million, Cairo 24 million, Khartoum 16 million and so on.

Can you talk a bit about this reality? Here’s an opportunity to confront a global challenge which is coming fast and cannot be avoided. Another fact not widely understood is that while around the world there are declining populations, in Africa populations are growing.

Judd Devermont: President Biden, when he was a candidate, showed impeccable instincts. He committed to an urbanization initiative, understanding how important cities are becoming in Africa. It is in urban areas where the challenges of climate change will rear their head, where COVID has been most treacherous, where economic dynamism exists, and where global competition will unfold.

Now, here comes the hard part: persuading the bureaucracy to move forward on this initiative. Africa is increasingly urban and will be 50% urban by the end of this decade. My colleagues and I laid out some ideas about the contours of the partnership, borrowing from the best practices of  Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and Power Africa.

There is tremendous opportunity here, but we have to put some skin in the game and we acknowledge that the region is no longer predominantly agricultural and rural, which is a lot where our development dollars go. MCC has done some urban programs particularly in Lusaka but there’s more to be done and I'm hoping the administration will run with the concept. I expect them to fix it and improve it and make it their own and then prioritize it as a signature initiative for this administration.

VI: You see this, then, as a model for engagement. Here’s a concrete problem, here’s a future challenge, here’s something that we can prepare for and get involved in and make a substantial impact on Africa and build relationships there by getting involved in this Great Cities partnership.

Judd Devermont: Absolutely. All of our national security interests come together in cities and, because cities are dynamic and cosmopolitan, it will challenge the existing, very negative narrative about Africa that exists in our media and endures in policy circles.

It will have two results: tackle a very big challenge and show that the Biden administration is committed to a new vision of African potential and global importance.

VI: Do you envision this evolving as a public-private partnership formula, that involves government initiatives but then enlisting private entities and civil society groups all combining their expertise to engage in this effort?

Judd Devermont: It is a mixed approach and it also will require American cities to be highly engaged. At CSIS, we did a study at the end of last year about why Africa matters to US cities. The evidence was overwhelming.

Our ties with African countries and the African diaspora enrich our communities, create jobs, contribute to academic research, and form a foundation for our religious and philanthropic endeavors.

It is important to add these dimensions to the national security conversation because it is one example of how a forward-looking and inclusive foreign policy benefits the middle class.

VI: Judd, we are coming to the end of our time. We like to end our conversations on an upbeat note and this Great Cities Partnership initiative is something that we can look at as a positive one, hopefully an undertaking the Biden administration can get behind and make a worthwhile part of engaging with the African continent.

Judd Devermont: Thank you so much for having me, it’s been a pleasure.

Judd Devermont is the director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Prior to joining CSIS, he served as the national intelligence officer for Africa from 2015 to 2018. In this position, he led the U.S. intelligence community’s analytic efforts on sub-Saharan African issues and served as the DNI’s personal representative at interagency policy meetings. From 2013 to 2015, he was the Central Intelligence Agency’s senior political analyst on sub-Saharan Africa. Mr. Devermont also served as the National Security Council director for Somalia, Nigeria, the Sahel, and the African Union from 2011 to 2013. In this role, he contributed to the U.S. Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa, signed by President Obama in 2012, and managed the process that resulted in U.S. recognition of the Somali government for the first time since 1991. Mr. Devermont spent two years abroad working at the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria from 2008 to 2010.