Africa in the Post-9/11 World
With more Muslims than the Middle East—plus large oil reserves, shaky states, porous borders and a welter of cold war-era weapons—Africa can be ignored only at America’s peril. Yet U.S. policy there has been careless and erratic. This needs to change—for Africa’s sake and for ours, says veteran diplomat Walter Carrington.
One of the original seven overseas directors of the Peace Corps, Carrington served as U.S. Ambassador to Senegal (1980-81) and to Nigeria (1993-97), where he was an outspoken advocate for democracy and where there is now a street named after him. A Fellow at Harvard’s W.E.B. DuBois Institute, he holds the Warburg Chair in International Relations at Simmons College, Boston, the first African American to do so, and he is writing a book on Nigeria.