White House Briefing On The Trip

Following are excerpts from a White House Press briefing to reporters Thursday by Mike McCurry on President Clinton's trip to Africa:

McCurry: The president is, obviously, looking forward to this trip to Africa, which will certainly be an historic one. It will be the most extensive trip to Africa ever by an American president. He will be the first sitting president to visit each country that is on the itinerary -- Ghana, Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, Botswana, and Senegal.

The key focus of the president's trip is really to celebrate the renaissance that is the African Continent today. It will spotlight the changes that have occurred there over the course of the last decade -- democracy spreading throughout the region, economic reform empowering a growing private sector, providing opportunities for Africa's citizens to enjoy the prospects of a higher quality of life; leaders and citizens now making real progress in addressing what remains very vexing social and economic problems.

In the 1990s, the number of democracies in sub-Sahara Africa almost quadrupled, and now half the region's 48 countries freely choose their leaders. As countries have embraced economic reform, opening markets, privatizing enterprises, stabilizing currencies, growth in sub-Sahara Africa has more than tripled since 1990.

I think the figure for 1996 and 1997 is now roughly 4 percent average economic growth in sub-Sahara Africa. And because of that, we believe that the region of sub-Sahara Africa represents one of the great vast potential markets for goods and services exported from the United States.

Obviously, in the view of the President, it would be much better to have economic partners in Africa rather than depending on relationships that go one way and primarily through economic aid. I think most Americans are familiar with the work we've had to do in the past to deal with compelling disasters like famine or the results of natural disasters in Africa.

Those humanitarian missions are always costly, and far preferable would be an economic relationship in which we are heavily engaged with the growing entrepreneurial class in Africa to build a self-sustaining economic base, while continuing to support those types of development and assistance programs that are necessary for the livelihood of those who can't immediately share in the benefits of a growing economy.

There are nearly 700 million people south of the Sahara, and because of the commerce we already have with them, U.S. trade with Africa grew 20 percent -- or is already 20 percent larger than the trade we have with the states of the Former Soviet Union.

So the potential is there for an economic relationship that could be one of the most important relationships we have as we look ahead to the 21st century.

Thaverage annual return on investment in Africa exceeds 30 percent, but far from the full potential that we've got. We currently only supply about 7 percent of what Africa imports. So the obvious conclusion is the United States has every reason in the world to be much more heavily involved.

While the president is in Africa, because of the enormous potential that exists there, his remarks and his presentations will focus on programs that can both support democracy and prosperity. There will be a lot of discussion about the president's trade initiative in which you've heard administration officials talk about in the past, but clearly the president will be echoing that during the trip. There will be initiatives on education, the rule of law, food security, trade and investment, aviation and conflict resolution.

Obviously, the portion of the president's trip that falls in Uganda and Rwanda will deal very directly with those conflicts that could potentially threaten the prosperity and progress that we see in Africa. He will visit Rwanda to meet with survivors of the genocide in the Great Lakes region and to convene in Uganda a meeting of the region's leaders to advance cooperation on conflict and prevention, democratic participation, human rights promotion and economic integration.

But you will quickly see that the overall goal of the trip is to foster what could potentially be one of the most important new relationships we have in the world as we think about America's presence in the world in the 21st century.

Q: Is there any relationship between the president's trip and his race initiative?

McCurry: There is directly. One of the things that the President stresses in the race initiative is economic empowerment and the need for Americans to recognize the incredible opportunities that come from opening doors to people who have historically been left out or discriminated from opportunities for leadership in our private economic here.

You've heard the president a lot talk about diversity and what diversity means to our presence in this world as we look ahead to the 21st century. By that, the President thinks of the kinds of opportunities that will come when we see African-American CEOs here in the United States or African-Americans who have worked their way through the corporate ladder, going to Africa, engaging with their counterparts as part of this new effort.

It is uniquely, the president believes, a possibility for America that we can help lead this global economic revolution by using that diversity, that we are -- as we reach out to these regions of the world that are beginning to expand, beginning to emerge from the shackles of underdevelopment and economic impoverishment that they have suffered for generations. So in that sense, there is a real connection.

Q: Now, why hasn't he been able to go there before now, Mike?

McCurry:: Well, he's had -- every year we have exensive travel commitments depending on the series of annual summits we do -- APEC, the G-7/G-8, other things we have done in connection with NATO, the president's series of meetings with President Yeltsin and others. He's never had, quite frankly, the opportunity to do a serious, substantive trip to Africa, and the president has often said that he regrets that in the first term he wasn't able to go.

I think he thinks it's all the more important because of the serious potential that Africa represents to try to make this trip one in which Americans come to understand better the enormous potential that exists on the Africa Continent, and certainly in the sub-Sahara.

U.S. Newswire contributed to this report.
©1998, CBS Worldwide Inc., All Rights Reserved