Visiting American first lady, Michele Obama, began her visit to Botswana with a touch of creativity as she spruced up the Botswana-Baylor Adolescent Centre of Excellence AIDS clinic with a colourful mural. With a few brush strokes she brought a burst of sunlight to a centre associated with doom and gloom. The painting of a sun on a mural that included scenes of children playing, homes and blue sky is a fitting metaphor for her visit.
Director of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Steve Morrison, and his deputy, Lisa Carty, maintain that the visit brought a ray of hope for Africa. In an opinion piece published on the day Ms Obama arrived in Botswana, the duo argued that the visit is focusing national attention on the serious U.S. strategic interests on the continent.
“Washington is now confronting hard decisions about a range of issues relating to Africa ÔÇö including security, trade and, particularly, global health. Millions of lives may be affected as a result.”
The first lady is promoting health and wellness on her visit, with a special emphasis on Aids prevention.
Her mission began last Monday in South Africa.
“So this visit can help the American people better understand why the U.S. must continue to engage with South Africa and Botswana ÔÇö as well as other African countries.
“South Africa and Botswana can be viewed as the kind of partners we need to advance U.S. interests in Africa. They are stable democracies that have long-standing partnerships with Washington to promote development in education, health, science and good governance.
“With each, the administration can make a viable case to U.S. citizens and Congress that U.S. investments are paying off. For both Botswana and South Africa have developed the capacity to train, finance and deliver key social services that can help address the serious problem of HIV/AIDs that threatens the continent,” state Morrison and Carty.
The AIDS clinic in Botswana is affiliated with Baylor University in Texas, and supports 4,000 children orphaned by AIDS or infected with HIV. About one-quarter of Botswana’s population is estimated to be HIV positive.
Botswana, however, provides Africa’s most comprehensive delivery of treatment and care for people living with HIV/AIDS. It has just opened a state-of-the-art medical school ÔÇö which the First Lady is scheduled to visit.
Morrison and Carty pointed out that, “after years of denial and medical missteps, President Jacob Zuma has finally put South Africa on a path to deal more comprehensively with its HIV/AIDS challenges. Pretoria has launched ambitious plans for health sector reform. His government has committed to steady increases in its HIV funding ÔÇö from $754 million in 2009-10 to $1.4 billion by 2012-13. Medical researchers at South Africa’s Center for AIDS Program Research, with U.S. support, unveiled last year the first promising field trials of a microbicide technology that could potentially give women a tool to block the sexual transmission of HIV.
They, however argue that, there is still extensive work to do in both South Africa and Botswana’s health and development arenas to improve the lives of women and girls. “Continued U.S. engagement is essential here and Washington is in a position to help the governments and non-governmental partners achieve crucial results.
“We still need to help expand access to services for pregnant women living with HIV ÔÇö to ensure the health of the mother and prevent the virus from being passed to newborns. More broadly, there is the need to improve systematically maternal and child health in Botswana and South Africa: to ensure safe motherhood and healthy infants, and to improve access to family planning.”
They further argue that there is also the need to confront the persistence of violence against women and girls, by strengthening legal and social protections and taking meaningful steps to advance women’s and girls’ economic and political empowerment.
“Botswana and South Africa are key U.S. partners in finding solutions to important regional and transnational challenges. We cannot see progress in addressing climate change, war crimes, and emerging pandemic threats, among other issues, without quality enduring alliances. The same is true for addressing urgent regional crises.
“For example, under former president Thabo Mbeki, South Africa long blocked any concerted international action to confront the tyranny of President Mugabe in Zimbabwe. Botswana often stood alone in the region in speaking forthrightly of the need to end the outrages Mugabe and his brutal regime visited on Zimbabwe’s citizens.
“But Zuma has dramatically reoriented South Africa’s outlook. Now there is hope that South Africa, Botswana, the United States and others can work effectively in steering Zimbabwe away from a violent, regionally destabilizing endgame and look instead to a post-Mugabe future that is stable, prosperous and democratic.
“Washington alone does not have the leverage to achieve that outcome. Acting in concert with South Africa, Botswana and others in southern Africa, there is hope.
That is but one urgent example of where U.S. interests require reliable, strong partners in Africa. Other Africa examples are daily before us ÔÇô Sudan, Somalia, and Libya.
Morrison says there is another reason for optimism in U.S. approaches to Africa. It is self-interested U.S. policy to reach out to Africa’s many emerging women leaders, hear their views and build the bonds that we need today and into the next generation.
