The conversations at the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington this week, Secretary of State John Kerry said on the first day, are very different from discussions about Africa 10 to 15 years ago. He's right — and he should know.
In the early 2000s, then-Sen. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, was one of the leaders in the bipartisan effort to scale up U.S. funding for the HIV/AIDS pandemic through the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria — just as both programs were gaining their footing in Africa.
As recently as 2000, "The Economist" had featured a notorious cover story calling Africa "the hopeless continent," and debating its future of war, disease and endless poverty.