In Africa, Would the Chinese Ambassador Open with “It’s 9:00, Do You Know Where Your Kids Are?”

During a recent vacation in an African country (that shall remain nameless here), I found myself, entirely by accident, sharing a large bush camp dinner table with a delegation of local officials and the US ambassador to that country.  Hmm, what would they talk about?   Political intrigue? Business deals?  The Olympics?  Instead I cringed at the actual topic:  “So, how are you integrating youth outreach into your conservation programs?”

At first, I thought perhaps the Ambassador was making polite conversation about an uncontroversial topic. But on reflection, it’s probably more than that.  Recall, in June the White House released Fact Sheet: Obama Administration Accomplishments in Sub-Saharan Africa that lists, as the very first accomplishment: “Engaged Young African Leaders”

Really, after more than three years and all the dynamic changes going on in Africa, that’s the thing that the Administration is most proud of?  Apparently so, because that same week the White House also released U.S. Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa, which declares:

“We will … continue engaging with Africa’s next generation of leaders by advancing the President’s Young African Leaders Initiative to provide tools to support leadership development, promote entrepreneurship, and connect young leaders with one another and the United States.”

The continent’s demographic bulge is a tangible issue—in fact nearly half of the population is under 15 years old.  And there’s a massive generation chasm between elderly African leaders and their young populations. (And I was relieved to hear that youth didn’t feature prominently in Michael Froman’s recent speech at CGD.)  But “youth engagement” still has no place as a central pillar of US foreign policy:

• It’s patronizing. If one of our top talking points with foreign officials is to urge them to remember to talk to their own children, it’s just plain insulting. Especially coming from a country which still has problems of its own with youth engagement (e.g., less than half of Americans age 18-24 bother to vote).  And with all the supposed importance of building strategic partnerships, I’ll be willing to bet that not a single African country has ever asked for our assistance to integrate youth into their policymaking process.
• It confuses ends and means. Interacting with certain demographic groups is not a policy goal in itself. At best, it could be a (likely marginal) means to help promote mutual goals—much like engaging civil society groups or encouraging dialogue or promoting the media. (The only way youth engagement becomes an actual end in itself is if your aim is not foreign policy but rather a nifty photo op.)
• It’s unworthy of a superpower. It’s pretty hard to argue that we have real strategic interests with Africa (like investment, counterterrorism, and promoting democratic freedoms) and then also prioritize an issue like youth engagement, even if only rhetorically. Youth engagement smacks of the kind of soft issue elevation that happens precisely when we don’t take these other interests—or our partners—seriously. (Remember Michael Mandelbaums’s “Foreign Policy as Social Work”?)

Another way to put all this is to imagine that the British or Brazilian or Chinese Ambassador were instead sitting at the end of my camp table. What issue would they be raising?