On the final day of last December’s US-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington – the first since 2014 – the State Department’s top official for the continent received a phone call from one of the invitees.
“That was really terrific,” the caller told Assistant Secretary of State Molly Phee. “Just don’t wait another eight years.”
With that message in mind, US officials got to work trying to figure how to keep the continent top of mind despite the vagaries of shifting politics and time-consuming crises.
This week they unveiled a new panel to leverage what Washington considers to be one of their best tools in the battle for influence in Africa: America’s almost 50 million-strong diaspora, including two million immigrants born on the continent.
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