Word: africas
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Other elements may be harder to acquire but are no less essential: Good governance, caring for the welfare of the people, not the potentates. New leaders, pragmatic and progressive, honest and efficient in their exercise of power. Eritrea's President Issaias is but one of them, along with South Africa's Nelson Mandela, Uganda's Yoweri Museveni, Rwanda's Paul Kagame, Botswana's Quett Ketumile Masire. National reconciliation where necessary, national cohesion everywhere, the sublimation of narrow loyalties to a larger good...
...easy to see only the Africa that's broken. While many of these countries cannot quite stand on their own, what they want from the West is no longer just a benefactor but a partner. Although the U.S. trade-liberalization bill passed two weeks ago by the House of Representatives is mostly symbolic in easing the terms for America's minuscule trade with Africa, it moves in the right direction of shifting aid from handouts to the development of sustainable economies...
There is a word we heard over and over in Africa: ubuntu. It's different in every dialect, but the meaning is always roughly the same: a complex, highly nuanced precept governing the way individuals relate to the community. Ubuntu is the organizing principle of the African mind, defining the pre-eminence of the interests of the community over the individual, the duties and responsibilities the individual owes the community, the obligation of the individual to share what he has with the community. It is both blessing and curse, the root of Africa's strong families and social customs...
...recognition of all that, Bill Clinton set off last Sunday on the first extensive tour of Africa by a sitting U.S. President. His aim is to cast a high-wattage spotlight on the continent's emerging democracies, economic growth and social progress and to promote a new relationship with the U.S. Of course, the Administration also sees a largely untapped market and wants to encourage American businessmen to get there first. Africans hope Clinton will show them that the U.S. is ready to be a partner instead of patron...
...good news in Africa is less in such momentary gestures than in the small stories of steady progress made, the handiwork of hundreds and thousands of individuals laying foundations for a better future. Two TIME correspondents recently spent a month traveling in four countries to look at the many ways in which Africa actually works...