Witney W. Schneidman is the author of the new memoir This Africa Idea: A Memoir of Discovery, Diplomacy, and Opportunity. He is the president of the consulting firm Schneidman & Associates.
Q: Why did you decide to write this memoir?
A: As I approached five decades of having worked in Africa, I thought that I had an important story to tell an audience who might have an interest in Africa or those who might want to learn more about political and commercial issues on the continent.
I also wanted to write about the key people who helped me on my journey, the challenges I encountered and learned to navigate, and the many consequential events I have witnessed on the continent over the last 50 years, and why I believe they still matter today.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen?
A: The phrase comes from a letter my mother wrote me when I was 18 years old and starting a gap year on a kibbutz in Israel. I was supposed to spend six months there, but I met some young Americans who had grown up in Kenya.
I found their stories of game parks, hippo pools and endless beaches on the coast enthralling. In the evenings, I started poring over maps of Africa and soon decided to leave Israel for Kenya.
I wrote my mother with this news, and she quickly wrote back asking me to tell her more about “this Africa idea.” I left Israel for Kenya several weeks after receiving her letter and have been engaged with the continent ever since.
Q: How has your relationship with the continent changed over the decades?
A: When I first became engaged with Africa, my focus was on big picture issues: self-determination, ending Portuguese colonialism, and overcoming white minority rule in southern Africa.
Nearly two decades after I began my work on the continent, I took a job with a nonprofit monitoring U.S. corporate compliance with the Sullivan Principles in South Africa. I saw that the companies that took the principles seriously were training and promoting Black workers and improving their lives, in defiance of South Africa’s apartheid laws.
I thought to myself, “If U.S. companies can do this in South Africa, why can’t they do it all over Africa? It was at this point that I became an advocate for U.S. investment in Africa.
That has been my principal focus ever since, specifically, working with companies to align their commercial objectives with the economic development objectives of African nations.
Q: What do you see looking ahead when it comes to U.S. relations with the African continent?
A: In 25 years, one in four people on earth will live in Africa, and the median age of the people there is 19. This will present both challenges and opportunities, but I am hopeful that our government will redouble its efforts to engage with the continent.
For me, the focus should be on the opportunities. How can we increase our presence in African markets? How can we help strengthen accountability and governance? How can we contribute to the end of conflicts in the Sahel, Sudan, and in the Congo?
Most importantly, how do we build a relationship with Africa that recognizes the continent’s growing importance to our own economic and strategic interests?
Q: What impact did it have on you to write the book, and what do you hope readers take away from it?
A: Writing this book has been a very significant undertaking, and I feel immense gratitude for how it turned out. I was so fortunate to have worked with an extraordinary editor, Caroline Lambert, from the outset.
I’m also very appreciative to all those who took the time to read drafts and parts of my book and to provide feedback. This contributed immensely to the final product.
I especially valued getting back in touch with friends and asking whether they remembered a shared experience the same way I did. Often they didn’t, and that only made the book richer.
I hope readers come away appreciating just how complex and diverse Africa is, and what extraordinarily rich cultures and histories exist across the African continent.
I also hope they are inspired to find their own way to connect with people there, whether through travel, church groups, businesses, schools or other avenues. In doing so, I believe they will enrich their own lives.
Finally, I hope the book creates opportunities for me to engage with students and the next generation of leaders, both in Africa and the United States.
If some of the experiences and lessons I have gathered over the last 50 years can help young people think about their own engagement across the Atlantic, and perhaps encourage them to build relationships of their own, that would be enormously gratifying.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I almost feel that promoting my book and getting the word out is a full-time job. It is as if I am staring at a vast ocean of potential readers and standing on the shore wondering where to jump in, even though I have a great publicist in Lissa Warren, a number of friends supporting me, and a terrific publisher in Bloomsbury.
In addition to promoting my book, I am working on projects in Sierra Leone, Tanzania, South Africa, the DRC, and Namibia, and on several boards on which I serve, including the National Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian, the Corporate Council on Africa, and the African Center for the Study of the United States at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
No comments:
Post a Comment