Good governance is essential for Africa's development and achievement of its full potential, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says, calling for free elections across the continent and for strong democratic institutions.

Speaking in Lusaka, Zambia, June 11, 2011, on the Africa 360 current affairs show, Clinton said authoritarian regimes "try to put everybody into the same mold" by dictating to their people, while good governance has the power to unleash individual human potential.

"I want to see an African renaissance that provides opportunities of all kinds for people because I am confident you can compete with anybody anywhere," she told viewers.
She recalled President Obama's 2009 speech in Ghana where he condemned leaders who use coups or change laws to stay in power. "Africa doesn't need strongmen, it needs strong institutions," Clinton said.

Clinton said there needs to be "enormous cultural pressure on people who run for office to abide by the rules and the outcomes of the election."

Good governance can be measured not only through indicators such as economic growth, education and the availability of health care, but also if the population is cooperating across tribal, ethnic and religious divides for the betterment of the whole country, she said.

"Leaders have to understand that in the 21st century people know a lot more than they did even 15, 25 years ago, and so they expect more. So good governance ultimately is whether or not people believe they are governed well," Clinton said.

"As we are seeing in the Arab Spring, young people in particular are not going to accept being told what to do. They want the freedom and the education and the opportunity," she said.

The secretary urged young Africans to participate more in the political process by voting, being active in campaigns, or even running for office themselves. Unless they participate, their leaders may not pay attention to them or their priorities, she said.
She also urged that women be granted the same entrepreneurship opportunities as men, noting that women small business owners and small farmers "are actually the backbone of a lot of the economic development that can and should occur inside Africa."

"We don't think Africa can be all it can be unless women and girls, 50 percent of the population, are included in every respect," she said.

INVESTORS IN AFRICA SHOULD DO GOOD, NOT JUST DO WELL

U.S. assistance to Africa is being given with the long-term goal of improving standards of living and creating "a ladder of opportunity" for the African people, she said.

"We don't want to see a new colonialism in Africa," where investors "come in, take out natural resources, pay off leaders and leave," Clinton said.
The Obama administration wants investors to "do good" as well as prosper in African countries, Clinton said.

"We don't want them to undermine good governance. We don't want them to basically deal with just the top elites and, frankly, too often pay for their concessions or their opportunities to invest," she said.

The United States is investing in Africa's people and "not just the elites," she said.
"We've spent many tens of millions of dollars working with the people of Zambia to combat HIV/AIDS. Are we doing that to make money? No. But we're doing it because we want to see a healthy, prospering Zambian people, which we do ultimately think is in American interests," Clinton said.

But along with increasing opportunities for women entrepreneurs, African nations also need to take advantage of the tens of millions of consumers on the continent and trade more with each other, as well as enact reforms to make it easier to do business, she said.

"We have to knock down legal, cultural barriers, but we also have to learn from what's working, particularly in Asia," she said. "If governments here literally took the lessons and said 'here's what we need to do to improve distribution, infrastructure, supply chains, marketing,' I think within 10 years you would see a very different story."

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/iipdigital-en/index.html)