During a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Tuesday, Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) spoke about the Trump administration ending foreign aid and diplomacy programs in Africa.
00:00Thank you very much Chairman, Risk Ranking Member Shaheen for this important full committee hearing and to the Ambassador and to Mr. Preservey thank you for your testimony. What I hear from both of you is more engagement not less. More of what we have done that works and that the abrupt and chaotic closure of a very wide range of our most effective tools for engaging with Africa from the MCC to YALI to the PEPFAR program puts all of this at risk.
00:29Mr. Chairman, if I might, given your opening comments in the exchange, I'd love to work with you on clarifying the U.S.-Kenya relationship. Their foreign minister and national security advisor were just here last week meeting with the president and folks at the White House and I agree with you that some of those statements with the PRC are very concerning given the deep and long relationship and the security relationship we have with regards to al-Shabaab in Somalia.
00:54It's disappointing to say the least.
00:55You referenced how important it is that there be more students from Africa coming to the United States. Well, I've got a solution for you. It's a 15-year-old program called the Young African Leaders Initiative that has sent 20,000 vetted promising African students to the United States.
01:13The University of Delaware happens to be one of the 20 hosting universities at a very modest cost that is about to be shut down.
01:21Not a good idea. It brings promising young African leaders to the United States for a summer to meet with businesses and entrepreneurs, to meet with civil society,
01:31to convene in Washington and then go to 20 different states all over the country.
01:35One of many things I don't think we should shut down. To the point you just made, Ambassador Gavin, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, MCC, launched under President Bush,
01:45explicitly used corruption and combating corruption, reducing corruption as one of the key indicators for whether or not a country would get a long-term development partnership with the United States.
01:57It is all but closed. Most of its staff have been laid off. Many of its compacts have been shut down.
02:04PEPFAR, Mr. Miservi, is all but closed. It has been trimmed dramatically from its scope. A 25-year-old program long deserving of bipartisan support.
02:15I would just be interested in both of you briefly saying what does it do to our reputation on a continent of 54 countries, a continent with enormous human potential and natural resources,
02:28a country that China and Russia see as the continent of the 21st century.
02:34What does it do to our place in East Africa and across the continent if we abruptly shut down these long-standing demonstrated and effective programs?
02:42Madam Ambassador and then Mr. Miservi.
02:45Thank you, Senator. It is incredibly self-defeating, is my view.
02:52I just don't understand why we are taking a bunch of tools in our foreign policy toolbox and tossing them into a dumpster.
03:00I think the term was a wood chipper.
03:03Okay. I suppose so.
03:06It's tougher to reassemble things that have been put through a wood chipper,
03:11than things that have gone through a reasoned considerable review,
03:16which is the process that we should have gone through,
03:19is to have this body, Congress, work with the new administration to say,
