Interview by Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield with Dr. Tammy Hultman from All Africa

QUESTION: Could you talk a little bit about what you’ve heard from Africans you’ve met and what you’ve learned from those conversations?

AMBASSADOR LINDA THOMAS-GREENFIELD: I learned so much from this trip. And above all, what I learned is that Africa goes on—the continent, the people of Ghana, the people of Uganda, Cape Verde—they are so resilient. You see resilience, you see strength and grit among the people I’ve met. I had the opportunity in Uganda to meet with NGOs, refugee organizations, civil society groups, young businessmen. And despite everything that is happening in the world, they are still hopeful.

I saw him in Ghana. I went to the north of Ghana, to Tamale, I met farmers, women farmers, a young woman who had been involved in our Young African Leaders Initiative, who had started a program to support young women who needed to learn skills. And again I saw resilience. And I think that despite everything that’s going on, resilience and hope are still there.

What I heard from the African leaders I spoke to in all three countries is that they are feeling the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine. They feel it in energy prices, they feel it in food prices. I visited a granary or grain mill in Uganda that gets 40 percent of its wheat from Ukraine. I heard they are facing shortages and high prices. When I was in Uganda, I sat with farmers, they expressed concern about the high cost of fertilizer – the price had tripled for these farmers. One farmer told me he would normally plant 10 acres; he planted only four because of a shortage of fertilizers. Another woman who was a farmer told me that she usually planted five acres, but only planted one acre.

And as I talked to the leaders, they were very aware of the impact this was having on ordinary citizens. And they wanted to hear from me, from the United States and others, how we’re going to help them deal with some of these issues of food scarcity, food insecurity, security in general, and deal with some of the economic consequences that they’re facing upright.

QUESTION: And in these desperate situations in many countries of famine, none of the food that has ever left Ukrainian ports has reached Africa, has it?

AMBASSADOR THOMAS-GREENFIELD: I don’t know the answer to that, Tammy. I know that some of the food that WFP was involved with would have gone to Somalia. I don’t know if it has reached Somalia yet, but I know we all realize that it has affected Africa even more than other regions of the world. So I expect this food to reach the mainland sooner rather than later.

QUESTION: And when you talked to leaders, farmers, and women’s organizations, did you find that they were optimistic that what the United States said it was going to do would be carried out or carried out? As you know, there has been a lot of cynicism about this and a lot of doubt about whether the United States will follow through on its promises, stung in part by the fact that the COVID vaccines have reached Africa so little and so late, despite Africa’s input in testing them and other ways.

AMBASSADOR THOMAS-GREENFIELD: I heard some of it. But I also saw that people were happy to see us there. Because, as you know, after my trip, Minister Blinken arrived in South Africa and visited the DRC and Rwanda. Samantha Power has been to Malawi and Horne before. So the active involvement of American leaders is welcomed on the continent. I felt it personally, arriving in both Ghana and Uganda and Cape Verde, the way the leaders received me. I think there was a sense that certainly during a certain period of the previous administration we had forgotten Africa. And there was a sense of welcome that we were back. And I think there was a confidence that Africans felt, that these leaders felt that they could count on our commitment, on our word and on what we could achieve.

And this is – we are not new, Tammy, to the continent of Africa. We are not new to any of these countries. We’ve been involved in Uganda, providing health support, when you look at what we’ve done in the past, through PEPFAR, through the malaria initiative, through Feed the Future, in all these countries, we’ve always been there for Africa. So I didn’t feel there was any confidence that we would be there. I mean, even when we were not physically present, our programs and our funding were always available to the people of the continent.

And we announced new funding, I announced $20 million in new funding for refugee programs in Uganda, I announced additional funding for Feed the Future in Ghana. So we certainly have, we have not neglected Africa in terms of our funding. And what we tried to do during this visit is to strengthen what is already a solid relationship that we have with the continent of Africa. And it was about recalibrating, it was about reaffirming our commitment to the continent. But we are not new to the continent. And we have always put Africa first.

And I did hear concerns about COVID that Africa is being left out of COVID. However, we have administered close to a billion doses of COVID vaccines over the past two years. We strongly support efforts to develop capacity on the African continent to develop vaccines so that Africans are not left behind when vaccines are delivered. So, we’ve heard the concerns. We’ve heard the complaints. And we are absolutely committed to working with African partners to address them.

QUESTION: Finally, in addition to what you announced during your trip and what Secretary Blinken announced, are there other things that the United States should do to reassure African people and leaders that the United States will be there for Africa and Africans will achieve?

AMBASSADOR THOMAS-GREENFIELD: Well, we’ll be doing quite a bit the rest of this year. The President will host a Food Security Summit here in New York during High Level Week, where we will address a wide range of issues facing countries related to food insecurity. And, as you know, we will be hosting the U.S. African Leaders Summit in December — December 13-15 — where we will invite every country. It will be a two-way street. Where we will listen to African leaders. We will be looking forward to hearing from them their recommendations on how we can work with them better and what programs they should look to.