A Half Century of U.S. - Africa Relations

Haskell Ward discusses the last 50 years of US policy in Africa.

Thursday, April 02, 2009
4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
6275 Bunche Hall
UCLA Campus
6th Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90095

While UCLA has built its African Studies program and forged strong bonds between scholars and institutions in Africa, official United States policy has too often lacked clarity and coherence. Neglect has alternated with responses to discreet events, whether British or French actions, the cold war or terrorism. As a reactive rather than a proactive policy, the United States has failed to provide a coherent framework for political and economic progress. At this critical historical moment, there is an opportunity for informed engagement to change those dynamics and create new realities.

Born in 1940 in the small town of Griffin, Georgia, Haskell Sears Ward became an active participant in the student sit-in movement carried out by college students during the civil rights movement.  He received his undergraduate degree from Clark College in Atlanta and his graduate degree in African Studies from the University of California in Los Angeles.  Ward began his professional career as a volunteer in Kenya in 1962 and was a member of one of the first groups of Peace Corps volunteers, posted to Ethiopia.  He also worked for the Ford Foundation where he specialized in economic development programs and strategies for the Middle East and Africa.  Ward has served as deputy assistant secretary of state and as deputy mayor of New York City.  He is the author of African Development Reconsidered: New Perspectives from the Continent, widely used as a college textbook on African development issues.  As a senior vice president at Global Alumina Corp., which he joined in 2000, Ward helps manage its relationships with key government officials and non-governmental organizations, including the U.N., USAID and the World Bank.  He is also a senior vice president at Seacom.

Ward is married to Leah Sears, chief justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia, and they reside in Atlanta, Georgia.

To read the complete text of an AllAfrica interview with Haskell Ward by Tami Hultman on February 16, 2009, visit

• http://allafrica.com/stories/200902161084.html

Africa: Social Benefit of Investment Good for Business
Tami Hultman, 16 February 2009
http://allafrica.com/stories/200902161084.html

Interview with Haskell Ward, senior vice-president of Seacom

"Haskell Ward is senior vice-president of Seacom, a company that will provide high-capacity international fibre optic bandwidth this year to eastern and southern Africa, connecting to the rest of the world via landing points in France and India....Seacom's investors are African, European and North American, and Ward is proud that its work was shaped, from the beginning, with African partners. Ward talked to AllAfrica's Tami Hultman about his involvement with Seacom and other African ventures:...."

 

For more information please contact:

African StudiesCenter

africa@international.ucla.edu

www.international.ucla.edu/africa

Sponsor(s): African Studies Center