NAFAC 46

So I just got back from a week in Annapolis at the Naval Academy Conference on Foreign Affairs. This year's theme was Africa-Turning Attention into Action. I attended The Student Conference on United States' Affairs at West Point in November 2004 and ever since then I have lobbied to go to NAFAC. Leading up to this I was worried because I have so much work to do, including my thesis, but I am really glad I went.

SCUSA and this conference are among the best highlights of my professional life. The people I met and the speakers I heard were some of the most intellectually stimulating people I have ever been around. Unlike most conferences, the central part of these events are the roundtables that we are split into daily. There were 12 roundtables and we had 7 roundtable sessions at NAFAC. Each roundtable has a theme; mine was economic development, surprise! Our table included: Helen Adeosun from Notre Dame, Weston Lemay from Claremont McKennna, Mellissa Hargleroad from Boston College, Midshipman Joe Carrelli, Clark Rachfal from Towson, Alex Cree from USC, Padden Murphy from Tufts, Jon Kording from Waynesboro College, Midshipman Tim O'Connor, Midshipman David Haines, Major Grant Goodrich USMC, Anastasysia Kutelvas a student at College of Staten Island from Uzebekistan, and Jared Licina a Fulbright Scholar from South Africa studying at NYU. We spent 2 hours each session hashing over the various economic and development issues facing African states.

What really made this so unique was the intellectualism that went on. Each roundtable session was followed by various speakers and events. In between sessions we continued to debate and discuss, not only with each other, but with members of other tables to see what they had been discussing. Just an example of how great this was...I came back from the bars at 1 AM the last night. We were finished with the conference and everyone was departing in the morning. I found myself at 4AM sitting in the lobby of the hotel, passing a bottle of wine, with 20 people or so discussing the presence of China in Africa and the US's real motivations in its dealings with China in Africa.

The speakers included:
Vice Admiral Rodney P Rempt, Superintendent of the Naval Academy. He spoke at the banquet on Africa's relevance to national security. He also hosted us at his house for a reception for National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, whom I met!

Dr. William Miller, Dean and Provost of the Naval Academy. His speech was general and intended as a brief welcome to NAFAC and the Academy.

Dr. Robert Rothberg: Director of the Program on Intrastate Conflict and Conflict Resolution at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He was fairly good and made some good points about corruption.

The keynote address was General Carlton Fulford, USMC Ret. The Director of the Africa Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University. He was very good and spoke to the unique problems in Africa such as the disparate languages, most in Sub-Saharan Africa alone.

The Egyptian Ambassador Nabil Fahmy. Who was brief and vague.

National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley. His speech was the same crap you have heard from Bush over and over. I think he has the same writer. But the questioning was good and he made some really good points about the importance of empowering women, although Olumide, a Nigerian delegate told me that women's roles in many African states are different and wield a lot of power in non-Muslim states where they operate within certain social norms. It was a bit of a surprise that no one asked about domestic spying though!

The panel discussion sucked. The moderator did not keep the panelists on track and spent so much time on his own questions that none of the mids or delegates got to ask any questions. Also, one of the panelists asked the audience, like a bunch of grade schoolers: Does anyone know where Darfur is? Know your audience asshole.
Moderator: Dr Stephen Wrage
Panelists included Dr Umunna Orijiako, Ambassador from Nigeria.

The final Banquet address was by far the best part of the conference. The speaker was Dr Princeton Lyman, former ambassador to South Africa and Nigera and currently the Ralph Bunche Senior Fellow for Africa Policy Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

I had a wonderful time and did not want to leave. I made many friends and met tons of unbelieveably interesting people from the US, Germany, Sweden, South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Niger, India, Pakistan, Japan, China, Mexico, France, El Salvador, DR Congo, Canada, UK, etc etc. Also, Midshipman Paul Angelo, 2006 Rhodes Scholar.