Sam Brownback: “I have worked on Africa for some period of time. A humanitarian crisis of incredible proportions is taking place in many…”

“I have worked on Africa for some period of time. A humanitarian crisis of incredible proportions is taking place in many places in Africa. We need to do more, and a lot more people are doing more. I think we are at a moment where Africa is becoming a focus in both Europe and the United States, left and right; for economic reasons, the Chinese are going in very aggressively; for militant Islamic reasons, people are coming in trying to penetrate into the continent. One of the first things we need to do to be able to grow the continent and allow people there to develop some sort of standard of living, some sort of quality of life and to be able to live, is to get the conflict out. One of the key things we need to go at in reducing the conflict is getting the money out of the conflict. We have had some success about this in the past. A decade ago, people were talking about blood diamonds in Western Africa and getting those out of the trafficked portion, out of the commodity business, and getting them into legitimate means of commerce. Out of that, we reduced the money into the conflict, and, as a result, had a substantial impact on the conflict and reducing the conflict in Western Africa.”