Background Paper
Published March, 1997
Available on-line as of August, 1997
The map of Africa-interested constituencies can be envisaged as three concentric circles, each divided into six sectors. The operational definitions are only suggestive--illustrating how one might begin to put numbers to these divisions, if data were available.
Circles
HARDCORE
The inner circle consists primarily of people having jobs with Africa-focused organizational responsibilities. It could be operationally defined as people spending more than half their working time dealing with African issues, whether employed by Africa-focused organizations or as staff with Africa responsibilities within broader organizational structures. An initial guesstimate is that there may be as many as 3,000-5,000 such individuals resident in the US, including, for example, staff of non-governmental organizations such as African American Institute, Africare, staff of US and multilateral agencies and embassies, teachers of African studies. A broader definition of the HARDCORE would include people who would like to spend more than half their working time dealing with African issues, if they could find a job that would let them do this.
SOFTCORE
The second circle includes the inner circle, plus individuals with significant involvement in African issues as indicated by, for example, subscribing to an Africa-focused publication, being a member of or a regular contributor to an Africa-focused organization, being a repeat buyer of books on Africa, teaching one course on Africa a year, having significant business relations with Africa, or significant if still part-time professional involvement with Africa. This core Africa-interest group might, on an initial guesstimate, include as many as 20,000-25,000 additional individuals.
POTENTIAL
The outer circle extends outward to include all those US residents with some organizational or media-attention factor making them significantly more likely than the average to have some occasional interest in African issues. Only a fraction would be expected at any given time to respond to offers of information or challenges to be involved. But their likelihood of response can be hypothesized to be much greater than of a general audience. Examples include members of African-American civic, civil rights, or social welfare organizations, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Council of Negro Women, or Alpha Kappa Alpha; members of international affairs interest groups such as the Foreign Policy Association, UN Association, World Affairs Councils; teachers of international affairs, current issues and social studies courses in secondary schools as well as colleges and universities; subscribers to African-American magazines such as Emerge and to public affairs magazines such as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy and Current History; immigrants from African countries; US citizens who have worked in, lived in or visited African countries.
Together these categories might include as many as 10-20 million additional individuals.
Sectors
The constituency map can also be divided up by sectors, each of which has different information needs, and a different potential relationship to advocacy and constituency mobilization. Some individuals, of course, may be active in more than one sector at the same time, or over time. The audience for Africa-focused communication media, such as the Africa News web site, includes individuals and organizations from all the sectors. But despite overlap, the best communication channels for reaching the different sectors are unlikely to be identical.
Although further research may indicate an alternative breakdown, six sectors seem initially to be sufficiently distinct to warrant separate consideration: government, business, education, media, organizations, and religious groups.
Demographic data
For each of the 18 pieces of this circle it would be useful to know background demographic or other data that might be relevant to their information needs, communication channels by which they might be reached, and so on. It might be useful to develop a standard set of variables that different organizations could use in constituency research, such as, obviously, geographic location, age, gender, race, national origin, education, income, occupation, experience in Africa, level of interest in Africa or specific regions or countries within Africa, access to e-mail and fax and so on.
Africa Policy Information Center
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