The Penn Stater Magazine

Gen. William Ward ’79g, AFRICOM commander

I heard an interesting piece on NPR as I was waking up this morning—Morning Edition co-host Renee Montagne was interviewing Gen. William Ward, the guy in charge of the U.S. Africa Command, also known as AFRICOM. In my sleepy haze, I thought I remembered that Ward is a Penn Stater, and upon checking later, I found out that indeed he is.

We last profiled Ward ’79g in 2005, when he was the U.S. security envoy to the Middle East. Ward, who earned his master’s degree in political science from Penn State, is a four-star general in the Army. In 2007, he was named the first-ever commander of AFRICOM, an effort to coordinate U.S. military operations on the African continent.

The U.S. doesn’t actually have much military presence in Africa, but it’s a continent of immense strategic importance, with new terrorism threats emerging in countries that have (as Montagne put it) “weak or chaotic governments.” And there are plenty of hot spots on the continent—Darfur and Somalia, to name just two. Ward’s thoughts on the U.S. role in Africa are worth a listen. You can hear the five-minute piece here.

Tina Hay, editor