It has been an encouraging year for our partnership with Africa. Alongside our African partners, we have made significant progress advancing democracy, peace, and prosperity throughout the continent, though challenges, of course, remain.

Past presidents have tried to use "soft power" strategies to bolster the United States' cultural appeal abroad and lend moral weight to the country's standing as the free world's leading alternative to communist or authoritarian systems. Such tactics are not a substitute for military and economic "hard power," foreign affairs analysts said, but can help shape global perceptions of the United States and its motives.

During the 2016 election campaign, Trump declared that many of America’s foreign-policy problems began with the “dangerous idea that we could make Western democracies out of countries that had no experience or interest in becoming a Western democracy.” As on a number of other issues, the president-elect’s dramatic statement broke from not only establishment views within his own party, but the dominant perspective of America’s political and foreign-policy elites.

The US must return to a policy that prioritises providing both moral and material support for Cuba’s dissidents and human rights activists. Funding for Cuba democracy programmes was redirected by the Obama administration to other activities on the island. [...] Human rights in Cuba must also be reprioritised at the United Nations, other international forums, and in US public diplomacy campaigns.

Several of the U.S. government’s development priorities in Vietnam can be traced back to events that damaged relations between the two countries during the Vietnam War. But USAID is now also looking ahead to what’s next, such as an innovative finance mechanism for forest protection, and supporting the country in adopting a more inclusive, modern health system post-PEPFAR procurement.

President-elect Trump is about to inherit a newly empowered Voice of America that some officials fear could serve as an unfettered propaganda arm for the former reality TV star who has flirted for years with launching his own network. Buried on page 1,404 of the National Defense Authorization Act that passed last week is a provision that would disband the bipartisan board of the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

Mangal Shobhajatra on Pahela Baishakh, a festival close to the hearts of Bangalis, has been inscribed on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The decision was made at the 11th session of the Inter-governmental Committee on Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia yesterday.