President Bush, under pressure to provide more help to Africa ahead of a G8 summit next week, pledged on Thursday to provide $1.2 billion through 2008 to help combat malaria in sub-Saharan Africa as part of what he called an eventual doubling of U.S. aid.
With Africa a top agenda item for Group of Eight leaders meeting on July 6 to 8 in Gleneagles, Scotland, Bush defended his record and pledged to do more by fighting malaria, which claims an estimated 1.2 million people a year worldwide, 95 percent of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
In addition, the White House announced $400 million for an African education initiative over four years to help improve basic education for millions of African children, and $55 million to support efforts in four African nations to combat sexual violence and abuse against women.
All told, U.S. aid to Africa has been on the increase and national security adviser Stephen Hadley said the new assistance, if approved by the U.S. Congress, would amount to a doubling of aid to $8.6 billion from $4.3 billion by 2010.
"The United States has tripled overseas development aid to Africa during my presidency," Bush said in a speech to a think tank group at an art gallery. "And we're making a strong commitment for the future."
Bush is under pressure to increase aid for Africa after he turned down a proposal by British Prime Minister Tony Blair to give the continent as much as $50 billion a year by making long-term aid commitments that would allow poor countries to raise money on global capital markets.
Blair, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the G8 grouping of wealthy countries this year, is still pushing for other nations to join in his plan after declaring 2005 a make-or-break year for plans to lift Africa out of poverty.
MALARIA ASSISTANCE
Bush said the United States will take action next year in Tanzania, Uganda and Angola to provide malaria assistance.
"America will bring this anti-malaria effort to at least four more highly endemic African countries in 2007 and at least five more in 2008. In the next five years with the approval of Congress we'll spend more than $1.2 billion on this campaign," Bush said.
California Democratic Rep. Tom Lantos (news, bio, voting record), ranking Democrat on the House of Representatives International Relations Committee, welcomed the announcement but said "it comes with no commitment to use new funding resources in the first year, so it will take money from existing health programs" for Africa.
"This is typical of the administration's rhetoric on African aid," he said. "This administration is playing a shell game with all assistance to Africa except its high-profile efforts on HIV/AIDS."
Chad Dobson, U.S. policy director for the anti-poverty organization Oxfam, said Bush's pledge will mean an extra $900 million a year for Africa and this is a welcome first step.
"However it is widely calculated that $25 billion is needed annually for Africa so we hope the announcement today is just the beginning of a much bigger U.S. commitment to fighting poverty," he said.
Bush repeated that the crisis in Sudan's Darfur region amounts to a "genocide" and said the United States, through a NATO mission, will airlift more than 1,000 Rwandan troops as part of an African force to help protect the innocent in Sudan.
He called "preposterous" a claim by some critics that the United States was easing off Sudan because it has been helpful in counter-terrorism cooperation.
In a round-table interview with a handful of international reporters, Bush criticized Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe and hinted South Africa could do more -- "nations in the neighborhood must be strong" -- to pressure Mugabe to stop political violence and intimidation in his country.
"I'm disappointed in Mugabe. Zimbabwe was a bread basket, provided a lot of food on a continent that often needs food. and it's just a country being wrecked. and the world needs to speak very clearly about the decisions he has made and the consequence of the decisions he has made," Bush said. (Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria)
_________________ Deep below the dunes I roved Past the rows, past the rows Beside the acacias freshly in bloom I sent men to their doom
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 1:38 am Posts: 5575 Location: Sydney, NSW
Green Habit wrote:
I'm not getting excited yet. What entity(ies) is this money going to, and who is going to spend it?
And how many testicles shall be sacrificed in return?
_________________
Jammer91 wrote:
If Soundgarden is perfectly fine with playing together with Tad Doyle on vocals, why the fuck is he wasting his life promoting the single worst album of all time? Holy shit, he has to be the stupidest motherfucker on earth.
Malaria may claim 1.2 million, but tens of millions already have it. In all seriousness, what is a billion dollars? What's a billion dollars to just that one million? How far does that go? And now we start actively picking and choosing what countries deserve malaria treatment... oh, and in a few years we might branch out to some others...
I don't think Bush should be out there parading the fact that he's tripled aid to Africa. The bar was set so insanely low when he took office that achieving such a feat wasn't anything too terribly difficult, let alone painstaking.
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I'm not getting excited yet. What entity(ies) is this money going to, and who is going to spend it? - Green Habit
To first world contractors. To host national governments. To people working within the state department and the UN. A fraction of it might actually reach the people themselves.
When the hell are we gonna get a goal? All I want is a goal from these people. 25 billion? Well, what is your goal with this quantity of money. I'm sorry, but it's not going to carry you very far...
When the hell are we gonna get a goal? All I want is a goal from these people.
FORGIVE THE DEBT: the G8 countries, the World Bank and the IMF should forgive 100% of the poorer countries debt.
DEBT FOR DEVELOPMENT: invest the resources generated by the debt forgiveness to achieve the September 2000 Millenium Objectives (specific goals to improve the living conditions of the world population for the year 2015, this implies significantly reduce poverty, hunger, diseases, illiteracy, degradation of the environment and discrimination against women).
MEET PROMISES MADE: the G8 countries promised to contribute with 0,7% of their GDP, the UN's report of the Millenium Project "Investing in Development" states that these Objectives can be achieved with 0,5% of these countries GDP.
BETTER HELP: regardless of commercial interests and in accordance with the Millenium Objectives.
CHANGE THE RULES: of international trade that favor the richer countries and prevent the governments of the poorer countries from fighting poverty and protecting the environment.
ELIMINATE THE SUBSIDIES: that allow the products from the richer countries to be exported below production cost harming the rural communities of the poorer countries.
PROTECT THE PUBLIC SERVICES: to ensure access to clean water and essential medication.
ENABLE THE ACESS TO TECHNOLOGY: according to the poorer countries' needs.
If things remain the same it will have tremendous consequences worldwide. The population of the world today stands at 6.1 billion and all projections indicate that growth will reach about 7.5 billion in 2020 and about 10 billion eventually.
Essentially all of the future growth will occur in the developing world, that is, the poor regions of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Africa's population has nearly doubled in the last 25 years and is expected to increase at least 50 percent—about 500 or 600 million more people—in the next 25 years.
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 7:19 pm Posts: 39068 Location: Chapel Hill, NC, USA Gender: Male
towelie wrote:
See, I can admit when he does good things! "The United States has tripled overseas development aid to Africa during my presidency," Bush said in a speech to a think tank group at an art gallery. "And we're making a strong commitment for the future."
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Has Bush Tripled Aid to Africa?
Susan Rice of the Brookings Institution runs the numbers on President Bush's claim that he has "tripled" aid to Africa thus far during his presidency:
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We thought that was an interesting claim and decided to get behind the numbers, and we have looked at all "spigots," to use the State Department terminology, for aid. That means every possible program through which aid could flow to Africa, from child survival programs and development assistance in USAID to economic support funds which are State Department security—often security-related funds, foreign military, financing, peacekeeping, AIDS, narcotics, non-proliferation, refugees, Peace Corps, the multi-lateral institutions like the African Development Bank, the Millennium Challenge Account Debt Relief, and, of course, food aid.
And when you do that, the numbers paint a different reality than the administration has claimed.
In the first instance, the number for FY 2000, the last year of the Clinton administration, is considerably higher than the [Bush] administration’s numbers would suggest. The total for FY 2000 in nominal dollar terms, was $2,034,269,000–$2,034,269,000. The actual total for FY ‘04, the last completed fiscal year of the Bush administration was $3,399,416,000. That is an increase in nominal dollar terms of 67 percent, or more importantly, in real dollar terms of 56 percent, which falls substantially short of a tripling. In fact, it’s not even a doubling, either in nominal dollar terms or in real dollar terms over the period fiscal 2000 to fiscal 2004.
What is also interesting is, when you get behind those aggregate numbers and you look at what they consist of, you’ll find that more than 53 percent of the total increase between fiscal 2000 and fiscal 2004 consists of emergency food aid, which is important; obviously it meets a need. It meets a need that varies from year to year depending on the circumstances on the ground. But it is not development assistance; it is not the sort of resources that enables countries to embark on a path of sustainable development. In effect, it’s important for life saving but it’s, from a development point of view, a band-aid.
So the Bush administration hasn't even doubled aid, let alone tripled it—in fact, the increase has been exactly 56 percent. And half of that is emergency food aid, which is important, but not development assistance. So there's good reason to be skeptical of Bush's latest promise to "double" aid to Africa once again. This isn't to disparage the increases he's already pledged, and, among other things, his plan to double spending to fight malaria is surely welcomed. Still, as the president himself says, "Our greatest challenge is to get beyond empty symbolism and discredited policies and match our good intentions with good results."
_________________ "Though some may think there should be a separation between art/music and politics, it should be reinforced that art can be a form of nonviolent protest." - e.v.
Joined: Sat Oct 16, 2004 10:52 pm Posts: 1727 Location: Earth Gender: Male
Aids is killing the entire African Nation. But these Governments they don't mind they're procrastination. They say we'll kill them off, take their land and go there for vacation.
_________________ "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum." -Noam Chomsky
Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2004 4:50 pm Posts: 3955 Location: Leaving Here
We might have tripled our aid to Africa over whatever period of time, but I suspect that amount is propably a drop in the proverbial bucket compared to what we have paid over the last 5 years for the Iraq war.
Could you just imagine if half of the war cost was actually put toward building some infrastructure and getting relief to African nations instead?
Boggles the mind.
PS:
Brad Pitt's speech consisted of him explaining that "by the end of the day 30,000 people will have died. By the end of tomorrow, 30,000 more...." At that rate, the city in which I live would be completely eliminated and void of life in 36 hours.
we can raise a bajillion dollars, and give them cures to AIDS and every other disease on the planet, but that isnt going to force the warlords there to administer the resources
Joined: Wed Oct 20, 2004 2:43 am Posts: 870 Location: We chase misprinted lies.....
Peeps wrote:
we can raise a bajillion dollars, and give them cures to AIDS and every other disease on the planet, but that isnt going to force the warlords there to administer the resources
And yet again Peeps is dead on.
All the well-intentioned do gooders can throw all the money they want at these poorer countires to make themselves feel like they are doing something helpful for these people and get recognition from the press, the people, etc., but it doesn't amount to anything. They are sending aid money to countries with tyrannical leaders only making them richer! We've tried this approach for 40 some odd years. Take a hint folks....this approach ain't working.
PJinmyhead: I'm sorry, but those are incredibly vague goals. Monstrously vague. I read those goals, I look at what is being asked, and I shake my head. You couldn't achieve one aspect of those goals with what is being asked. On top of that, much of what takes place is counter productive. Such as dumping free food aid into regions and expecting their farmers to be able to trade their goods fairly in a regional market, much less a global one...
Taylor is right. Now I'm not protesting the amount of money we spend in Iraq. But in all seriousness...we are spending an insane amount of money in Iraq for 26,000,000 and spending a tiny fraction of that on 350,000,000 that are living on less than a dollar a day in Africa alone...
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we can raise a bajillion dollars, and give them cures to AIDS and every other disease on the planet, but that isnt going to force the warlords there to administer the resources - Peeps
This is true to an extent...but Darfur is just a region in the Sudan. Outside of Mogadishu and Berbera, Somalia is a land of peace. It's only parts of Rwanda that face strife now. Africa has come a long way in the past decade in at least achieving peace and laying the frame work for Democracy. I assure you it is not the place painted by stereotypical images. The vast majority of those living in poverty, are living it in peace.
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