St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 5, 2005 President George W. Bush wants Congress to spend $1.2 billion over the next five years to attack the scourge of malaria in Africa and extend more educational opportunities to African girls. The timing of
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 5, 2005
President George W. Bush wants Congress to spend $1.2 billion over the next five years to attack the scourge of malaria in Africa and extend more educational opportunities to African girls. The timing of these announcements may or may not help blunt criticism of American unwillingness to join the war on African poverty in a big way, an issue likely to come up at this week’s summit of eight industrial nations in Davos, Switzerland.
Nevertheless, Mr. Bush’s choices are important ones. Malaria kills 1 million people each year, most of them African children. His goal of halving the number of deaths in less than a decade has been praised by world health agencies, although some note that malaria could be brought under control sooner if the United States and other wealthy nations put $3.5 billion on the table now.
Mr. Bush also is right to pay more attention to educating African girls with a $400 million, four-year program to train teachers, distribute textbooks and provide scholarships. Education is a powerful tool for improving the health and economic well-being of girls and women in poor nations, where they have far fewer opportunities than males at every level of schooling. Higher education also correlates positively with lower birth rates, which in turn improves the economic wellbeing of families in underdeveloped countries. Mr. Bush’s plan to attack malaria and educate girls has been applauded by UNICEF and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
But the plan may not be what it seems – a new initiative – but rather a repackaging of money already set aside for those purposes. The Global AIDS Alliance told The Washington Post that the malaria initiative was simply a restoration of money that the administration previously had cut in this year’s budget.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the summit’s host, is calling for foreign aid to Africa to double to $50 billion a year by 2010. While agreeing to an earlier Blair proposal of debt-forgiveness for some African nations, Mr. Bush has repeatedly rejected the call for doubling U.S. aid to Africa.
World leaders need to put this issue in a broader economic perspective. The current $25 billion Africa gets in aid represents 8 cents for every $100 of GNP (0.08 percent) from the industrial nations. The amount of money the United States gives to Africa is equal to 3 cents for each $100 of GNP (0.03 percent), according to Jeffrey Sachs, an economist and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Mr. Sachs was the lead author of a U.N.-sponsored report on global poverty.
In his new book, “The End of Poverty,” Mr. Sachs argues that extreme poverty could be cut in half by 2015 if the world’s 22 developed nations gave seventenths of 1 percent of their GNP (0.7 percent) to help attack the root causes of poverty, including polluted water, poor soil and lack of medical care. Mr. Bush talks about America’s generosity toward Africa and the rest of the world, but generosity is a relative term. Relative to the other 21 donor nations, the United States gives the lowest percentage of its GNP in foreign aid. The leader of one of the wealthiest, most powerful nations in the world should set a better example.
