HOW ABOUT AFRICA?

Since the colonization of the Continent in the mid-19th century,
Africa has always been marginalized. The World Bank/IMF bailout
for Asian countries was in excess of trillions of US dollars while
that of Africa was tiny and negligible. While the global response
to Tsunami was tremendous, the thousands upon thousands of HIV/AIDS
victims in Africa did not get the necessary attention. This New York
Times editorial carefully and critically examines Africa's ordeal and
challenges the developed and prosperous nations to fulfill their
obligations in Africa as well.

IDEA, Inc.


February 27, 2005
EDITORIAL

Thousands Died in Africa Yesterday NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/opinion/27sun1.html


When a once-in-a-century natural disaster swept away the lives of
more than 100,000 poor Asians last December, the developed world opened its
hearts and its checkbooks. Yet when it comes to Africa, where hundreds of
thousands of poor men, women and children die needlessly each year from
preventable diseases, or unnatural disasters like civil wars, much of the
developed world seems to have a heart of stone.

Not every African state is failing. Most are not. But the
continent's most troubled regions - including Somalia and Sudan in the east, 
Congo in the center, Zimbabwe in the south and Ivory Coast, Liberia and Sierra
Leone in the west - challenge not only our common humanity, but global security
as well. The lethal combination of corrupt or destructive leaders, porous and
unmonitored borders and rootless or hopeless young men has made some
of these regions incubators of international terrorism and contagious
diseases like AIDS. Others are sanctuaries for swindlers and drug traffickers
whose victims can be found throughout the world.

In many of these places, poverty and unemployment and the
desperation they spawn leave young men vulnerable to the lure of terrorist
organizations, which, beyond offering two meals a day, also provide a target to
vent their anger at rich societies, which they are led to believe view them
with condescension and treat them with contempt. Training camps for
Islamic extremists are now thought to be sprouting like anthills on the
savanna.

"America is committed not only to the campaign against terrorism in
a military sense, but the campaign against poverty, the campaign against
illiteracy and ignorance." Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said that. Well,
America launched its war on terror after Sept. 11, but did not bother to
look at some of the deeper causes of global instability. This country is going to
spend more than $400 billion on the military this year, and another $100
billion or so for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. But that amount
is never going to buy Americans peace if the government continues to spend an
anemic $16 billion - the Pentagon budget is 25 times that size - in foreign
aid that addresses the plight of the poorest of the world's poor.

For decades, most Americans either have preferred not to hear about
these problems, or, blanching at the scope of the human tragedy, have
thrown up their hands. But in terms of the kind of money the West thinks
nothing of spending, on such things as sports and entertainment extravaganzas,
not to speak of defense budgets, meeting many of Africa's most urgent needs
seems shockingly affordable. What has been missing is the political will.

This year, there is a real chance of scrounging up, and then
mobilizing, this political will. Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who has stood
resolutely by President Bush at Mr. Blair's own political peril through the war
in Iraq, has staked Britain's presidency of the Group of 8 industrial nations
this year on tackling poverty in Africa. Mr. Blair wants his ally, Mr. Bush,
to stand beside him at the coming G-8 summit meeting at Gleneagles in
Scotland this July. After the G-8 meeting there will be a United Nations summit
meeting in New York in September, where the world's leaders will examine
progress made toward reaching the Millennium Development Goals of cutting global
poverty in half by 2015. Chief among those goals was that developed countries
like America, Britain and France would work toward giving 0.7 percent of
their national incomes for development aid for poor countries.

If the progress made so far is any guide, it is going to be a short
meeting. While Britain is about halfway to the goal, at 0.34 percent, and
France is at 0.41 percent, America remains near rock bottom, at 0.18 percent.
Undoubtedly, President Bush will point to his Millennium Challenge Account when
he attends the summit meeting. He will be correct in saying that his
administration has given more annually in foreign aid than the Clinton administration
in sheer dollars. His Millennium Challenge Account was supposed to increase
United States assistance to poor countries that are committed to policies
promoting development. This is a worthy endeavor, but it has three big
problems.


First, neither the administration nor Congress has come anywhere
close to financing the program fully. Second, the program, announced back in
2002, has yet to disburse a single dollar. Most important, relying mostly on 
programs like the Millennium Challenge Account, which tie foreign aid to good 
governance, condemns millions of Africans who have dreadful governments 
(Liberia, Congo, Ivory Coast) or no government (Somalia) to die. No donor 
nation is, or should be, willing to direct money to despotic, thieving or
incompetent governments likely to misspend it or divert it to the personal
bank accounts of their leaders. Strict international criteria of political 
accountability, financial transparency and development-friendly social and
economic policies need to be established and enforced, not just by
outside donors but by prominent and influential African leaders, like South
Africa's president, Thabo Mbeki. Help for people living under governments 
that fail these criteria will have to be channeled mainly through international and
nongovernmental organizations. Bypassed governments will not like this, but they cannot
be allowed to stand in the way of outside help to the victims of their misrule.

It is not the fault of Africa's millions of refugees that warring armies have
burned their villages and fields and driven them into unsafe and disease-ridden
camps, like those in the Darfur region of Sudan. And no fair-minded person would
blame the victims of callous and destructive governments, like Zimbabwe's, for
the economic and social misery they create. In the next few months, Mr. Bush could
take a giant step towards altering the way the world views America by joining
Mr. Blair in pushing for more help in Africa. It's past time; the continent is dying.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is anything but, some 1,000 people
die every day of preventable diseases like malaria and diarrhea. That's the equivalent of a
tsunami every five months, in that one country alone. Throughout the continent of
Africa, thousands of people die needlessly every day from diseases like AIDS,
tuberculosis and malaria.

One hundred years ago, before we had the medical know-how to eradicate these
illnesses, this might have been acceptable. But we are the first generation 
able to afford to end poverty and the diseases it spawns. It's past time we
step up to the plate. We are all responsible for choosing to view the tsunami
victims in Southeast Asia as more deserving of our help than the
malaria victims in Africa. Jeffrey Sachs, the economist who heads the United
Nations' Millennium Development Project to end global poverty, rightly takes issue with
the press in his book "The End of Poverty": "Every morning," Mr. Sachs writes,
"our newspapers could report, 'More than 20,000 people perished
yesterday of extreme poverty.' "

So, on this page, we'd like to make a first step. Yesterday, more than 20,000 people
perished of extreme poverty


Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company