 South African President Thabo Mbeki has urged US President George Bush to deliver more African aid, ahead of a G8 summit where the fate of a multibillion-dollar rescue plan for Africa will be decided.
Mbeki said at a briefing with Bush: "I'm going to create more problems for you, President, because I'm going to ask for more support because the contribution of the United States to helping us to solve the issues related to peace and the security on the continent, that contribution is very great. That contribution, in terms of the recovery of the economy and recovery of the continent, is very important, and I - we believe very strongly, President, that the forthcoming G8 summit in Scotland has a possibility to communicate a very strong, positive message about movement on the African continent away from poverty."
| Yeah. It's coming any day now. |
But Bush appeared not to budge.
Washington has been lukewarm to British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Commission for Africa, which calls for doubling aid with an extra $25 billion annually until 2010 and then, following a review, an extra $50 billion per year. Blair's initiative also proposes 100% debt relief for poor sub-Saharan countries and cautions donors against attaching too many strings to their money.
| It might have been worth the investment in 1960, though I doubt it. By now things are pretty much set in concrete. Some African states, like Botswana and Kenya, are moderately successful and don't really need their hands held. Others are ruled by senile Marxists, generals, boy emperors, various "liberation armies," and God knows what else, and no amount of aid is going to change that. I'd like to see generic African aid become a thing of the past, and specific aid to individual countries for specific projects become the norm — when we part with any money at all. I wouldn't give a nickle to any state that wasn't friendly to the U.S. And I wouldn't trust Thabo in administering any of it. |
| How about this: we'll provide generous amounts of aid to any African country that 1) adopts the U.S. constitution (except the slavery part) as its own 2) pegs its currency to the dollar and 3) signs a free trade agreement with the U.S. |
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