It may be a surprise to learn that nine of the ten countries whose citizens rated US leadership most favourably in a recent 47-nation poll were in sub-Saharan Africa, says the Chicago Tribune.
But President Bush has devoted a great deal of energy to the continent’s challenges, and during his five-nation visit to Africa last week he was “welcomed as a hero”. One reason is the successful reach of his Emergency Plan for Aids relief, which will have spent $18.8bn by the end of its first five-year phase in September, mostly in Africa. The US has also supplied millions of people with anti-malarial drugs and bed netting and written off billions of dollars in government debts.
In terms of foreign aid, Bush is justly proud of his four-year-old programme, the Millennium Challenge Corp (MCC), which has marked a “critical shift in aid policy”, says Peter Pham in The Washington Times. The key to this new strategy is, as Bush puts it, America “serving as an investor, not a donor” with its development aid, bestowing funds on countries that have shown commitment to political and economic freedom, funding education and health, reining in corruption and respecting civil liberties and the rule of law.
On top of this, the “very logic” of his itinerary is “illuminating”, says Howard French in the International Herald Tribune. He visited Tanzania, Benin, Ghana and Liberia, all small democracies, and post-genocide Rwanda, which although not democratic, has established a “reputation for clean, effective government“. None of his stops were in Africa’s emerging natural-resource powerhouses; “important yet highly corrupt places” such as Nigeria and Congo.
In contrast to China, which has showered its largesse on Africa, but has little to say on human rights abuses or lack of democracy, the US has placed itself as a friend of African peoples. Both see Africa as an “important frontier“, but only “time will tell which has placed its bets on the right side of history“.