The Vision Thing: Barack Obama's plans for Africa are not nearly as ambitious as George W. Bush's were.

Nicholas Salmons

9/15/09

11:56 pm

This article reviews President Bush’s involvement in African aid and development, and compares it with President Obama’s current level of dedicated support to the continent. According to the article, Pres. Obama’s work in Africa has been significantly less beneficial than Pres. Bush’s, despite the general controversy behind his administration. The Bush administration established a program known as PEPFAR, an aid disbursement system that funded “nearly every aspect of the fight against HIV/AIDS.” This program was high in startup costs, but results have been coming within recent months (in July, South Africa administered the first AIDS vaccine known in Africa, which would have been impossible without the assistance of PEPFAR). In contrast, Pres. Obama’s administration has made a record number of first-term African visits and spread messages stating that the US will indeed continue to aid African nations, but that Africa needs “to take care of its own house” in the meantime. While Pres. Obama intends to continue PEPFAR, many researchers now say that there must be drastic changes in order for real growth to occur, particularly in the HIV/AIDS arena (infection rates far outweigh PEPFAR’s attempts at combating the disease). However, there are many other issues that must be addressed. The most critical are “long wave problems”: climate change, population growth/movement, and new disease growth. These issues will inherently require massive amounts of capital, simply due to the lack of development/infrastructure already present, and the sheer number of people affected - yet this is one enormous opportunity Pres. Obama has been offered to make a real step forward. With Africa already one of the most severely affected global regions in relation to climate change, population crises and biological threats, the window of opportunity seems to be getting both deeper and narrower.

I care less about the politics in this article than what should and could be done to begin remedying the situation Africa currently is in. To expect a region that is heavily dependent on developed-nation aid to be able to “take care of its own house” seems a bit presumptuous, however. What the US has failed to consider is how “African” crises affect the rest of the world (and how these crises have largely been brought about by the rest of the world…*). The US, along with her developed allies, has every contemporarily available resource necessary to begin lasting development and real growth in impoverished regions such as the vast majority of Africa (not to mention domestic sectors, too). I can understand being wary of walking into another “Iraq” somehow, but when the mass destruction results from doing nothing… *The main thing, I think, is to not disconnect the African situation from how the current global socioeconomic circle breeds inequality. It’s not a “blame” thing, it’s observing specific (though astounding in scale) consequences of systematic flaws.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/210665