ALWAYS CLEANING UP THEIR MESSES:

When it comes to Africa, Bush has more on his mind than aid (Torcuil Crichton, 6/12/05, Sunday Herald)

America will have nothing to do with the commitment to providing 0.7% of GDP (gross domestic product) for aid which the European powers have signed up to. The US will have nothing to do with Gordon Brown’s International Finance Facility (IFF) which would use the sale of gold reserves to speed up the rate of aid delivery. According to aid agencies, the Bush administration’s agreement on debt cancellation simply makes more economic sense than the European proposals for debt relief which would see the impoverished African nations picking up the repayment baton again halfway through the next decade.

In the same way as it blindly ignores the Kyoto targets on climate change, the US government is pursuing its own unilateral agenda on Africa and poverty reduction.

This, however, does not necessarily support the conclusions about American intentions most of Europe has already come to before George Bush steps foot on Scottish soil for the G8 summit at Gleneagles next month.

“Bush has a reputation in Europe, for grudgingly accepting that Africa has to be dealt with, but in practice he has a fairly benevolent policy in terms of aid,” says Martin Meredith, whose book, The State Of Africa, a study on the 50 years of post-colonial independence, was published this month.

It’s not as if Bush, who arrived in office as one of the least-travelled presidents, doesn’t know where Africa is. He toured part of the continent in 2003, emphasising the tough-love approach to poverty reduction, insisting on the entrenchment of democracy and on cleaning up state corruption.

Bill Clinton was the first US president to tour Africa while in office, and although he made large gestures about working with the continent, they amounted to very little in reality. Bush has actually delivered on promises – over the last three years the US aid to Africa has trebled.