Bush Promised Africa Money
He Doesn't Have
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. Bush appears set to clash with Congress over a $100 million security pledge he made to East Africa during his recent visit to Africa.
Bush promised during his recent visit to Africa that the United States would greatly increase its funding for development initiatives in the sub-Saharan region and for anti-Aids programmes in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and several other countries. He also pledged to provide a total of $100 million worth of security assistance to the three East African countries as well as to Djibouti and Ethiopia.
But the amount of new aid that will actually be delivered may turn out to be substantially less than what has been pledged.
The US Congress has yet to approve the added spending that was touted by the president at each stop on his safari. And even though Mr Bush�s own party controls both the House and Senate, there are signs that US lawmakers may refuse to allocate the full amounts of aid that Africa now expects to receive.
Members of Congress are feeling increasing pressure to economise following the announcement last week that the US budget deficit will approach half-a-trillion dollars this year. Proposed aid to Africa could well be vulnerable to expected moves to narrow a $455 billion gap between the US government�s revenues and its expenditures.
Congress has already demonstrated its reluctance to fully fund what has repeatedly been described as a five-year, $15 billion effort to fight Aids in 12 countries in Africa and two in the Caribbean. A key committee in the US House last week voted down a proposal to spend $3 billion in the first year of the anti-Aids initiative. The panel instead approved $2 billion in spending � which is the amount that had actually been requested by President Bush.
Advertising the Aids programme as a $15 billion package amounts to "a cruel hoax", says Salih Booker, director of an Africa advocacy group in Washington.
Members of the Bush team have defended the action taken in Congress. In the first year of the Africa Aids programme, "it�s going to take less money to get the job done," said Joseph O�Neill, the top Aids official in the White House. And Jim Kolbe, a key figure in Congress on this issue, said he was confident that the full $15 billion would ultimately be appropriated. But Congressman Kolbe also said that President Bush "continues to compound the problem" by presenting the $15 billion anti-Aids programme as though it had already been fully approved.
Anti-Aids activists in the United States have generally welcomed the president�s initiative. Similarly, many Africa policy analysts in Washington say they have been pleasantly surprised by the degree of attention Bush has paid to the continent. Some of them believe that Bush is proving at least as sympathetic to Africa�s needs as was Bill Clinton. But even those impressed by Bush�s rhetoric now wonder whether he will apply the requisite pressure on Congress to translate his words into deeds.
Nearly a year and a half after he proposed to double US development aid for sub-Saharan Africa and other poor regions, Congress has yet to appropriate any of the additional money. Some research groups meanwhile note that the conditions to be attached to this new aid, known as the Millennium Challenge Account, may prove so stringent that only a very few African countries will qualify for the added help.
Advocates of increased assistance for Africa are not encouraged by the amounts of money Bush seeks to spend on existing development programmes. The White House has asked Congress to provide $21 million less for African development aid in 2004 than was approved this year.
The Bush team is also seeking to cut US expenditures for peacekeeping operations in Africa from $40 million to $24 million. Even deeper cuts are to be made in the contributions the United States makes to United Nations peacekeeping missions in Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone and Ethiopia/Eritrea.
In addition, the White House has yet to indicate how its promised $100 million in security assistance will be shared among six East African nations. The anti-terrorism funding is supposed to be provided over the course of 15 months, but US officials have not said when the initiative will get underway.
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