Now that the dust has settled from the rush of media reports about Africa brought on by the Group of Eight summit, it’s worth taking a closer look at what the United States has actually committed to, in terms of aid for programs to address poverty and disease in Africa.
Just prior to the Summit, President George W. Bush said he would double U.S.
assistance to Africa, and announced several new programs totaling $1.65 billion.
The largest component is for malaria prevention and treatment ($1.2 billion),
with smaller portions for education ($400 million) and programs to combat sexual
violence and abuse against women ($55 million).
Unfortunately, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s claim that the world has
committed to a massive increase in new aid to Africa relies on a very rosy
interpretation of U.S. spending proposals. Make Poverty History, the U.K. counterpart
to the U.S.-based One Campaign, correctly noted less than half of the aid increase
pledged by the G8 was new funding and called the G8 deal “too little
and too late.”
A closer look at Bush’s actual spending proposal shows that only 9%
of it consists of new money ($800 million of the $8.8 billion committed between
2004 and 2010). Bush did announce $674 million in what he said was “additional” spending
for humanitarian emergencies in Africa, but the fine print showed this was
not actually new spending. In fact, the vast majority of the so-called “doubling” of
U.S. assistance Bush promised is actually funding that was slated to be provided
anyway, for the most part through the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) as
well as the President’s global AIDS initiative. The MCA has been notably
slow-paced, and Congress may well continue denying the increases that form
a large part of the Bush pledge.
Malaria, Education
What new money there is in the U.S. proposal is primarily for programs on
malaria and education. These are two areas where additional spending, directed
in an effective manner, could do a great deal of good. Malaria deserves an
emergency response; it is, after all, the biggest killer of African children.
Between 300 and 600 million clinical cases of malaria occur each year, primarily
in Africa. It has a huge economic impact on Africa, cutting the region’s
gross domestic product by about $12 billion annually. The disease annually
kills up to 3 million people. But, while the announcement on malaria sounded
big, clever use of words concealed the fact that the proposal included all
funds the United States had already planned to spend.
The actual increase of $1.2 billion is significant, and is desperately needed,
but $500 million of it, nearly half, would not be provided until after Bush
leaves office, even though there are malaria programs that could use the full
level of funding right away. Investing $3 billion a year would provide global
coverage of malaria prevention and treatment, so real U.S. leadership would
be providing a third of this annually, starting this year.
Congress already seems prepared to act faster on malaria than the President.
While for 2006, the President proposes a $30 million increase in bilateral
malaria funding, this is less than the cut he had earlier proposed and less
than the increase Congress is already preparing to make. In recent weeks Congress
has reversed Bush’s cut and approved significant increases in the account
for infectious diseases, which includes malaria funding. The House version
of the foreign aid bill includes approximately $100 million for USAID malaria
programs, while the Senate version is even higher, at about $140 million.
Let’s put this in perspective. The United States provides about $17.5
billion a year in foreign aid. Even though the 9/11 Commission called for increasing
development assistance to safeguard global security, U.S. aid is still less
than 5% of the annual military budget. Only about $6 billion of that goes toward
humanitarian and development assistance. Africa receives only about 24% of
all foreign aid (about $4.3 billion). Even though far richer than sub-Saharan
Africa, Israel and Egypt together receive about $4.5 billion a year, more than
all African countries combined.
Global Fund
Just as important as the overall level of malaria funding is the way it is
to be spent. The way the funds are to be channeled is highly unilateral, and
this is something Congress must work to correct. Bush did not direct any of
the new malaria funding to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and
Malaria, which is the largest and most effective effort against malaria today.
Louis Da Gama, the Malaria Director for the Massive Effort Campaign and a member
of the Communities delegation to the Global Fund Board, was very critical of
the plan. “The U.S. proposal could have had a multiplier effect if channeled
through the Global Fund, since U.S. dollars would be matched two-to-one,” Da
Gama told journalists in a conference call. “But, sadly, the President
is missing this opportunity.”
The G8’s declaration, which Bush signed, did mention the importance
of the Global Fund. Next year is a critical year for the Fund, as its resource
needs escalate. The leaders said they would “work toward” replenishment
of the Fund. While Germany is notable for its low level of support for the
Fund, other G8 countries, such as France and Japan, have greatly expanded their
contributions for 2006 and 2007. But, while the Fund has asked the United States
to provide $930 million for 2006, Bush has proposed giving just $300 million
(Congressional appropriators have increased this, but only by $100 million).
The result is that while the United States claims to be the Fund’s biggest
supporter, at the current rate the U.S. contribution will be just 20% of all
2006 contributions. Even though France’s economy is one-seventh that
of the United States, the pledge from the French government is approaching
what Bush has proposed the United States give in 2006, and in 2007 its contribution
will exceed what Bush has proposed.
AIDS is an area where Bush often gets high marks from the media. Yet, at the
G8 summit, U.S. pressure had to be overcome before a declaration of support
for universal access to AIDS treatment by 2010 could be included in the final
document. In the end, the leaders merely said they would get “as close
as possible” to this goal, while failing to mention any specific financing
plan.
Americans want to see the United States support a response to AIDS and other
crises in which the United States shares the burden with other nations. This
points the way to real alternatives. The United States should put much more
of its funds into the Global Fund, where every dollar of the U.S. contribution
is matched by two dollars from other nations. Since global health has correctly
been identified by the United States as a security threat, the United States
can certainly afford to redirect some of its foreign military aid to providing
its fair share of what experts say is needed to fully address malaria, as well
as AIDS, tuberculosis, and the shortfall in funding for basic education.
School Fees
On education, the G8 leaders promised to support free access to primary education
in Africa, but Bush’s actual proposal on education fails to help eliminate
school fees. The proposal’s extra funding for the Africa Education Initiative
will help improve educational quality, but the scholarships the Initiative
provides go to only 300,000 children, instead of helping countries simply eliminate
school fees altogether. Currently 25 million African children who should be
in school are not attending, due to many factors including the onerous burden
of school fees.
The actual funding level is extremely low, especially in the context of the
quantum leap Blair and others have called for. The Commission for Africa found
that up to $8 billion is needed each year to address educational inequity.
Yet, Bush is proposing only to continue an existing initiative and to increase
by $50 million the baseline funding level for education in Africa over the
next four years. In the last four years, Congress, without significant support
from the Bush administration, has increased the baseline funding level for
basic education by $339 million. Therefore the supposedly new U.S. initiative
represents a fraction of what Congress has already pitched in to deal with
the issue.
Other Promises
The United States also signed on to other critically important promises, such
as to provide support for “all children left orphaned or vulnerable by
AIDS or other pandemics” and to help countries train and retain health
workers. Yet, missing from the final declaration is any mention of a process
to develop a credible plan to achieve these or other critically important goals.
In particular, the United States and the other G8 countries seem to have no
real strategy for how to erase the $18 billion shortfall in resources which
UNAIDS says countries could in fact use to fight the disease through 2007.
Progress achieved on debt cancellation could help address this funding gap.
The agreement will release close to $1 billion annually in resources poor nations
can use for development. Already the Zambian government has said it will use
debt relief proceeds to provide AIDS drugs to 100,000 HIV/AIDS patients. But
the relief of payments comes slowly, partly as a result of the difficulties
countries face in meeting the economic policy conditions set by the creditors.
And, while the African Union has called for all African nations to receive
debt cancellation, the G-8 agreement applies to only 14.
Now, the hard work begins of pressuring leaders, including Bush and Congress,
to make the actual content of U.S. proposals match the G8 summit’s lofty
rhetoric.
David Bryden is the Communications Director of Global AIDS Alliance (www.globalaidsalliance.org) and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org).
