White House at odds with rest of G-8 on Africa aid

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By Mark Silva, Washington Bureau. Tribune foreign correspondent Tom Hundley contributed to this report from London
Published June 21, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Though leading industrial nations plan to extend Africa a dramatic helping hand at a world summit next month, the United States already is at odds with other members of the club over just how generous that new aid should be.

The Bush administration's reluctance to meet British Prime Minister Tony Blair's challenge of doubling aid to Africa has created friction in a relationship crucial for Bush. The president has counted on Blair's support in the war in Iraq but stops short on a goal Blair has set as a priority and a matter of his legacy--fighting poverty in Africa.

As other European nations have signed on to Blair's pledge of a doubling aid to the continent, Blair has professed satisfaction with Bush's commitment to a far less ambitious plan of debt relief for the poorest African nations. Yet Bush's stance will leave him vulnerable to some high-stakes lobbying as the leaders of the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations assemble July 6-8 in the picturesque hills of Perthshire in northern Scotland and demonstrators mass in nearby Edinburgh to rally for African aid.

"Debt cancellation is an important step forward," said Princeton Lyman, senior fellow in African studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria and South Africa. "[But] it doesn't begin to address the real development issues."

Some of the world's richest nations already have agreed to erase the debt of some of the world's poorest countries, canceling the $40 billion debt of 18 nations, including 14 in Africa.

Yet many experts inside and outside the World Bank, whose loans account for most of the debt, say that relief is only a small fraction of what is needed to extricate Africa from poverty, illiteracy, hunger and disease.

The goal of debt cancellation is to enable needy nations to spend less of their scarce resources on repayments to international banks and more on their needs.

For the 14 African nations that will benefit from G-8 debt relief, just over $1 billion a year will become available for spending at home instead of paying debt service.

By contrast, Blair has called for an immediate doubling of aid to Africa, raising the international ante to $25 billion a year. He wants that figure doubled again to $50 billion by 2015.

"If the administration does not come forward with anything bolder for Africa, they do risk looking to much of the world like the skunk at the garden party," said Gene Sperling, who was chief economic adviser to President Bill Clinton and now is working to improve public education in Africa.

Heading into the G-8 summit, European leaders are echoing Blair's call and personally imploring Bush to heed it.

`Task of a generation'

"This is a task of a generation," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said Monday, standing alongside Bush in the East Room of the White House. "Every day, 25,000 people die because they don't have enough to eat or they don't have clean water to drink. This is really a shame for our generation. And you cannot accept it as a kind of natural order of things. ... There are enough resources in the world. What we need is political will and good organization."

Among the issues is establishing public education as a birthright in Africa, where 50 percent of girls never graduate from primary school.

It would cost an estimated $2.3 billion to $3 billion a year just to underwrite the 15 nations that have had Education for All plans approved by the World Bank, the G-8 nations and other interests.

That includes nations such as Ghana, which has invested heavily in education yet still cannot afford high school for most children. The West African country will use some of the money it gains from debt relief to finance educational improvements, health care and other needs, according to Ivor Agyeman-Duah, public affairs officer for Ghanaian Embassy in Washington. But that stops short of meeting all the country's needs.

Ghana owes the World Bank alone about $3.5 billion, more than any other African nation involved in the first stage of the G-8's plan.

"What this relief will do for us is to give us breathing space to use this money to invest in other areas, for health care and education," Agyeman-Duah said. "Once we are able to lay a good foundation for these areas, we then will be able to talk about economic growth."

Debt cancellation, which was approved this month by the industrialized nations' finance ministers meeting before the July summit in Scotland, will spare 14 African nations from making $1.04 billion in payments on debt service this year to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the African Development Bank, according to the World Bank. It will save them $1.1 billion next year.

Ultimately, 27 nations, including 23 in Africa, that the World Bank has targeted for debt cancellation could save a total of $2.5 billion a year in loan repayments.