Africa’s Routine Misery

Every once in a while, something so awful happens in Africa that the rest of the world momentarily takes note of the continent. Twenty years ago, a devastating famine prompted Michael Jackson and friends to stage a nationally televised benefit concert that raised millions. More recently came the horrors in Rwanda and Sudan, prompting a lot of international indignation, if little else. Those crises duly acknowledged, people outside of Africa were free to look away again.

Nothing much new is happening in Africa these days. It’s the same old miserable routine -- 6,000 people dying of AIDS every day, thousands more, mostly children, dying from malaria, tuberculosis or malnutrition. It’s no tsunami, so your neighborhood Ralphs isn’t asking for donations to help assuage the continent’s suffering.

That isn’t to say no one is paying attention. Indeed, the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, offered a heartening call to focus on Africa. It was as if Oxfam had hijacked the high-roller confab in the Alps.

French President Jacques Chirac kicked things off by proposing the impractical idea of creating new worldwide taxes on such things as international financial transactions and airline tickets, and using the money to relieve poverty and disease. British Prime Minister Tony Blair seemed intent on showing he can outdo his French rival when it comes to humanitarianism. Besides issuing dire warnings about climate change, he said Britain is trebling its aid to Africa this year. In addition, Blair has used his leadership of the Group of 8 industrialized nations to strongly push for African debt relief.

Other high-powered participants at Davos also made Africa a theme, including Bono, the wonkish rock star; former President Clinton; and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, whose Gates Foundation recently pledged $750 million to vaccinate children in developing countries. Bono, who once famously toured Africa with President Bush’s first Treasury secretary, Paul O’Neill, acknowledged Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist for traveling to Africa and calling for a boost in AIDS relief spending.

But the United States is a laggard on the humanitarian front. Bush has spoken eloquently about boosting foreign aid while quietly ignoring his own promises.

The president has trumpeted his Millennium Challenge Account for foreign aid, promising in 2002 to invest billions in it and to reach an annual contribution of $5 billion by 2006. That pledge was recently erased from the fund’s own website, and for the last two years Bush has been contributing far less to the account than promised. Not a dime from the fund has been distributed, and there was no mention of foreign aid in Bush’s State of the Union address.

“There are no second-class citizens in the human race,” Bush said when he announced the fund three years ago. “I carry this commitment in my soul.” It’s time for Bush to now act on that commitment, by cutting some checks. Keeping the commitment locked up in his soul isn’t saving any lives.