GlobalHealthReporting.org Summarizes Opinion Pieces on Commission for Africa Report

British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Commission for Africa on March 11 released a report calling for a doubling of international aid to Africa to $50 billion annually, the removal of trade barriers, debt forgiveness, and increased efforts to address poor governance, corruption and war throughout the continent. The report also calls for funding for HIV/AIDS to be increased to $10 billion annually within the next five years. Blair established the 17-member commission, which has nine African members, in February 2004. The commission, which examined challenges facing the continent and ways to resolve those issues, includes politicians, economists and advocates from Africa and developed nations. The report aims to put Africa in the forefront of the international agenda during the United Kingdom's year as chair of the Group of Eight industrialized countries and during its presidency of the European Union (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 3/14). Several newspapers have published editorials and opinion pieces on the report, some of which are summarized below.

Editorials

• Long Island Newsday: Although Africa "continues its downward slide into a collective miasma of extreme poverty, pervasive disease, civil strife, tribal warfare and obscenely corrupt governments," Western nations are "leaving [the continent] behind," a Newsday editorial says. However, if the commission's report is "taken seriously where it counts," then Africa "could indeed benefit tremendously," the editorial says (Long Island Newsday, 3/20).
  
  
• New York Times: The financial "aid and attention that have gone to Africa from Europe, Japan and America pale in comparison with what rich countries have been willing to squander on far less noble causes than providing drinking water for a three-year-old in Chad," according to a Times editorial. In addition, the Bush administration's development initiatives are "not even close to what America can afford," the editorial says, concluding, "It is long past time for Mr. Bush to stand shoulder to shoulder with Mr. Blair on Africa, just as Mr. Blair stood with Mr. Bush on Iraq" (New York Times, 3/19).

Opinion Pieces

• Jagdish Bhagwati, Wall Street Journal: Although some "skeptics" of increasing financial aid "fear" that such increases will "result mainly in waste ... profligacy" and governmental corruption, "[m]uch could be done for Africa abroad," Bhagwati, a professor at Columbia University and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, writes in a Journal opinion piece. With "our ability to devise and implement programs at home that would assist the poor nations, we should aim higher" than the proposed target of spending 0.7% of gross national product on foreign aid, Bhagwati writes, concluding, "Let us return to the original target of 1% of GNP -- for a start. And above all, let us spent it right" (Bhagwati, Wall Street Journal, 3/22).
  
  
• Sebastian Mallaby, Washington Post: Although "[p]eople know that Africa is desperate," they are "mostly resigned to this" and "believe, wrongly, that progress is impossible," columnist Mallaby writes in a Post opinion piece. "Helping the poor world is not just a matter of charity," Mallaby writes, concluding, "The United States and its rich allies will gain if African societies grow strong enough to control the pathologies that spill beyond their borders" (Mallaby, Washington Post, 3/21).