US aidUS president George Bush said yesterday he would ask Congress to approve a $1.2 billion programme to reduce deaths from malaria in Africa by a half over five years, and also to provide increased funding for the education of women teachers and legal protection for women.
Mr Bush's initiatives were announced as he prepared to attend next week's G8 summit in Scotland where the focus will be on world poverty. Mr Bush has been under pressure to increase US aid to Africa from European leaders and from rock stars Bono and Bob Geldof, who are staging special concerts this weekend to highlight the fight against poverty.
Also yesterday former president Bill Clinton said that Americans would provide more foreign aid if the American people realised how little they currently give.
In a wide-ranging speech in Washington, Mr Bush said African leaders must themselves be the "agents of reform", rather than "passive recipients of money".
Economic development is "not something we do for countries, it is something they achieve with us", he said in an outline of what he will tell the leaders of the top seven industrialised nations and Russia next week.
The West had to "get beyond empty symbolism and discredited policies" and there had to be an emphasis on encouraging trade, which he called the "engine for development".
Mr Bush said he knew large-scale action could defeat malaria in whole regions of the world. "Together we can lift this threat and defeat this fear across the African continent," he said. Malaria is estimated to kill one million people a year worldwide.
Bono told US television on Sunday that "three thousand Africans die every day of a mosquito bite; that's not acceptable ... and we can stop it".
The malaria initiative - which must be approved by Congress - is aimed at Tanzania, Uganda and Angola in the first year, at least four other countries in 2007 and at least five more in 2008, Mr Bush said, and would eventually cover 175 million people in 15 countries.
Mr Bush also proposed doubling US spending to $400 million on initiatives to promote the education of girls in Africa and providing $55 million over three years to improve legal protections for women in Africa against violence and sexual abuse.
The initiative, along with $674 million in emergency famine relief announced last month, enables Mr Bush to blunt criticism for not supporting the proposal of British prime minister Tony Blair to double global aid to Africa.
Mr Clinton told BBC radio that public opinion could persuade Mr Bush to provide more on overseas aid than the current 0.16 per cent of US GDP.
"We have always been hampered in getting adequate budgets for international assistance by the fact that the American people believe we give much more than we do," he said.
Tom Lantos, the senior Democrat on the House of Representatives international relations committee, welcomed the Bush announcement but warned "it comes with no commitment to use new funding resources in the first year, so it will take money from existing health programmes" for Africa.