In The News

Critical of U.S. Policies, Africans Are Giving Bush Chilly Reception

Dana Milbank July 10, 2003
African commentators refuse to tip-toe around the tough topics. Though US President Bush and South African President Mbeki carefully avoided contentious issues at their meeting, newspapers refused to muffle criticism of America's foreign policies and continued to express doubt about the sincerity of the superpower's interest in Africa. In general, says this Washington Post article,...

A Rich Nation, a Poor Continent

Jeffrey D. Sachs July 9, 2003
The cure for Africa’s ills is the one thing the continent lacks: money. According to Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, Africa’s health care problems could be effectively combated with an annual infusion of $25 billion dollars from the developed world, including $8 billion from the US. By bolstering the continent’s nearly non-existent health care programs,...

Bush, in Africa, Promises Aid but Offers No Troops for Liberia

Richard W. Stevenson July 9, 2003
As his first trip to Africa commences, US President Bush is promising to promote democracy, fight AIDS, and increase trade with the continent, but he is offering no immediate assistance in the current bloodbath in Liberia. This reluctance to commit troops to the war torn country belies the emphasis Bush will be placing on the problems plaguing failing states like Liberia over the course of his...

A Helping Hand from Bush to Africans?

Abdallah Abu-Younis July 8, 2003
US President Bush’s agenda for his upcoming trip to Africa is packed with high stakes issues. AIDS, poverty, corruption, and state failure run rampant across the continent, threatening US interests by providing the shroud of chaos for terrorist groups. However, as this editorial in The Arab News points out, Bush must be careful not to generalize about Africa’s problems and solutions. African...

African Pundits Heckle Bush for ‘Safari’

Jefferson Morley July 8, 2003
Africa’s online media has been attacking US President Bush’s agenda even before his five-day trip around the continent got under way.. Journalists in each of the countries he is visiting – as well as in some that he’s not – doubt Bush’s sincerity and motivations vocally or tacitly. Concern over American hegemony figured prominently in the South African and Zambian press, which maintained Bush...

Controlling the Flow

Gamal Nkrumah June 27, 2003
In the same week that European Union (EU) leaders met in Thessaloniki, Greece to discuss migration issues, a vessel carrying African migrants trying to enter Europe sank off the coast of Tunisia, killing some 70 people. This was one of the many vessels operated by illegal immigrant-trafficking gangs in Northern Africa who carry Africans to Mediterranean coastlines. Ironically, top on the agenda...

Researchers Have New Theory on Origin of AIDS Virus

Donald G. McNell, Jr. June 13, 2003
How HIV first infected humans is still a puzzle waiting to be solved. Past research has traced the virus to chimps in Africa. Now scientists have gone a step further – they have found that chimps got the virus from two kinds of monkeys that they ate, each with its own virus. The HIV virus may have been a combination of these two viruses. It is still unknown when and how the viruses merged,...