Transcript:

Host: This is “On the Line,” and I’m Eric Felten.

President George W. Bush, back from a trip to Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana, and Liberia, says the United States is helping a new generation of African leaders change the continent:

President Bush: “They are reformers who are determined to steer their nations toward freedom and justice, prosperity and peace. They’re also the result of new American policy and new American commitments.”

Host: The United States has launched major initiatives in Africa on malaria, HIV/AIDS treatment, education, and good governance. During the Bush administration, U.S. development assistance to Africa has more than doubled -- from about ten billion dollars in 2000 to twenty-three billion dollars in 2006. Mr. Bush says America’s mission is strategic, as well as moral:

President Bush: “This mission serves our security interests -- people who live in chaos and despair are more likely to fall under the sway of violent ideologies. This mission serves our moral interests -- we’re all children of God, and having the power to save lives comes with the obligation to use it.”

Host: What effect is U.S. aid having in Africa? I’ll ask my guests -- Massimo Calabresi, White House correspondent for TIME magazine; Sulayman Nyang, professor of African Studies at Howard University; and Roger Bate, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Welcome, and thanks for joining us today.

Sulayman Nyang, I want to start with you. In the last quote from President Bush, he talks about the humanitarian efforts from the United States being crucial to fighting back the spread of violent extremism in the region. What is the state of that issue in Africa? To what extent is the spread of extremism an issue in Africa?

Nyang: I think the President’s visit to Africa was inspired by the moral currency of America in Africa. How is America perceived by the Africans towards the end of his term as president of the United States? So you have these three issues -- the issue of humanitarianism, which is very central, with regard to the President and many of his supporters in the United States, who are linked to the missionary groups in Africa. Secondly, the question of terrorism, because the countries that were visited, such as Tanzania, suffered from terrorism before 9/11 was faced by Americans. And I think many people would be very conscious of this fact. Then the third issue, really, is an issue which did not come up, but is very much related to peace and tranquility in Africa and the establishment of viable economies under democratic rule, since the President has been talking about democracy.

Host: Massimo Calabresi, what’s your sense of how the administration sees what it’s doing in Africa? To what extent is this humanitarian, and to what extent is it part of a strategy, a security strategy?

Calabresi: It’s clearly both. The administration, the White House -- Bush himself looks at his programs in Africa as one of the untold successes of their administration. And by and large, the kinds of programs the professor was referring to are seen in Washington on both sides of the political spectrum as having been fairly successful. There is controversy about aspects of the AIDS program. There’s controversy about one thing the professor didn’t mention -- AFRICOM, the new military command for Africa. But by and large, the President’s initiatives are seen as doing two things quite successfully -- one, improving America’s image in the region, advancing a kind of “hearts and minds” agenda that helps in the larger strategic sense for the United States, and secondly, doing good morally. The President talks often about the benefit of getting one-point-five million people on AIDS[-treating] drugs in Africa. There is some indication that there is not just a humanitarian result for the United States. The Pew Global Attitudes Survey, for example, is most commonly covered in the news for the number of countries that have turned against the United States during the Bush Presidency. During the same period, however, a number of African countries have become very supportive of the United States. Five of the top pro-American countries on the Pew Global Attitudes Survey are African countries that are direct recipient of AIDS money under the President’s program.

Host: Roger Bate, is this a case of doing well strategically by doing good?

Bate: I think that’s absolutely what it is. I think there’s no doubt that the trip was a success. I would agree with what my colleague said, that it’s not an unbridled success, but it is a success. There are problems related to the war on terror. Do we have allies that are interested? What is the Wahhabist influence across parts of countries [such as] Burundi, where there are mosques going up all the time in the capital, Bujumbura, and many other places? I’m not an expert on that. My colleagues at AEI inform me of such things. On the health stuff, which I know more about, I think it’s almost a total success. There are problems with the running of some of the HIV programs -- the issue of abstinence versus condoms -- but on the whole, there’s no doubt there’s benefit. I’m just reading a paper at the moment, “Keeping Malaria out of Zanzibar,” which is an island off Tanzania. It’s been a huge success. They’ve managed to reduce malaria rates by over 90%. And that’s an independent report. And there’s no doubt that there are massive successes. Will they sustain? That’s the critical part of any aid over all periods of time. The only way -- And there has been criticism of the President for going to countries where he’s wanted, if you like, rather than countries where there’s been more opposition. But on the other hand, aid only ever works when the countries that you’re giving it to want to work with you. It has to be a partnership, and if you don’t have that partnership – so I think the President was right to pick the countries he did. He could have gone elsewhere, as well, but I think it was definitely as success.

Host: And one of the pieces of the U.S. policy toward Africa is the Millennium Challenge Accounts, an effort to push for aid in response to efforts toward good government -- good governance and good government. And when President Bush was in Tanzania, he had this to say about it. Let’s take a look:

President Bush: “America doesn’t want to spend money on people who steal the money from the people. [ Laughter ] We like dealing with honest people and compassionate people. We want our money to go to help the human condition. We join you in this because of your government and your personal commitment to fight corruption, to invest in the education and health of your people, and to accept and expand the marketplace economics. Those are the conditions of the Millennium Challenge Account.”

Host: Massimo Calabresi, how new and how successful has that approach been?

Calabresi: It’s certainly new, and the success, almost universally, you will find experts say that it’s too early to tell. Most of the bulk of the five or six billion dollars of MCC money has gone to places outside of Africa. The problem has been finding countries in Africa that have cleared the threshold criteria for receiving money. And in fact, the Tanzania clip is a bit bittersweet, and his stop there is a bit bittersweet, because, finally, last fall, Tanzania became the first country to get a really large block of money -- the promise of a really large block of money, close to seven hundred million dollars. Bush signed the compact for that money while he was there, but a week before he left on his trip, the prime minister and two cabinet officials resigned in a corruption scandal over the provision of energy to the country. So it’s not entirely clear yet that the kind of hurdles that the MCC is supposed to create to encourage countries to become less corrupt before they receive aid is, in fact, taking root. But by and large, the program is well received.

Host: Roger Bate.

Bate: I would agree with that. I think that it is well received. And I think doing some aid along the lines of the Millennium Challenge Account is the right way to go forward. I think it’s an interesting initiative, to require countries to do things before you give them aid. I mean, there are numerous examples of governments which have not taken aid seriously. Kenya, for example, being sold by the World Bank the same agriculture project four times over a twenty-year period. Everyone knew that they weren’t going to implement them, but the aid went ahead, anyway. So, yes, it’s too early to say how successful it’s been, but I think, at least, having some of your aid contingent on good performance in advance of receiving it of the countries is a good idea. So as initiative, it’s a good idea, but it is too early to say how successful it’s been.

Host: Sulayman Nyang.

Nyang: I think I agree with my colleagues, in terms of their formulation of the issues. I think three issues immediately come to mind, and I think the President is very much aware of the reality. One is corruption, which is perennial in the developing countries, and particularly in certain parts of Africa. But I think the judgment that went into the presidential visit to Tanzania was grounded on certain consideration. One is, this is where you have the triple linkage --democratization, health and humanitarian effort, antiterrorism -- all converge in the Tanzanian case. So, by making it very clear in his speech, he was sounding the political host -- that corruption is unwanted in Washington. I mean, if it was tolerated to we’re blindsided to it -- “Now that we are giving you the money, we want our money to be in the right place.” Second thing is, it should be remembered that the Tanzanians and the Kenyans and many Africans were not very happy when you had the [al-Qaida] bombing in the embassy, and there was not much comfort or support at the time. It became more apparent to them, after what happened in 9/11, that there was a lot of concern and interest. So, going to Tanzania was useful for the President in the sense that he could have gone to Kenya, which has been the favorite nation, as far as the East African countries are concerned, but the President had to tell the Kenyan leadership that, “With regard to governance, you are not performing well.” So, between governance and corruption, a little corruption may be accepted, but with a warning against the corrupting agents.

Host: One of the other issues that President Bush took up while in Africa were the health initiatives that have been part of the Africa campaign, and let’s hear what he had to say about that.

President Bush: “This is my second trip to the continent of Africa, and I’ve come to remind our fellow citizens that it is in our interest to help countries deal with curable diseases like malaria and difficult diseases like HIV/AIDS, that it’s in our interest to promote trade between the continent of Africa and the United States of America, that it’s in our interest to provide education money so governments will educate children.”

Host: Dr. Bate, what has been the policy on malaria and HIV and how is it different from what went before?

Bate: The key aspects, particularly of malaria -- the President’s Malaria Initiative -- is that it is being driven by policies which, one, we know work, and, two, there is an attempt to measure performance. A lot of aid, historically, and certainly for disease control, has been -- There’s been financial transfers from the Western -- the U.S. -- to an African nation, and it’s gone into the health system without being able to actually assess whether there’s been some success. What the Malaria Initiative, in particular -- the HIV one, it’s harder, but I’ll get on to that -- what the Malaria Initiative is succeeding in doing is actually measuring how U.S. tax dollars are leading to lives saved on the ground. And this is absolutely certain, as I said. Will it be sustainable is another question, but it’s absolutely certain that it’s having that effect. As Massimo mentioned, over nearly one-point-three, one-point-four million people on HIV treatment -- that’s an incredibly amazing amount of people to be treated with complicated drugs in difficult settings. However, it does have problems, because if you start putting a lot of money at treating a disease like HIV and you are, with good intention, trying to save the lives of people or prevent them from dying, at the very least, with HIV treatment, you may draw resources -- and I don’t necessarily mean financial, because the U.S. is providing the money -- but you may provide [that] the best doctors and nurses are leaving pediatric programs to go and work on HIV because they can get paid a lot more. So the U.S. is aware of this, and it’s trying to do something about it, but it’s never easy to do these kind of things. But on the whole, I’m very, very positive about the President’s Malaria Initiative and pretty positive about the AIDS work.

Host: Sulayman Nyang, how important are improvements in disease control in Africa, to all of the other problems -- economic and political and violence -- everything else afflicting the continent?

Nyang: I think most of the Africans would say that health comes first, before anything else, because unless you are healthy, you are not going to be in any position to develop your society, so you address the issue of health. The major problem of the African government is they have limitations, with regard to finance. So they find themselves dependent on foreign sources to finance health, which is the number-one issue. So, before you can accomplish economic or educational development, you have to address the problem of health. So, AIDS has received greater attention abroad, but most of the African doctors and medical experts would tell you malaria, tuberculosis, and a host of others are the dominant diseases. But AIDS, of course, enjoys global recognition. So, in order to negotiate between these different diseases, AIDS has to be the subject of interest when you talk about health to foreigners. But if you can raise local funds to address the perennial issues of health, then you have to do it. So, this is a very delicate relationship between local funding and external support.

Host: Roger Bate.

Bate: Very briefly, on that -- I agree with that. That’s absolutely true. But one does have to look at a country like Botswana, which has one of the highest HIV rates in Africa, but has managed to sustain economic growth and has grown, over a thirty-year period, averaging four or five percent per annum. So, even with having a massively high HIV rate, you can still grow and develop. I mean, Botswana has -- There are caveats that I would add to that if I were writing a long paper about it -- but there’s no doubt that affluent countries can grow, even with a burden of significant disease. So, combating -- Health is important, but if you don’t have the institutions of a free society -- if you don’t have democracy, property rights, protection, the rule of law -- as you know, then you’re not going to grow. And so I think they come first.

Host: Massimo Calabresi, on the one point that Sulayman made about issues that attract attention in the West -- HIV/AIDS, because it’s a disease that also afflicts many people in the West, this is something that’s very high on the radar screen, whereas malaria is something virtually unknown in the developed world. How is it that President Bush decided to put so much effort into malaria when it’s not something that there’s a real sort of political support network for, if you will, in the U.S.?

Calabresi: There’s not a political support network for it. There has been a movement among some celebrities to try and heighten awareness to the lesser diseases, or less well-known diseases in the West. And, also, it should be said that many of these programs existed in some form or another, usually much, much smaller form, already, thanks to some advocacy on Capitol Hill. Senator Patrick Leahy has been a fairly regular advocate for some of these programs before they got the kind of bully-pulpit boost that the President gave them. It’s worth noting, in this regard, as well, that he’s added to the diseases -- President Bush has -- that he is willing to spend money on. In this trip, he announced a three-hundred-and-fifty-million dollar, five-year program for what they call “neglected diseases,” like schistosomiasis and other ones that have been seen as having been overlooked amid the torrent of money going to AIDS and, secondly, malaria. I would like to say one larger question about governance in Africa. I think that all of this good news in Africa needs to be taken with a grain of salt. There has been, over the last year -- over the last eight years, there’s been good news in the move toward liberalization in sub-Saharan Africa. But in the last year, there has been several troubling developments, and I think, both because of the security concerns and because of the massive increase in economic interest and the resources available in sub-Saharan Africa, there has been a troubling trend towards what one might call the Cold War paradigm of returning to sort of dictatorial and antidemocratic rule in some countries.

Host: Now, we only have a minute or two left, but along those lines, one of the issues that President Bush took up was the genocide in Darfur, where we have, clearly, this kind of political violence going on. We have very little time left, but where does that stand in Africa’s ability to deal with those issues?

Nyang: Quickly, I think the problem of political leadership is critical, and Darfur is a critical issue, because in Darfur, the Sudanese government is facing a critical problem of resistance from members of a particular province. But I think the larger issue, really, relating to health, politics, and terrorism, is to make sure that you have governments like the government in Botswana that has developed capacity to use its resources and to build a democratic society, so that you can have economic development while paying close attention to health issues.

Bate: Absolutely.

Host: Roger Bate, what’s your sense of prospects for reining in violence in Africa? Are we going to see more Darfur-like situations or not?

Bate: Generally speaking, for a continent, over a decade’s period, I’m very positive. I think every decade, there have been more peaceful transfers of power, and I think that will continue. But there are dark spots. There are problems. And you look at the Sudan. You look at Zimbabwe. You look at Kenya at the moment. There are problems, but on the whole, I’m generally positive. The one thing I would say -- One of the problems, I thought, for this trip -- there wasn’t enough focus on business. And where China’s winning -- although their behavior, in terms of governance is not good -- where they’re winning is they talk business the whole time. And as far as I know, in the entire five-, six-day trip, President Bush really only did one major business-related visit. And I think that’s the wrong signal to send. Africa is open for business. It needs our help, in terms of aid, but it needs our trade much more.

Host: I’m afraid that’s going to have to be the last word for today. We’re out of time, but I’d like to thank my guests -- Massimo Calabresi, White House correspondent for TIME magazine; Sulayman Nyang, professor of African Studies at Howard University; and Roger Bate, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Before we go, I’d like to invite you to send us your questions or your comments. You can reach us through our website at www.voanews.com/ontheline. For “On the Line,” I’m Eric Felten.