| | During his campaign for president, George W Bush said that even though it was 'a country with many problems', Africa was not an area of strategic importance to the US. But Bush's recent actions have proved to speak much louder than his words. Late last year, his administration secured a dramatic increase in funding to fight the global HIV/AIDS pandemic and establish a new, robust foreign aid fund targeted to the world's poorest countries. Much of this new aid funding will go to Africa. Contrary to candidate Bush's previous assertions, the continent has assumed strategic importance as the focus of two of the Bush administration's primary policy goals: fulfilling the agenda of 'compassionate conservatism' and the pursuit of new supplies of oil. |
