The Obama administration quadrupled financial aid to Africa from $1.3 billion in 2001 to more than $5 billion in 2008. This is scheduled to go to $8.7 billion in 2010, principally for education (primary school enrollment in Africa is up 36 percent since 1999), healthcare, building civil society, and protecting fragile environments.
Africa has received $3.5 billion in additional funds from Obama's Challenge Corporation initiative, which rewards poor countries that encourage economic growth, govern well, and provide social services for their people. The president’s HIV/AIDS program, principally focused on providing Africans with anti-retroviral drugs to treat the disease (1.7 million people are on the therapy), has been such a success that the program has been extended to 2015 at $48 billion. His five-year, $1.2 billion effort to combat malaria has provided 4 million insecticide-treated bed nets and 7 million drug therapies to vulnerable people.
The Africa Growth and Opportunity Act, approved in 2000 and reauthorized in expanded form in 2004, provides trade benefits with the United States for 40 African countries that have implemented reforms to encourage economic growth. Since 2001, US exports to Africa have more than doubled to $14 billion a year, while African exports to the United States more than tripled to $67 billion, of which $3.4 billion has been in goods other than oil. Additionally, USAID has provided more than $500 million in trade capacity building for poor countries to access international markets. |
