"When It Comes to Africa, Bush has More on His Mind Than Aid "

[G_j]

http://www.sundayherald.com/50283

Published on Sunday, June 12, 2005 by The Sunday Herald (Scotland)

When It Comes to Africa, Bush has More on His Mind Than Aid

by Torcuil Crichton

For the United States, the balance sheet of what comes out of Africa far outweighs what goes back in. Oil, raw materials and the expansion of the free market are the principal reasons the US engages in Africa, anything else is pretty much incidental.

Chancellor Gordon Brown may have wrung significant support from the US for the debt relief deal he announced after yesterday's meeting of G8 ministers, but in the balance book of persuading the richest nation on Earth to help the poorest continent, the bottom line is not all that encouraging.

America will have nothing to do with the commitment to providing 0.7% of GDP (gross domestic product) for aid which the European powers have signed up to. The US will have nothing to do with Gordon Brown's International Finance Facility (IFF) which would use the sale of gold reserves to speed up the rate of aid delivery. According to aid agencies, the Bush administration's agreement on debt cancellation simply makes more economic sense than the European proposals for debt relief which would see the impoverished African nations picking up the repayment baton again halfway through the next decade.

<snip>
At present 12% of US oil comes from Africa and by 2015, when the UN's Millennium Goals to halve world poverty will be laughably incomplete, that proportion will have reached 25%. To control the security of oil supply will, in all likelihood, require a large US military presence near the oilfields.

..more..

[Stockholm]

1. Yes like how to get his hands on the Sudanese oil

without getting involved in the western part (Darfur).

The US is seriously lagging in the region as a result of neglecting sub-sahara after the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war.

China is the biggest player with the government owned CNPC (China National Petroleum Company) dominating the largest domestic oil production company GNPOC (Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company) and early explained that they would veto any UN resolution condemning the Sudanese government.

But some say a new "scramble for Africa" is on the way with the US building new military bases in the oil-rich island state of San Tomé and Príncipe in the Gulf of Guinea.

[mopaul]

2. think of all the slave labor that could come from africa

think i'm living in a fantasy world? i am.