British Prime Minister Tony Blair will meet US President George Bush tomorrow (Tuesday 7th June 2005), asking for the US to back proposals to offer unprecedented levels of aid to Africa. Blair is rallying world support for his proposals ahead of the G8 Summit of the world’s richest nations’ leaders in Edinburgh next month, and plans to ask for a doubling of aid funds to Africa, as well as complete debt relief for the world’s poorest nations.
Blair will ask of Bush this despite the US being more generous last year than ever in its history towards the African continent. Last year the US gave US$3.2 billion in foreign aid according to The Christian Science Monitor, which is about US$4.50 per sub-Saharan African. This is more than any other nation in the world, and triple what the nation have in 2000.
Blair and his finance minister Gordon Brown have proposed that the rich countries should pay the debt as one of the solutions. Another solution mentioned has been to sell some of the International Monetary Fund's gold reserves.
Bush' administration has opposed both scenarios though, and has suggested that the debt should be paid from direct aid budgets, which would result in African countries not receiving any additional funds.
Ahead of the G8 summit, leaders of the European Union have already agreed to provide 0.7% GDP for foreign aid by 2015, so that the targets of the UN may be met.
However, the U.S. has rejected such a target claiming that it already spends more money on foreign aid than any other country – although the amount they offer is still very much under the target GDP proposed by EU nations - just 0.16% of the US GDP.
