Ending Poverty

In early July, President Bush and the other seven leaders of the world's leading industrial powers — the G-8 — agreed to double their global anti-poverty aid to $50 billion a year by 2010, with half the funding going to Africa. Some development experts say massive and well-targeted spending can wipe out the worst effects of poverty in Africa — the world's poorest continent — in just a few decades. But others, including some Africans, call that plan simplistic, warning that corruption, rampant HIV/AIDS, drought, malaria, lack of infrastructure and civil conflict remain major obstacles to fighting poverty. Indeed, projections show that sub-Saharan Africa will remain far from meeting the U.N.'s first anti-poverty target date, 2015. Meanwhile, even supporters of increased aid to sub-Saharan Africa and other impoverished regions worry that the rich countries may not keep the spending promises announced with great fanfare at the G-8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland.