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Remarks
by President Bush and the First Lady on
Africa policy
At the Smithsonian
National Museum of African Art
Washington, D.C.
Cont'd.....PART 2
Last year, I also announced a new
International Education Initiative, which
will help make basic education available to
4 million people in Ghana, Liberia, and
other nations. Laura and I are looking
forward to talking to the leaders of Ghana
and Liberia about this important,
transformative initiative. With both
these steps, we are matching the enthusiasm
of African educators with the generosity of
our taxpayers -- and we believe strongly
that this will open up the door to
opportunity for millions. The good
news is, so do the leaders of the countries
we're going to visit.
The greatest threat to Africa is disease.
The greatest threat for a successful Africa
is the scourge of HIV/AIDS and malaria.
Two out of every three people afflicted with
HIV/AIDS live in sub-Saharan Africa.
The disease is the leading cause of death in
the region. Just a few years ago,
there were fears that HIV/AIDS could wipe
out much of the continent's population, with
death rates that would rival the Black
Plague of the Middle Ages.
We responded. We responded with the
Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. It's
the largest international health initiative
in history to fight a single disease.
(Applause.) In 2002, we pledged $15
billion over five years to support HIV/AIDS
prevention, treatment, and care. We
set some clear principles on how that money
would be spent. We put local partners
in the lead, because they know their people
and their needs. We opened the funding
to faith-based groups -- healers willing to
deliver medicine to remote villages by
bicycle or on foot. We stressed the
importance of changing behavior, so that
fewer people are infected in the first
place.
And the results are striking. When I
visited sub-Saharan Africa five years ago,
or when we visited five years ago, 50,000
people were receiving medicine to treat
HIV/AIDS. And when we return this
week, there will be more than 1.3 million.
(Applause.) One person who knows the
benefits of the Emergency Plan is Tatu
Msangi. She's a single mother from
Tanzania. When she became pregnant,
Tatu went to a clinic run by a Christian
group. Souls showing up to love a
neighbor just like they'd like to be loved
themselves. You know, it didn't take a
federal law to say, go to Africa to provide
love for Tatu, it took a higher calling.
These goals responded.
She learned she was HIV-positive, and
enrolled in a program designed to prevent
mother-to-child transmission. She went
on to deliver a healthy, HIV-free girl,
named Faith. I will see Tatu next week
in Tanzania, but it's not going to be the
first time I met her. See, a few weeks
ago, she and Faith endured a rather windy
State of the Union address. She sat
with Laura in the box, here in the capital
of the nation that helped save their lives.
In all, the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief
has benefited tens of millions in Africa.
Some call this a remarkable success. I
call it a good start. Last May, I
proposed to double our nation's initial
pledge, to $30 billion over the next five
years. (Applause.) The people on
the continent of Africa have to know they're
not alone. The G8 has shown leadership
by agreeing to match our $30 billion pledge.
The private sector has made generous
contributions as well. Think of what
Warner Brothers has done, for example.
And now the time has come for Congress to
act. Members of both parties should
reauthorize the Emergency Plan, maintain the
principles that have made it a success, and
double our commitment to this noble cause.
Malaria is another devastating killer.
In some African countries, malaria takes as
many lives as HIV/AIDS. And the vast
majority of those taken by malaria are
children under the age of five. Every
one of these deaths is unnecessary, because
the disease is entirely preventable and
treatable. So in 2005, America
launched a five-year, $1.2 billion
initiative to provide the
insecticide-treated beds, indoor spraying,
cutting-edge drugs that are necessary to
defeat this disease. It's not a
complicated strategy. It doesn't take
a lot of medical research. We know how
to solve the problem. That's why I put
the Admiral there. He knows how to
solve problems. He can get us from
point A to point B in a straight line.
Well, nearly straight line.
(Laughter.) And so we set a historic
goal -- if you have a treatable problem on
hand, then you're able to set measurable
goals. And the goal is to cut the
number of malaria-related deaths in 15
African nations by half. That's the
goal.
Like the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the
malaria initiative empowers leaders on the
ground to design strategies that work best
for their nations. For example,
President Yayi of Benin has called the fight
against malaria "a fight against misery."
With the help of the malaria initiative,
he's leading a campaign to deliver
insecticide-treated bed nets to children
under five in Benin. I'm looking
forward to hearing how that's going when we
meet him on Benin on our first stop. I
can't wait to find out how well this
initiative is doing.
Like the Emergency Plan, the malaria
initiative has been matched by G8 nations,
which have pledged to cut malaria deaths by
half in an additional 15 countries.
This initiative has also been greeted with
generous support from the private sector,
faith-based groups, and Americans who want
to do something to save somebody's life.
You can buy a $10 bed net and ship it to
Africa to save a life. It doesn't take
much money, but it takes a big heart.
One of the interesting gifts Laura and I got
a couple of years ago for Christmas was bed
nets in our name. It made us feel
great.
Like the Emergency Plan, the malaria
initiative is producing undeniable results.
In just over two years, the initiative has
reached more than 25 million people.
(Applause.) According to new data,
malaria rates are dropping dramatically in
many parts of Africa. If we stay on
this path, an extraordinary achievement is
within reach -- Africa can turn a disease
that has taken its children for centuries
into a thing of the past. And wouldn't
that be fantastic? And so Laura and I
are going to spend time with these leaders,
saying, what a noble opportunity; what a
great goal; what a great way to serve
humankind.
Finally, we're working to empower Africans
to end conflicts, strengthen democracy, and
promote peace. When I took office,
Africa was home to six major conflicts -- in
Angola, Burundi, Congo, Liberia, Sierra
Leone, and southern Sudan. We
concluded that the best way to broker peace
was to support the efforts of African
leaders on the ground, instead of dictating
solutions from Washington, D.C. And
today, every one of them has made progress
toward peace and stability.
For example, the United States worked
closely with Nigeria to help end the
Liberian civil war. When the
international community called for Charles
Taylor to step down in 2003, the President
of Nigeria provided a plane to take him in
exile. When U.S. Marines deployed to
Liberia, Nigerian peacekeepers deployed at
the same time. And today, Liberia's
long war is over. And next week in
Monrovia, Laura and I will meet with
Africa's first democratically-elected woman
President: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
(Applause.)
Even without major conflict or civil war,
security challenges remain in Africa, and
we're working closely with local partners to
address them. The Department of
Defense has established a new African
Command, which will work closely with
African governments to crack down on human
trafficking, piracy, and terrorism across
the continent. We are employing
diplomatic tools as well. In Eastern
Congo, we worked with leaders on the ground
to broker the recent agreements to
demobilize all remaining armed groups.
And we stand ready to help all sides to
implement them. In Kenya, we are
backing the efforts of former U.N. Secretary
General Kofi Annan to end the crisis.
And when we're on the continent I've asked
Condi Rice -- that would be Secretary Rice
-- to travel to Kenya to support the work of
the former Secretary General, and to deliver
a message directly to Kenya's leaders and
people: There must be an immediate
halt to violence, there must be justice for
the victims of abuse, and there must be a
full return to democracy. (Applause.)
In Darfur, the United States will continue
to call the killing what it is – genocide.
We will continue to deliver humanitarian
aid. We will continue to enforce
sanctions, tough sanctions, against the
Sudanese government officials, rebel
leaders, and others responsible for
violence. We expect other nations to
join us in this effort to save lives from
the genocide that is taking place. We
will use all our diplomatic resources to
urge full deployment of an effective United
Nations force. The decision was made
to count on the United Nations to provide
the force necessary to protect people, and
so we're going to support their efforts.
I must confess, I'm a little frustrated by
how slow things are moving. And yet we
will support their efforts to find forces
necessary to make a robust contribution to
save lives.
On this trip, I'm going to visit with brave
peacekeepers from Rwanda, a nation that
knows the pain of genocide and was the first
country to send troops into Darfur.
Other nations need to follow Rwanda's
example. Other nations need to take
this issue seriously, just like the United
States does, and provide more manpower for
this urgent mission. And when they do,
I pledge America will provide the
training and equipment necessary to deploy
the peacekeepers to Darfur.
(Applause.)
America also stands with all in Africa who
live in the quiet pain of tyranny. We
will confront tyranny. In Zimbabwe, a
discredited dictator presides over food
shortages, staggering inflation, and harsh
repression. The decent and talented
people of that country deserve much better.
America will continue to support freedom in
Zimbabwe. And I urge neighbors in the
region, including South Africa, to do the
same. We look forward to the hour when
this nightmare is over, and the people of
Zimbabwe regain their freedom.
These are great challenges, but there is
even greater cause for hope. In the
past four years alone, there have been more
than 50 democratic elections in Africa.
Thriving free societies have emerged in
nations with Islamic majorities, Christian
majorities, majorities of other beliefs --
which is a powerful rebuke to the ideology
of the extremists. In many nations,
women have exercised the right to vote and
run for office. Rwanda now has the
highest percentage of female legislators in
the world. (Applause.) Overall,
more than two-thirds of the nations of
sub-Saharan Africa are free. And for
the rest, the direction of history is clear,
so long as the United States does not lose
its nerve, and retreat into isolationism and
protectionism. The day will come when
a region once dismissed as the "dark
continent" enjoys the light of liberty.
The United States must remain fully
committed to the new era of development that
we have begun with our partners in Africa.
It's in our national interest we do so.
I'm going to work closely with the G8
nations to ensure they keep their promises
as well. Congress must continue to
show its commitment by fully funding the
development programs I described today.
You see, saving lives is a calling that
crosses partisan lines. It remains
equally worthy in both good economic times
and times of economic uncertainty.
Across Africa, people have begun to speak of
the "Lazarus effect," where communities once
given up for dead are coming back to life.
This work of healing and redemption is both
a matter of conscience and a wise exercise
of American influence. The work is not
done. In the face of the needs that
remain, it's important for the African
people to believe the American people are
not going to turn away. That's part of
the purpose of our trip. The changes
taking place in Africa don't always make the
headlines. So don't be frustrated,
Mark. That means the work is quiet,
but it is not thankless.
Last November, I met a woman from Zambia
named Bridget Chisenga. Bridget's
husband died of AIDS, and she expected to
meet the same fate. Then she went to a
clinic operated by Catholic Relief Services,
funded by the American people. Today,
Bridget is healthy. She has a job at
the clinic, where she helps provide AIDS
medicine to others. I want our fellow
citizens to hear what she said: "This
face is alive and vibrant because of your
initiative. I would like to thank
you."
Americans have heard similar words of
gratitude and hope in the past. They
were said about the people who liberated the
concentration camps, and saved the blockaded
city of Berlin, and stood firm until the
prisoners in the gulags were set free.
This spirit of purpose and compassion has
always defined America. And that is
why the people of Africa can be certain they
will always have a friend and partner in the
United States of America.
God bless. (Applause.)
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