WASHINGTON — President Bush, responding to international pressure to do more for Africa, on Thursday proposed a $1.2-billion program to combat malaria and promised to double U.S. aid to the continent over the next five years.
Administration officials said Bush's Africa initiatives, which include smaller programs to increase education and reduce sexual violence, represented a significant new commitment of U.S. resources to many of the world's poorest nations.
But the U.S. plans appeared to fall short of the challenge issued by British Prime Minister Tony Blair in advance of next week's summit of the Group of 8 industrialized nations in Scotland. Blair, the host of the summit, has put aid for Africa at the top of the G-8 agenda.
In remarks previewing the American response to Blair's campaign, which has been supported by religious leaders, relief organizations and rock stars on both sides of the Atlantic, Bush said U.S. aid to Africa had tripled since he took office and would double again by 2010.
"After years of colonization and Marxism and racism, Africa is on the threshold of great advances," Bush told an audience assembled by the conservative Hudson Institute at the Smithsonian Institution's Freer Gallery of Art.
"All who live in Africa can be certain, as you seize this moment of opportunity, America will be your partner and your friend," Bush said.
Stephen J. Hadley, the president's national security advisor, said Bush's pledge would increase U.S. assistance to Africa from $4.3 billion in 2004 to at least $8.6 billion by 2010. Hadley characterized it as the largest development aid increase over the shortest period of time "since Harry Truman and the Marshall Plan."
Some aid experts disputed the Bush administration's claims of past funding increases. Susan Rice, an assistant secretary of State for African affairs in the Clinton administration, said her calculations showed that U.S. aid to the continent had not quite doubled under Bush.
Much of the increase was in the form of emergency food donations, not development assistance. "That's not the kind of aid that Blair and the G-8 want Bush to increase," Rice said during a briefing arranged by the centrist Brookings Institution.
Several independent analysts said Bush's pledge did not appear to satisfy Blair's request for an overall doubling of development assistance from wealthy nations by 2010 and a tripling by 2015.
