Transcript
Susan Rice: Good morning everyone. This is Susan Rice at the Brookings Institution. And we wanted to share with you this morning some results of an analysis that we've done on U.S. aid levels to Africa.
As you are probably aware, President Bush has stated on a number of occasions in recent weeks, particularly around the time of his most recent meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair, that the United States has tripled its assistance to sub-Saharan Africa. And he's referred to the period of the last four years, making a comparison between the last completed fiscal year of the Clinton administration, FY 2000, and the last completed fiscal year of this administration, FY 2004. And he and others in the administration have said that they have actually increased aid to about $3.2 billion.
We thought that was an interesting claim and decided to get behind the numbers, and we have looked at all "spigots," to use the State Department terminology, for aid. That means every possible program through which aid could flow to Africa, from child survival programs and development assistance in USAID to economic support funds which are State Department security—often security-related funds, foreign military, financing, peacekeeping, AIDS, narcotics, non-proliferation, refugees, Peace Corps, the multi-lateral institutions like the African Development Bank, the Millennium Challenge Account Debt Relief, and, of course, food aid.
And when you do that, the numbers paint a different reality than the administration has claimed.
In the first instance, the number for FY 2000, the last year of the Clinton administration, is considerably higher than the [Bush] administration's numbers would suggest. The total for FY 2000 in nominal dollar terms, was $2,034,269,000–$2,034,269,000. The actual total for FY '04, the last completed fiscal year of the Bush administration was $3,399,416,000. That is an increase in nominal dollar terms of 67 percent, or more importantly, in real dollar terms of 56 percent, which falls substantially short of a tripling. In fact, it's not even a doubling, either in nominal dollar terms or in real dollar terms over the period fiscal 2000 to fiscal 2004.
What is also interesting is, when you get behind those aggregate numbers and you look at what they consist of, you'll find that more than 53 percent of the total increase between fiscal 2000 and fiscal 2004 consists of emergency food aid, which is important; obviously it meets a need. It meets a need that varies from year to year depending on the circumstances on the ground. But it is not development assistance; it is not the sort of resources that enables countries to embark on a path of sustainable development. In effect, it's important for life saving but it's, from a development point of view, a band-aid.
So a substantial portion of that increase from 2000 to 2004, over 50 percent, is emergency food aid, not development assistance of the sort that is being sought by Prime Minister Tony Blair at the G-8 Summit coming up next week and of the sort that the United States has been asked to increase.
If you look at fiscal 2005, which of course is not a completed fiscal year—and when we're having to deal with the administration's own estimates of what will be spent in fiscal 2005—again you don't find a tripling or even a doubling of assistance to Africa, although it has increased over fiscal 2004 if the estimates hold true. And in that instance, the real dollar increase over fiscal 2000 would be 78 percent, again less than the one hundred percent that would represent a doubling. And again, 50 percent of that increase is emergency food aid.
I have a great deal of detail behind these numbers, I'm happy to discuss them with you. But the big picture is that when you step back and look at what is on the table for decision at the G-8 Summit next week, it's Prime Minister Blair's proposal that aid to Africa be increased to $25 billion by fiscal 2015. Most of our G-8 colleagues have agreed to that and more. In fact, most of our OECD country colleagues have agreed to the U.N. target affirmed in 2002 at Monterrey to achieve 0.7 percent of gross national income devoted to overseas development assistance by 2015.
The U.S. has not agreed to that, nor has it agreed to Tony Blair's more specific and less ambitious goal for Africa, which is to reach $25 billion. And, in refusing to make that commitment, the administration has cited numbers with respect to its own increases in aid to Africa which are actually not borne out when one does the analysis.
I'm happy to take your questions.
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