As released from the White House yesterday, Obama will visit Accra, Ghana, on July 10 and 11. It will be his first trip to the sub-Sahara Africa as U.S. president. (His first trip to the African continent as U.S. president will be to Egypt in June.)
From the May 16 “White House Release on Upcoming Obama Travel:
“The President and Mrs. Obama will visit Accra, Ghana, from July 10 to 11. While in Ghana, the President will discuss a range of bilateral and regional issues with Ghanaian President Mills. The President and Mrs. Obama look forward to strengthening the U.S. relationship with one of our most trusted partners in sub-Saharan Africa, and to highlighting the critical role that sound governance and civil society play in promoting lasting development.”
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Yesterday, former President Bill Clinton announced an upcoming trip to Ethiopia, Rwanda, Liberia and Senegal to promote the Clinton Foundation’s new programs to fight AIDS and malaria. Earlier this month, the Clinton Foundation “reached an agreement with several pharmaceutical companies to slash the price of the top anti-malaria treatment by 30 percent.”(AFP)
President Clinton travels to Africa once a year and his first trip was while he was president in 1998. Due to ONE members’ “Visit Africa” campaign in February, both Senators McCain and Obama have pledged, that if they’re elected, they’ll visit the continent during their presidency. Check out their pledges here.
The 100,000 “Visit Africa” petitions have been delivered and we’ve heard back from the candidates.
After you check out the candidates’ responses, take a few minutes and write a letter to the editor of your local paper. Writing a letter to the editor is your chance to talk about the poverty-fighting successes highlighted on the recent presidential trip to Africa – successes ONE members have helped make possible – and our campaign urging the next president to visit Africa in his or her first term.
-Aaron Banks
For Americans, and especially our next president, President Bush’s trip to Africa last week wasn’t a victory lap. It’s a starting line. A challenge. The opening, not the closing, of a legacy in which medicine and health diplomacy serve as a currency for peace.
The trip demonstrated for the next president, whoever that may be, the tremendous opportunity that awaits in Africa. Yes, there is much work to do, and we are still confronted by staggering realities: More than 24.7 million people still have HIV/AIDS in Africa alone; thousands still die from malaria each day, and more than one billion people worldwide still don’t have access to clean water.
But never before have we had the tools we now possess to do this vital work – the medicines and technologies that are saving lives as you read these words have never been so inexpensive and so readily available. When you think about it, it’s amazing that AIDS drugs now cost as little as $1 a day . . . that a mosquito net can now protect a child from malaria for five years for $5 . . . that a well can provide clean, safe drinking water for 20 years at a cost of only $20 a person.
And never before have we had so many answers to the doubts of the past, the criticisms that dominated the debate over the effectiveness of American foreign assistance for a generation. Many of the old presumptions about Africa and other developing regions have been proved wrong, addressed through transparency and accountability, or dismissed by new approaches and 21st century technologies.
Last week President Bush visited some of the HIV-positive men, women, and children in poverty-stricken communities who are living today because of American-funded medicines. To date, around 1.4 million Africans now receive anti-retroviral pills through the president’s AIDS initiative.
Want to see health diplomacy making a difference? Want to see medicine serving as a currency for peace? Stare into the eyes of a mother whose daughter is alive thanks to America.
Critics once said that investing in Africa was worse than throwing money away, that the dollars would find their way into corrupt leaders’ bank accounts and perpetuate poverty. But the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) has changed the way America provides foreign assistance, attacking corruption head on by engaging leaders to take the difficult steps toward government reform, accountability, and transparency.
Just last week the president signed the largest MCA grant ever, a $698 million agreement with Tanzania. More than merely sending dollars, the MCA ensures that American assistance not only reaches those it’s designed to help, but that it’s setting structures in place – the rule of law, freer economic policies – for African countries to thrive on their own.
Last week we saw what American compassion and leadership can look like when invested in proven, effective solutions we know work.
I hope our next president is paying attention. I hope he or she sees the power of American health diplomacy, of using medicine as a currency for peace: the power to save lives, to lead under the guiding principles of compassion and human dignity.
We have the science. We can afford the pills and bed nets and wells. We have answers to the classic criticisms of the past. The question that remains is simple: Do we have the will to employ all this know-how, all these answers to help countless people throughout the world?
That sounds like a question for our next president.
-Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, M.D.
More than 100,000 ONE members have signed ONE Action’s “Visit Africa” petition.
Send it to a friend to keep the momentum going.
In just a week and a half, 97,220 ONE members have signed ONE Action’s “Visit Africa” petition.
We’re hoping to reach 100,00 by Monday at noon.
Sign on now if you haven’t already.
And send on to your friends if you have.
-Virginia Simmons
In just one week, more than 67,000 ONE members have signed ONE Action’s “Visit Africa” petition.
Sign on if you haven’t already.
