■"Bush's Africa policy is being driven by the right women," op-ed by DeWayne Wickham, USA Today, 11 October 2005, p. 13A.
Wickham is always solid and interesting. This op-ed sort of profiles a trio of African-American women in key decision-making positions in State and the National Security Council and the Agency for International Development.
One points out that, "on the education front, more money has been put into Africa that ever before. That's not a political statement. It's just a fact."
This same USAID senior, Sarah Moten, is quoted further as saying, "Forty percent of school-age children in Africa don't attend school. Sixty percent of them are girls. Forty-six million African children have never set foot in a classroom. Education is the engine of development."
What has Bush done? Doubled the amount of educational aid budgeted for Africa.
Read Blueprint for Action, chapter 4, section 3. If you really want to shrink the Gap, you educate young girls. It is #1. Nothing else even comes close.
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