A quarter of all African children will die before their fifth birthday. Only half of all adults are literate, and fewer than 20 percent of young people attend high school. Nowhere is the justification for foreign aid more compelling, and nowhere are the potential returns on our long-term investments greater. The Administration is deeply committed to a new and concerted international effort to make development work in Africa. Our foreign assistance programs are paving the way for growing trade and for a foreign policy that looks to Africa's future.
People are the center of our development efforts in Africa.
To reach everyone's common goal of more robust economic growth and stronger ties with Africa, we must begin at a more basic level. Development begins with children who live beyond their first birthdays - children who learn to read and write in school, and who as adults, become full members of civil society, find productive employment, and have their own healthy families. This is the face of development without which economic growth cannot flourish. More African children are attending school and staying there longer, but the proportion of children attending school remains too low. By the same token, no amount of investment in people will create economic growth absent sound economic policies.