[Read "An 'African Success Story' Gone Sour," by Blake Lambert, and "Getting Real on Africa, by Suzanne Nossel.]

Your recent story on Uganda is typical of the American tourist-cum-travel writer who, having spent a few days or weeks or even months in Africa, suddenly becomes an "expert" and tells the outside world the "inside story" of what's "really" going on in Africa.

Your reporter is seeing a fraction of the full Uganda story, listening to the loudest voices of criticism without fully grasping the full horror of what Uganda has been through for the last 40 years and more. It makes me sick to see the way Americans, even those who purport to be progressives, complain about an African leader like Museveni, who is one of the few world leaders who actually has a vision, a long-range program, and a cleaner slate than practically any other leader in the region.

-- Margaretta Wa Gacheru

Your article really misrepresented George W. Bush's position on Africa. His "spasms of generosity" in aid to Africa are spasms because his intentions are not real. Bush's rhetoric about not dictating what future administrations spend on aid is a crock of crap.

He is arrogant and is about continuing the old ugly way of colonialism -- dictating to Africans as if they were slow stupid children instead of ancient, colonially bereft and left-behind societies punished for their desire to be independent of colonizers by the same Western world's subsequent neglect.

-- Claire P. Taylor

Your piece on Bush's activism in Africa takes as face value the administration's claims and doesn't even check to see whether they actually do what they purport to. Of Bush's much-vaunted $15 billion for AIDS, less then $3 billion has been allocated, and even less has been spent, and much of what has been spent has gone to ineffectual abstinence programs. The much-ballyhooed recent "extra money" for Africa was money that had been already allocated. Although I expect mendacity from the Bush administration, I expect Salon writers to at least engage in a little fact-checking.

-- Brian Gygi

Ms. Nossel's article on what steps the United States could take in Africa was generally quite good.

However, especially given the mention of Darfur, I was surprised to see no mention of U.S. funding for peacekeeper training under the Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance program (ACOTA, formerly the Africa Crisis Response Initiative).

Funding for ACOTA has remained stagnant under the Bush administration, and according to Michael O'Hanlon and Peter Singer of the Brookings Institute (their article is available here; see page 90), it represents about 10 percent of what would be needed to create a robust African capacity for humanitarian intervention in regional conflicts.

If we are serious about preventing genocidal conflict in Africa, it strikes me that more public attention to programs intended to provide intervention capacity would be helpful -- both to ensure that they are funded at appropriate levels, and that they are having their intended effects.

-- Daniel H. Levine

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