In early July, President Bush and the other seven leaders of the world's leading industrial powers - the G-8 - agreed to double their global anti-poverty aid to $50 billion a year by 2010, with half the funding going to Africa. Some development experts say massive and well-targeted spending can wipe out the worst effects of poverty in Africa - the world's poorest continent - in just a few decades. But others, including some Africans, call that plan simplistic, warning that corruption, rampant HIV/AIDS, drought, malaria, lack of infrastructure and civil conflict remain major obstacles to fighting poverty. Indeed, projections show that sub-Saharan Africa will remain far from meeting the U.N.'s first anti-poverty target date, 2015. Meanwhile, even supporters of increased aid to sub-Saharan Africa and other impoverished regions worry that the rich countries may not keep the spending promises announced with great fanfare at the G-8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland.

Peter Katel is a CQ Researcher contributing writer who previously reported on Haiti and Latin America for Time and Newsweek and covered the Southwest for newspapers in New Mexico. He has received several journalism awards, including the Bartolomé Mitre Award for drug coverage from the Inter-American Press Association and awards for investigative and interpretive reporting from the New Mexico Press Association. He holds an A.B. in university studies from the University of New Mexico.