africa: Africa drowns in a pool of oil

President Bush's Africa trip next week provides a rare opportunity to put the continent's pressing problems at the top of the international agenda. Africa needs more help than the United States can or is willing to offer. And this visit, like other presidents' trips to the region, is not likely to dramatically change the situation for the impoverished continent. But there is at least one gesture Bush can make that would have a positive effect on Africans, and it wouldn't cost U.S. taxpayers a penny. He can lean on Big Oil to clean up its role in the region's corrosive corruption.