Investors Business Daily:

George W. Bush has been singled out as the American president who has done the most for Africa. So where’s the recognition, both in the media and the black community, of this worthy achievement?

Bill Clinton might have been America’s first black president, but it seems he didn’t do as much for Africa as Bush has. Bob Geldof, Irish rocker and Africa activist, says the Texas oilman, who is wrapping up his second trip to the continent, “has done more than any other president so far.”

That’s high praise from Geldof, a man who has spent much of the last 20 years fixated on Africa’s many problems. He sees Bush’s efforts to fight disease and poverty in Africa as “the triumph of American policy.” Though he says it was “unexpected of the man,” Geldof admits both the president and the nation “rose to the occasion.”

Geldof rightly chastises the American media for ignoring Bush’s contributions to Africa.

But it would be unrealistic to have expected otherwise. This is a national press corps that seems to notice homelessness and poverty only when a Republican is in the White House, and which itself votes heavily Democratic.

Meanwhile, African-Americans give little support to Bush — he got 11% of their vote in 2004 after taking 8% in 2000. Black leaders — such as NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, who has called Bush a liar, compared his judicial nominees to the Taliban and equated the GOP to Nazis — continue their shrill verbal assaults on the man.

Yet under Bush, the U.S. has boosted development and humanitarian aid to Africa from $1.4 billion in his first year in office to $4 billion a year today. He’s also sought $30 billion to fight AIDS.

Trade — far more efficient than aid — between our country and Africa has more than doubled during his terms. This administration has also actively sought to stop the genocide in Darfur and has led in attempts to end wars in Sierra Leone, Sudan and Congo.

As the U.S. press swoons over Barack Obama and his bromidic promise of “change” to the exclusion of almost all else, the African media have noticed Bush’s work.

It wasn’t the New York Times or ABC, but AllAfrica.com that gratefully acknowledged that Bush’s policies “have saved millions of (African) lives and lifted many others from abject poverty.”