ANALYSIS<$> — US Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill gladdened some Africans merely by touring their often neglected continent for ten days to study poverty.

Others watching the lengthy visit by the conservative former businessman and his rock-star travelling-partner Bono — a very unconservative advocate of more aid — saw only a patronising attempt to polish the West’s image among the world’s poorest.

“They are following in what I call ‘Tarzan’s footsteps’. It’s new faces but the same old Western paternalism,” said Kenyan sociologist Katama Mkangi.

“The visit is based on a Big Brother attitude that says it’s for the white race to develop Africa. And Bono is a bigger threat to Africa than O’Neill, because his thinking about more aid will just increase our dependence on the West.”

Both critics and admirers of the odd couple’s tour agree it is too early to judge whether the visit will inspire a change in US thinking about how to help enrich the poorest continent.

But they say prospects for a change in US trade protection — a key concern of officials O’Neill met in Ghana, South Africa, Uganda and Ethiopia — remain uncertain at best.

Apart from a disastrous foray into peacekeeping in Somalia in the early 1990s, Washington’s priorities in Africa since the end of apartheid have focused on oil and mining, AIDS and human rights. Since September 11, terrorism is an additional concern.

But many African policymakers are more concerned about trade protection in the form of new agricultural subsidies approved by President George W. Bush, a move described by critics as a bid for support from farm states in Congressional elections.

Bono and many analysts argue such measures handicap Africans in their struggle to export the cocoa, coffee, tea and cotton produced by their overwhelmingly agricultural economies.

“We have seen the industrialised world as a whole show a tendency to give grudgingly on trade protection,” Tony Twine of Econometrix in South Africa said.

“I would not expect dramatic changes to US policy towards Africa. I’m sure Mr. O’Neill is not unworthy, but it’s because of the realpolitik of the situation.”

Economists say aid from the United States and Europe amounts to one sixth of the $300 billion they pay in subsidies to prop up domestic agriculture.

Africans say such trade barriers, including minimum health and packaging standards that poor country producers cannot meet, help keep Africa poor and indirectly deter foreign investment.

O’Neill heard complaints about US subsidies in his private talks and will report them back home, but in front of the cameras he offered only a stock comment about free trade.

But the self-described odd couple of international aid diplomacy did succeed in drawing attention to the suffering that they say much of the world tries to ignore.

As they toured clinics, slums and markets, the unlikely duo also stirred debate about the efficiency of aid funding in Africa, graveyard of many a well-intentioned project handicapped by the incompetence or graft of foreigners or Africans.

At Soweto’s Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital in South Africa, project staff and donor agency officials told the pair that many of Soweto’s 2,000 HIV-positive pregnant women remained untreated despite $50 million in annual donations earmarked for AIDS.

“This whole business about having so much money...and it not going primarily to treatment is just a stunning revelation,” O’Neill said angrily. “Before we ask for more money, for God’s sake what are we doing with what we’ve got?”