Clinton's thin gloss on US aid in Africa

American aid to the country once called Zaire appeared to have an amazing effect. The more the US gave its ruler, Mobutu Sese Seko, the shorter Zaire's roads seemed to get. By the time Mobutu was overthrown in 1997, after two decades of American and other western largesse, his country had just about one tenth of the paved roads it had had at independence in the early '60s. Once US aid shrank, the roads started getting longer again.

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, began a tour of Africa this month with a thinly veiled warning that China is out to plunder the continent and its governments would do well to huddle under the protective wing of America's commitment to freedom. Clinton told an audience in Senegal that, unlike other countries: