Promises once, promises twice: a view on the Abuja Declaration and a new opportunity for African malaria control

In the recent Abuja Declaration, African leaders called on aid donors to deliver at least $1 billion annually for malaria control in Africa. This expenditure is small in light of malaria’s devastating cost in attenuating economic growth and development. Yet development aid donors encounter barriers in increasing their disbursements for malaria control: the scientific and technical challenges of designing, implementing and monitoring malaria control programs can be overwhelming for these institutions. The malaria control community, working with Roll Back Malaria, is ideally placed to lend advice and assistance on these matters, which can help facilitate an increase in the available funds for malaria control in Africa. Over one century into the history of scientific malaria control, too little has changed in Africa. The disease still has its claws firmly planted in the fabric of African life, where it causes untold suffering and impedes economic development. This state of affairs owes itself more to an unspoken political neglect than scientific failure, evidenced, for instance, by the world’s agreement to leave Africa out of the malaria eradication and control era of the 1950s to 1970s, or the dearth of research on malaria drugs and vaccines today. Th