In the last seven days
- The European Union hosted its Africa Summit, where the biggest news was Mugabe (and the biggest No Show was Gordon Brown);
- Condoleeza Rice traveled to Addis Ababa prior to her attendance at the NATO Foreign Ministerial;
- General "Kip" Ward, commander of AFRICOM, met with African regional organizations;
- UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon launched a distress call for troop and equipment contributions for the Darfur peacekeeping effort.
Now that the world has paid attention to Africa, we can say that 2007 came and went without Africa being completely forgotten.
Last week the Belgian francophone daily "Le Soir" carried a front page photo opening its coverage of the EU-Africa Lisbon summit. I'm sorry, but their facile placement of a photo of a little African child, a tear running down his cheek, is the kind of attitude toward Africa that shows only scant evolution since the time of King Leopold's rape of the Congo.
How many times must Africa listen to the West's default position on Africa - patronizing, platitudinous, pandering, preachy, paternalistic - and then compare it to that of China, which invests massively in Africa for base reasons of self-interest. But at least they don't preach.
I won't try to answer my own question, but here is another conundrum: why, after being called "Africa's First World War," and after the loss of (4 million?) people through guns & machetes, starvation, and AIDS-infected rape...why in God's name is the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo relegated to the back pages? One could simply add the DRC's plight to that of other forgotten African conflicts (Eritrea-Ethiopia; Ethiopia-Somalia; Morocco-Polisario etc.), if it weren't for the (inordinate?) attention paid to the conflict in the Sudanese region of Darfur. Simply type "Darfur" into Google, and you'll come up with innumerable links to genocide, plus refs to George Clooney, Colin Powell, and a host of other well-intentioned people. Not to mention the still-imprisoned in Chad French do-gooders from "l'Arche de Zoe," who mixed up humanitarian intervention with impunity.
At least Condoleeza Rice reminded African leaders of the long-running Congo conflict during her brief visit.
Back to Darfur. Granted, the Sudanese government appears to be doing everything possible to delay and obstruct the AU-UN-international community effort in Darfur. But there's the sticky issue of coming up with 24 helicopters to assist the peacekeeping mission. 24 helicopters? If every one of the 27 members of the EU came up with one each, problem solved. Ditto for the 26 members of NATO. Hell, if they can't do it, then the US, with its wonderful rust-free "boneyard" of surplus aircraft at Davis-Monthan AFB in Arizona, certainly can. 
Please, no more such silly excuses.
Photo source Alistair Maclean (who says that these Vietnam-era "Hueys - UH-1s - [are] kept here because their sale might precipitate a collapse in the civil helicopter industry."