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Twenty years ago, every Friday night on the village green beside the local shopping centre in Nairobi, Kenya, the Salvation Army brigade clanged their cymbals, danced and sang choruses of "hallelujah!"

They were celebrating the love of God. There was little else to celebrate in this overcrowded city of spreading squalor. Not much has changed since then, but now, at least, there is a more hopeful outlook for Kenya and the rest of Africa.

The reason is that at last Africa's many challenges - from the AIDS pandemic to anemic economic growth to ruthless dictators - are attracting the attention of the major Western powers. And the developed world, led by the United States, is backing up its new commitment with action and money.

Several billions of US dollars was pledged to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria at the recent summit of the G-8 countries held in France. The push came from the US to give up to US$1billion a year to the fund for the next five years. The maximum US$1billion annually will be paid only if funds from all other countries reach US$2 billion.

The European Union immediately stepped up to the plate with a major donation of US1$billion a year. This must have cheered South African President Thabo Mbeki, who led a group of African leaders to the G-8 Summit, because clearly Africa will be the main beneficiary of the plan.

Africa is the second largest continent in the world, three times the size of Canada, divided into 63 countries with more than 700 language groups. While its population of 780 million is only 12 percent of the world's total, its economic, political and social problems are overwhelming.

Hardly any progress has been made in its fight against disease and its struggle to feed growing city populations since the 1960s, the decade when most of the countries achieved independence. And even with the billions pledged, there will be no quick cure for any of these problems.

What is encouraging, though, is the new will to seek out solutions and build on the small successes already achieved, for instance, in the struggle against AIDS. The best example of progress there is Uganda, one of the first countries in Africa to admit it had a problem more than a decade ago.

The infection rate in Uganda is now 6 percent, compared with more than 20 percent 10 years ago. Yet the numbers are still shocking; probably more than 1.3 million are infected and 1 million have died so far, with 110,000 to 120,000 people expected to die each year.

That is just a microcosm of the Africa-wide problem, where the total deaths so far from AIDS is believed to be 15 million. Another 16 million are expected to die before it is brought under control.

AIDS will be conquered but it will take years of investment in medical research, training medical workers. It will also involve changing the culture of the continent, perhaps the hardest part, because Africans have shunned condoms and other preventive measures. It has not helped that some leaders in the past have actively opposed these preventive actions.

Africa also finds itself at the bottom of the heap in other basic statistics like life expectancy, where the world rate is 65.5 years compared with 54 years for Africans; the fertility rate of 5.62 in Africa compared with 3.05 for the rest of the world, and the illiteracy rate in 1995 of 43.8 percent of the population compared with 22.6 percent for the rest of the world. While economic and social problems are the most urgent challenges, solving them depends on greater political stability, more democracy and more individual freedom in countries like Zimbabwe, Nigeria, The Ivory Coast, South Africa and Kenya.

In the next years or so, political change is coming in Zimbabwe , and in Kenya a new government is in place following democratic elections. It cannot come too soon for two of the countries with the most potential both to make significant economic and social advances and to become models for the rest of the continent.

Zimbabwe has one of the best-educated populations in Africa, and it has a promising group of leaders-in-waiting. The country has fertile land and its fulsome share of natural resources. Kenya has tricky but not intractable problems that can be overcome with an imaginative and transparent leadership, which it seems now to have.

But the new leader in Kenya and the new leaders certain to take over Zimbabwe in the near future cannot turn around their countries in two or even five years.

Africa has had much bad luck, a lot more bad political management and not much sustained aid in the last 40 years. Recently its leaders appear ready to acknowledge the problems and, more important, to face them. And in the last few weeks, the industrialized nations, lead by the US, are finally giving them encouragement and money to begin the long process of catching up.

Hallelujah!

James Ferrabee is a contributing editor of Policy Options. He covered Africa for Southam News in the late 1970s and early 1980s and has visited there many times since. His column may be used without charge.

He encourages comments on this and other articles to jferrabee@irpp.org.