Even normally critical voices, like the aid activist and former rock star, Bob Geldof, gives Mr Bush credit for what he has achieved.

At the top of the list is the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar), initiated in 2003.

At the time just 50,000 Africans were on anti-retroviral drugs.

BUSH’S AFRICA RECORD
George W Bush under a mosquito bed net in Tanzania in February 2008
Pumped $18bn into fighting HIV/Aids, much of it in Africa
Backed cancelling $34bn worth of debt for 27 African states
Launched initiative that has halved Malaria in 15 African countries
Led condemnation of Sudan’s record in Darfur as genocide
Pressed for north-south peace deal in Sudan
“Saved millions of lives”, according to aid activist Bob Geldof
Backed Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia to battle Islamists

Countries that will miss Bush

Since then the US has pumped $18bn (12bn) into fighting HIV/Aids - much of it in Africa.

By 2007, 1.3 million Africans were on medication, much of it paid for by the Bush administration.

Not that Pepfar is without its critics.

Some have attacked the US for preventing any funding for programmes that support abortion in any form.

Others suggested that it has downplayed the need to promote the use of condoms.

But no-one denies that the funding has made anti-retrovirals widely available, saving hundreds of thousands of lives.

The story on aid is much the same.

The US has backed programmes to cancel $34bn (23bn) worth of debt for 27 African states.

At the same time aid to Africa has risen to $5.7bn (4bn) dollars a year by 2007.

And, as anyone who has ever been to a refugee camp in Africa will testify, almost all the food aid to be seen comes from American farmers - aid worth $1.23bn (0.85bn) in 2007.

I don’t think it’s too strong to say that President Bush’s Africa policy is the most distinguished foreign policy legacy of the administration
Todd Moss
Center for Global Development

Mr Bush’s Malaria initiative has seen the disease halved in 15 African countries.

Travelling to the continent with the president in February last year, Bob Geldof concluded: “The Bush regime has been divisive - but not in Africa.

“I read it has been incompetent - but not in Africa. It has created bitterness - but not here in Africa. Here, his administration has saved millions of lives.”