Africa must stand up and condemn the Western world for stigmatising it as the epicenter of Aids. Much of the literature and statistics which are being peddled about Aids are wrong. And there is not even a reliable Aids test. Is there a hidden agenda, asks John Kamau?

Why should an entire continent be stigmatised? Why should Africa suffer all the humiliation about Aids as unreliable figures are peddled around as truth and dangled before the entire world? What has Africa done to deserve all this?

We are being told that unless we change our behaviour, the Aids virus will wipe us out. Yet look at the West, the keeper of morals. In London the phone booths are full of photos of naked women advertising for sex. There are gay, and lesbian pubs. Trans-sexuals are advertising their wares openly. Prostitutes openly peddle sex in the parks. There are drug pushers on every corner.

And yet we are being blinded with phoney statistics saying that Africa is facing a crisis. An epidemic, they say.

We saw it coming. Didn't we? Aids came and was swiftly traced to Africa. Science was thrown out of the window and replaced with sensationalism, the fodder that the Western press feeds on.

Aids had to be traced to the black race and if that failed then the epicentre had to be in Africa. Poor continent, struggling to survive yet stigmatised everywhere.

You have by now read Baffour Ankomah's cry in the wilderness that the interpretation of Aids in the press is "the biggest lie of the century" (New African, December issue). If not you are in trouble, deep trouble indeed.

A document posted on the internet by the World Bank entitled Investing in HIV/Aids tells half of the story. The World Bank accepts the phoney figures that 30 million people worldwide are currently living with HIV/Aids and that sub-Saharan Africa has the lion's share of those cases with 20.8 million!

The World Bank says that this means "Aids lending is likely to rise as more countries turn to the Bank for financial assistance in implementing strategies to fight the epidemic".

It means that countries will invest more in Aids projects and relegate other deserving projects to the rear as they fight "the epidemic". They will put more money into an epidemic that is not yet proven.

Aids has become a commercial venture. "To date, the [World] Bank has committed over $800m to more than 70 current and future projects around the world that focus upon prevention of HIV/AIDS", says the document.

This is far more money than is devoted to malaria which, according to the WHO killed about 2.7 million people in 1997, compared with only 2.3 million from Aids.

So what should be the African priority? I ask this question because I have lost count of the number of people who I know and have died of malaria and yet all the focus is being put on Aids whose figures everyone accepts are mere estimates.

The World Bank says that African families spend between $2 and $25 on malaria prevention methods every month and between $0.20 and $15 on treatment.

And yet malaria is not considered to be an epidemic.

The World Bank is even asking for more money to be channeled to Aids projects: "The devastating impact of the HIV/ AIDS epidemic in many of the Bank's client countries has increased the priority for developing a preventive vaccine that will be feasible and effective in these countries. In response, a World Bank Task Force is exploring the market failures leading to under-investment in an Aids vaccine".

One day we will have to remember the words of Joan Shenton in her book, Positively False - Exposing the myths around HIV and Aids: "The story of HIV and the panic over Aids," she says, "has led to over $40 billion of the US taxpayer's money and £2 billion in the UK being spent on Aids since 1984 yet in all this time, no cure for Aids has been found."

The reason is that Aids is a mighty project that has gone hay wire. It has run amok and nobody can stop it. In Uganda the World Bank spent $50m on Aids! The shift is now to the new African "epicentre", Botswana. More money will be poured into this endless pit and the African nations will continue to beg for still more money to fight Aids. Western companies will continue to manufacture more and more condoms and worthless test kits for Africa and the figures will continue to spiral upwards.

One day somebody will be forced to tell the truth about HIV/Aids. At the moment the Aids establishment will use power, money and politics to silence any other voice. But one day the truth will be told.