The president of Tanzania, Benjamin William Mkapa, spoke about the economic challenges facing his country to a packed ARCO Forum Wednesday afternoon.

Mkapa spoke resolutely about the need for increased aid, emphasizing the problems in education and health care that plague his country.

Quantifying certain kinds of needed aid is difficult, he said.

"What price can you put on making someone literate?" he asked. "What price can you put on a child, who thanks to an aid-funded vaccination program, does not die before the age of 5?"

He said he considers basic education a human right. "Education is the key to life," he said, and added that it was unfortunate that just as African countries' interest in aid for development is increasing, the aid being offered is decreasing.

Mkapa added that the United Nations has yet to make development a human rights issue.

He also talked about popular misconceptions of African countries, which have trouble with creating and maintaining global presences.

"I do not know if most American people can locate Tanzania on a world map," he said. "Herein lies one of the greatest challenges for African countries."

Mkapa made a special point of reading a list of countries that had contributed to a Tanzanian debt relief fund. The U.S. was conspicuously absent.