Despite China’s considerable economic influence, however, China has largely been unable to project its soft power into the region, as it has been unable to do in many areas of the world – if indeed it wants to.

As Turks returned Monday from a month of fasting and holidays over Ramadan, their government proudly declared the amount of aid they had gathered together to send to fellow Muslims in Somalia: More than $237 million. Turkey has made no secret of its desire to increase its influence in the Middle East and Muslim Africa.

A foundation established by former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush says it is providing an additional $1.4 million to efforts to rebuild Haiti following its devastating earthquake last year. The non-profit Clinton Bush Haiti Fund said Tuesday the money will go to a Haitian company that will train engineers and general contractors to manufacture steel-frame houses.

With the twin crises of the American budget deficit and the European public borrowing emergency, China has ample worries. China is nonetheless active in bilateral relations with EU member states, and this involves commercial diplomacy, high-level visits and public diplomacy. The last increasingly revolves around the notion of “helping friends,” whether these are nations in need of investment or simply cash.

Aid organisations need to be careful that in boasting of (or inflating) achievements in Mogadishu, rather than highlighting massive humanitarian failings across Somalia, they do not become inadvertent allies in a grand deception.

An spokesman for the African Union says final preparations are being made for the scheduled August 25 “pledge conference” in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. Organized by the continental body, the meeting aims to raise funds to help relief efforts in hunger-stricken East Africa, which has created hundreds of thousands refugees and internally displaced.

The best way to diffuse a sense of injustice for those people involved in the Arab Spring is through improving material circumstances, London said. British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg in a speech before delegates at the British Council in London said the British government has committed more than $180 million during the next four years to development in the Arab world.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton launched a new business loan program in Haiti on Tuesday aimed at helping bolster an economy that was devastated by the January 2010 earthquake. Clinton said the first loan in the $20 million program is being made to Caribbean Craft, which produces colorful goods such as carnival masks, sculptures and paintings for export and lost its workshop in the earthquake.