African leaders lobbied the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria for more money Wednesday to solve a cash crunch facing its work, seen as vital for the continent’s health, officials said.

Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa told board members of the Geneva-based fund visiting the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha that new prevention methods were fueling optimism in the fight against malaria, which kills more than a million people a year.

Speaking at the opening of the first factory in Africa to make long-lasting insecticidal mosquito nets, Mkapa told accompanying board members that it showed conditions were right for a big rise in funding for the battle against the disease.

“Long-lasting insecticidal nets are Africa’s best hope for preventing malaria, and we are very proud that Tanzania is the home of Africa’s first manufacturer of these nets,” the U.N. Children’s Fund quoted Mkapa as saying at the opening of the A to Z factory in Arusha.

The technology for long-lasting insecticidal nets, which embed insecticide within the net’s fibers and therefore retain their efficacy for up to five years without retreatment, was transferred to Tanzania last year in a collaboration between aid agencies and multinational drugs and energy firms.

A to Z Textiles produces nearly half a million of the new nets yearly and hopes to hike output over one million in 2005.

Later Wednesday Mkapa, as well as Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Kenya’s Mwai Kibaki will step up their lobbying when they attend the annual meeting of the fund’s board in Arusha.

“The four presidents are here to state what the region needs in terms of aid and, we hope, to convince the board that Africa needs this funding,” Fund spokesman Jon Liden said.

The fund, an independent private-public partnership that raises and disburses new funds to battle the three killers, needs at least $2.5 billion in 2005, up from $1.5 billion last year. It has received pledges of only $900 million, he said.

The United States says it is opposed to the launch of a fifth round of funding because the money is unavailable. It also says the fund has been unable to manage project funds efficiently. U.S. Health Secretary Tommy Thompson is currently the chairman of the fund and will be at the meeting.

Activists say any delay of the fifth round of funding would be disastrous to the Global Fund and a deathblow to millions of people with malaria, AIDS or TB.

Most of the money committed by the fund since it was launched in 2001 has gone to fight HIV/AIDS, which has killed 20 million people in the past two decades.

The G8 group of industrialized nations declared in 2003 that the fund should get $3 billion a year, with French President Jacques Chirac proposing $1 billion from Europe, $1 billion from the United States and $1 billion from other countries.

But donations to the Geneva-based partnership have fallen short of such pledges, amid tensions between Washington and other governments over the best way of tackling AIDS.