Bono on Tour

Bono on tour

Travelling star keeps up pressure on aid and debt for Africa



By Steve Bloomfield

Published: 21 May 2006



If it's Sunday, this must be Nigeria. Bono, the rock star and

anti-poverty campaigner who was guest-editing The Independent less than

a week ago, is already past the halfway mark in a lightning tour of six

African states. The U2 singer arrives today in Nigeria, Africa's most

populous nation, having already visited Lesotho, Rwanda and Tanzania to

highlight the benefits of his Product RED campaign. But the tour was

almost aborted before it began.



Fresh from his day in the editor's chair on Monday, Bono flew to

Johannesburg, but he was initially barred from entering South Africa.

The reason: so extensively has he been travelling the world to whip up

support for debt relief, increased aid and fairer trade terms for

Africa, he didn't have a blank page left in his passport. A quick call

to Nelson Mandela solved the problem, and the rock star and his

entourage were waved through.



In Lesotho, the tiny, mountainous kingdom surrounded by South Africa,

Bono and his wife, Ali Hewson, visited a textiles factory that was

almost forced to close after an agreement which had protected textile

industries in developing countries ended last year.



The factory, the only major employer in the remote town of Butha-Buthe,

was saved after an order from Ms Hewson for a range of T-shirts to be

sold at U2 concerts. Nakadi Jabbie, the owner of the factory, said the

order was better than aid. "When people work, and they can buy their

own food and take themselves to the clinics, then it means they are

doing it themselves and they are not just receiving food parcels."



Lesotho has one of the highest HIV/Aids infection rates in the world.

Unlike its neighbour, South Africa, the Lesotho government has

encouraged its citizens to take an HIV test. The Prime Minister,

Bethuel Pakalitha Mosisili, has even subjected himself to a test.



Bono said it was "scandalous" that Lesotho had not benefited from debt

cancellation under a global scheme managed by the World Bank and

International Monetary Fund to write off the debts of the world's poor

countries. "The reason Lesotho has not received debt cancellation is

because it has been disciplined, it has been punished for the fact that

it has been a good borrower in the past and has paid back its debts."



There was another indication of the rock star's frenetic pace of

travelling on Thursday. In Rwanda's capital, Kigali, he promised to

keep up pressure on the US and other wealthy nations to make good on

their promises of increased aid for Africa, saying there were signs the

G8 industrial countries were back-tracking on last year's promises to

double aid to Africa by 2010 to $50bn (£27bn).



Ten days earlier, he said, he had been in Washington: "They welcomed us

with open arms ... shook our hands and their eyes misted up at the

right place. When we left town, they slashed the budget."



The G8 is scheduled to meet in Russia in July, and Bono is almost

certain to be there. By then, one presumes, he will be filling up a new

passport with stamps.