Bono urges Blair and Brown to lead world in helping Africa

BONO yesterday urged British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chancellor Gordon Brown to use Britain’s influence to transform the future of Africa.

The U2 frontman called on the two men to use Britain’s presidency of the G8 and EU next year to lead an international effort to tackle the continent’s poverty.

Bono made his remarks in an address to the Labour Party conference in Brighton, where he was international guest speaker.

Bono praised Mr Blair and Mr Brown’s initiatives on fighting African poverty but cautioned that much more work had to be done.

Bono told delegates, as Mr Brown and Mr Blair watched from the platform: “You know as transcendent as I’d like to think a U2 show can be, it isn’t life or death. This is. And I’ve met people whose lives will depend on the decisions taken by these two great men. They have great ideas.

“And the promises they have already made will save hundreds of thousands of lives - if they follow through.”

Bono likened Mr Blair and Mr Brown to Beatles John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

“I’m fond of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

“They are kind of the John and Paul of the global development stage, in my opinion. But the point is, Lennon and McCartney changed my interior world - Blair and Brown can change the real world.”

Bono, who has been campaigning on African poverty since 1984, told the conference: “6,500 Africans dying a day of treatable, preventable disease, dying for want of medicines you and I can get at our local chemist - that’s not a cause, that’s an emergency.

“Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice; it makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties, it doubts our concern, it questions our commitment.

“Because there’s no way we can look at Africa - a continent bursting into flames - and, if we’re honest, conclude that it would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else.

“Anywhere else. Certainly not here. In Europe. Or America. Or Australia. Or Canada.

“There’s just no chance.

“You see, deep down, if we really accepted that Africans were equal to us, we would all do more to put the fire out.

“We’ve got watering cans; when what we really need are the fire brigades.”

Bono went on to argue the West had a vested security interest in combating the poverty of Africa and its related problems.

“The war against terror is bound up in the war against poverty. I didn’t say that, (US Secretary of State) Colin Powell said that.”