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May 15, 2007 10:20 am US/Eastern
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U2's Bono: G8 Not Keeping Money Promises To Africa
BERLIN (CBS) ―
The world's biggest industrial countries are failing to keep up with financial promises they made to Africa, rocker-activist Bono said Tuesday, calling a new progress report "a cold shower" for the Group of Eight.
G8 members in 2004-2006 contributed less than half the amount needed to make good on promises to double Africa aid to $50 billion by 2010, according to a report released by DATA - Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa - an advocacy group founded by Bono, the 47-year-old frontman for Irish band U2.
"The G8 are sleepwalking into a crisis of credibility. I know the DATA report will feel like a cold shower, but I hope it will wake us all up," he said.
Bono is urging German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who chairs a G8 summit in Germany next month, to ensure that members contribute what they said they would.
The report shows the G8 increased aid by $2.3 billion but says they need to increase aid by an additional $3.1 billion to substantially help the people of Africa.
"These statistics are not just numbers on a page," Bono said. "They are people begging for their lives, for two pills a day, a mother begging to immunize her children, a child begging not to become a mother at the age of 12."
The DATA report said aid money that does arrive has an effect. "Every day 1,450 Africans living with AIDS are put on lifesaving drugs," the organization said, and 20 million African children are going to school for the first time, thanks in part to debt cancellations and aid increases.
Still, Bono warns that insufficient increases in aid could reverse progress already made. DATA says the G8 must contribute $7.4 billion this year alone to reach its goal. If Germany makes good on its promises to help Africa, he said, the other G8 members will do the same.
Britain and Japan have contributed most of the aid increase so far, it said.
DATA was founded in 2002 by Bono, Bobby Kennedy and the U.K.-based Jubilee Debt Campaign.
(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)