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U2 singer, O'Neill to tour Africa
Posted on Sunday, February 03 @ 13:21:21 CET by Macphisto
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(Allen Wan / CBS.MarketWatch.com) -- NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- U2 lead singer Bono and U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill will travel to Africa later this year on a development mission.
"I can assure you that O'Neill will be coming back with more than a souvenir spear," Bono told a news briefing.
Bono also said that he has gotten assurance from Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien that Africa will be "center stage" at the upcoming G-8 conference.
Bono said he is hoping to build support for a so-called Marshall Plan for Africa at the G-8 meeting in Canada. Making an analogy to the U.S. aid given to Europe after the Second World War, Bono said that
"Africa was in the same vulnerable position as Europe was...preventing fires are more important than putting them out," he said. Bono is a member of several global organizations involved in international development and aid to Africa. At the same briefing at the World Economic Forum entitled
"Building support for development beyond good intentions," the founder of software giant Microsoft (MSFT: news, chart, profile) Bill Gates said he was optimistic on the prospects for U.S. aid and said that private philanthropy will never be a substitute for government action.
"If the government pulls back, the AIDS epidemic will not be stopped," he said. Both Bono and Gates called on pharmaceutical companies to look beyond the bottom line in deciding whether to cut costs for life-saving treatments.
"As life transforming as a U2 concert is, it's not a life and death issue affecting the pharmaceuticals industry," said Bono. "20 million lives have been lost to AIDS in countries like Brazil that have been progressive have been told that it's a founding principle of how we do business and don't mess with that. It's a nonsense," he said. Gates said that "there is more than drug pricing in the equation. It's part of the equation, but not the tough part of it," he said.
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