Bono urges action on corruption in Africa

Larry Elliott, economics editor
Sunday May 21, 2006

The west's new mood of generosity towards Africa will come to an abrupt and early end unless political leaders in the world's poorest continent are ruthless in eliminating corruption, the rock star Bono said last night.

Speaking to finance ministers in Abuja, the U2 frontman said both rich and poor countries were responsible for money being pilfered or wrongly-used, and that corruption was now the "biggest single obstacle to business and the renewal of economies in sub-Saharan Africa".

At the Gleneagles summit last year, the G8 agreed to write off the debts owed by eligible poor countries to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the African Development bank; and to increase development aid by $50bn (£26.6bn) a year.

Although the debt package was finalised last month, there are growing fears that developed countries may renege on their aid pledges, citing poor governance as a reason for caution.

"It's a critical moment", Bono said. "There's some goodwill. There's a window of opportunity. But it could close if corruption is not tackled."

There was no shortage of generosity nor any meanness of spirit in countries such as the US, which gives a smaller proportion of its national income in aid than any G8 country, but people wanted to know that their "tax dollars" were not being spent on Gulf Streams and redecorating presidential palaces.

"To counter that argument, I say that those were loans in the past not grants. It was for cold war reasons that they were made. It was cold war reasoning that meant billions got lost in Swiss bank accounts. Judgement of character came second to national interest," Bono said.

The rock star is on a six-nation tour of Africa to assess progress since a trip made in 2002 with Paul O'Neill, then US Treasury secretary. Nigeria has had a reputation for being one of the most corrupt countries in Africa, although the present government has sacked and jailed corrupt officials as part of an attempted clean-up.

Bono said that the new mechanisms for dispensing aid meant the scope for corruption was now greatly limited. The US only dispenses financial assistance under its Millennium Challenge Account to governments with a clean record, Britain has recently cut off support to Ethiopia and Uganda following human rights abuses; and the global fund for tackling malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS has suspended programmes in countries with poor records for converting cash into treatment.

"Donors are becoming more careful who they give increased aid flows to," Bono said. "That kind of auditing is necessary because transparency demands it. We have to accept that a lot of the aid in the past has done more harm than good."

Donors had to recognise that corruption was not uniform across Africa, but that many countries such as Tanzania and Rwanda were taking steps to improve the quality of governance.

Guardian Unlimited