Dear Concerned Citizen,

BONO: This is the number-one problem facing Africa, corruption; not natural calamity, not the AIDS virus. This is the number-one issue and there's no way around it. That's what was so clever about President Bush's Millennium Challenge. It was start-up money for new democracies. It was giving increases of aid flows only to countries that are tackling corruption. That's what's so clever. It's--the implementation of the Millennium Challenge has not happened. It is in trouble. They recognize that. President Bush is embarrassed about that. They're trying to put it right. But the idea, the concept was a great one. Debt cancellation also has conditionalities built into it. People need to know this.

MR. RUSSERT: You say from everybody. In fact, you gave an interview to Time magazine. "Question: Which of the G8 leaders do you think remains the toughest nut to crack? Bono: The most important and toughest nut is still President Bush. He feels he's already doubled and tripled aid to Africa, which he started from far too low a place. He can stand there and say he paid at the office already. He shouldn't because he'll be left out of the history books. But it's hard for him because of the expense of the war and the debts." How much pressure do you think should be on President Bush at this time?

BONO: Well, I think he's done an incredible job, his administration, on AIDS and now 250,000 Africans are on antiviral drugs. They literally owe their lives to America. In one year that's being done. But it can't just be AIDS. It has to be the environment in which viruses like AIDS thrive, or malaria. I mean, 3,000 Africans die every day of a mosquito bite. Can you think about that, malaria? That's not acceptable in the 21st century and we can stop it. And water-borne illnesses--dirty water takes another 3,000 lives--children, mothers, sisters.

Yes, there's a lot of pressure on President Bush. If he, though, in his second term, is as bold in his commitments to Africa as he was in the first term, he indeed deserves a place in history in turning the fate of that continent around. If he doesn't, I fear that even the good work that he has started will be forgotten by history and that really makes me very, very sad, because I worked on a lot of this stuff, the AIDS initiative and the Millennium Challenge, and really want to see--I think he deserves his place in history here. I believe he has the heart for it, but his advisors are going to have to let him go to Gleneagles with something other than timid proposals and pilot programs and rhetoric. They're going to have to let him sign, you know, a proper check. One billion dollars is all it would take to save a million lives from malaria, with bed nets, etc., $1 billion. Four billion dollars, you could change the world. From the United States, an extra commitment of $4 billion.

Here's a sampling of reviews:

CNN
Leader of USAID emphasizes the importance of linking aid and debt cancellation to conditions of political reform by African governments

"You have to make changes to the capacity of governments to manage programs, to write the right laws, to have the rule of law," U.S. Agency for International Development Director Andrew Natsios told CNN.

"If you don't have those other conditions, you can put huge amounts of money into aid programs and they'll be ineffective."

Natsios defended the Bush administration's proposed increase in development assistance to African states from critics like U2 singer Bono, one of the performers at the weekend's Live 8 concerts, who say the additional money is still smaller than necessary.

Aid programs can fail if funding is increased too quickly without the accountability that democratic governments require, he said.

"Bono and many other very well-intentioned people have really never actually run aid programs and seen what happens," Natsios said.

"If you put too much aid too quickly into weak institutions, where there isn't capacity, you have corruption, and the programs don't work."

On Thursday, President Bush previewed his plans for the G8 summit, presenting three new initiatives for Africa, including a $1.2 billion effort to combat malaria."

BBC
Voices join to sing Live 8 praise

The papers are united in enthusiastic praise for Saturday's Live 8 concerts, described by the Sunday Telegraph as "the day music gave voice to hope". "Job Done Sir Bob" is the verdict of the Sunday Express, in tribute to organizer Bob Geldof. For the Sunday Times, the world rediscovered a voice for poor Africa in the "greatest comeback gig ever seen". The Observer hails the event, staged in 10 countries, as "the day the world sang as one".

Frasier Nelson - The Scottsman
Live 8 message doesn't reflect an accurate picture of US aid to Africa

PRIVATE American citizens donated almost 15 times more to the developing world than their European counterparts, research reveals this weekend ahead of the G8 summit. Private US donors also handed over far more aid than the federal government in Washington, revealing that America is much more generous to Africa and poor countries than is claimed by the Make Poverty History and Live 8 campaigns.

Church collections, philanthropists and company-giving amounted to $22bn a year, according to a study by the Hudson Institute think-tank, easily more than the $16.3bn in overseas development sent by the US government. American churches, synagogues and mosques alone gave $7.5bn in 2003 - a figure which exceeds the government totals for France ($7.2bn) and Britain ($6.3bn) - according to numbers from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development which deal a blow to those who claim moral superiority over the US on aid.

Carole Adelman, the author of the Hudson Institute report, has discovered that a further $6.2bn a year is donated by independent US organizations, $2.7bn by US companies and $2.3bn by US universities and colleges, mainly through scholarships, to reach an overall private US donations total of $22bn.

In stark contrast, in separate exploratory work for the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), Adelman found that the maximum EU figure was a mere $1.5bn in private sector donations, 14.6 times less than the comparable US figure.

In addition, the US economy's large immigrant population, which makes up 12% of its population, almost twice that of Britain, allows $40.1bn of wages earned by developing world workers to be sent to their home countries in the form of remittances.

Adelman said this transforms the picture on aid to the developing world, showing how America's stronger economic growth and lower taxation is giving indirect aid to the Third World which dwarfs the government's donations.

by Karen Palmer - Toronto Star
Why I didn't go to Live 8

So instead of being directed to a place to put one's new-found charity, concert goers and home viewers were offered a snappy website — makepovertyhistory.ca — and told to do their best nagging.

And this is why I didn't trek up to Barrie for Live 8.

I feel like I'm doing more to end African poverty by selling off my old junk to buy and send small items that are beyond the budget of my African friends.

Even sending their children packages of pencils pilfered from the Star's stock closet might do more good.

At the end of the day, would the suffering of Africans be eased, even a little, by standing in the hot sun at Geldof's glitzy, multi-centre rockapalooza?

The real question for concert-goers and at-home viewers will be this: Once your consciousness is raised, once the golden tones of Blue Rodeo and Bryan Adams have convinced you that Africans really are poor, once you finally have that "oh, that's what gross national product is!" moment while re-applying your sunscreen or adjusting your Live 8 tube top, what are you going to do about it?

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For those who question the long term impact of Live 8, may we suggest the following: if attending a free star-studded rock concert motivates you to fund an orphan, encourage democracy and economic development, fund antiviral drugs, support the use of ddt to fight malaria, or help install a drill rig to bring fresh water to a thirsty village, then this was a good ad campaign. Without these tangible acts of charity, Live 8 will have resulted in nothing more than delusional fans at a free concert on a new drug called sentimentalism.