ACCRA, Ghana - U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill launched a unique four-nation Africa tour Tuesday with none other than pop icon Bono as guide: the Rocker, working to showing the Republican that Africa would put Western development aid to good use.
Bono in his trademark wraparound shades, O'Neill in an equally to-type gray suit, the two opened their visit with a cliche-busting first stop — skipping mud villages, they dropped in at a high-tech data processing center in Ghana's capital, Accra.
The two are "here to learn from all quarters," Bono told reporters, a mix of rock, financial and political journalists from the West.
In Accra's business center, O'Neill looked on approvingly inside a sleek office as Ghanaian Internet workers explained their jobs.
That stop alone, O'Neill told reporters, "showed how well-trained people on the continent could match any workers in the world."
"What we've seen in Ghana broke the cliched and the stereotypical," Bono said.
The two and their retinue are due to spend two days in the former British colony.
South Africa, Uganda and Ethiopia are the next stops on a 10-day run through sub-Saharan Africa.
Bono's goal: Persuade the notedly skeptical treasury secretary that Africa can and does put Western aid to good use.
The idea of a joint trip was hatched a year ago, when the two men met in O'Neill's office.
Bono, who has campaigned for years to focus the attention of rich nations on the plight of Africa, asked for the session with O'Neill, a vocal critic of previous aid programs in Africa.
O'Neill has deplored them as a waste of billions of dollars, on the grounds they failed to generate real economic development.
Initially reluctant, O'Neill finally agreed to meet Bono, and later said he was impressed by the Irish singer's knowledge of Africa's problems.
Bono has campaigned to get the Group of Eight top industrial countries to provide greater debt relief for the world's poorest countries and now as the founder of Debt, Aid and Trade for Africa.
Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the issue of fighting poverty to eliminate a breeding ground for terrorists has gained momentum and will be a top agenda item of the G-8 countries at their June summit in Canada.
In an effort to find out what kind of aid really works, O'Neill and Bono, whose real name is Paul Hewson, will visit AIDS clinics, schools and projects sponsored by the World Bank and other development agencies in Africa.
On Tuesday, O'Neill and Bono were due next to speak with President John Kufuor and then with producers of cashew nuts and handicrafts.
On Wednesday, the two head to the remote northern town of Tamale, to meet local agricultural workers and tour a hospital.
O'Neill's African tour will also highlight the Millennium Challenge Accounts, a program unveiled by U.S. President George W. Bush in March, and that would see U.S. foreign aid boosted by dlrs 10 billion from 2004 to 2006.
But the extra funds will not be granted to everyone — only to countries that are working to eliminate corruption and to reform their economic systems.
O'Neill has pushed this tough-love approach inside the Bush administration.
Bono first became involved in Africa when U2 took part in concerts to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia.
Bono and his wife spent six weeks working in an orphanage in Ethiopia to learn how bad conditions were.
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