AFRICA: Bob Geldof, Bono and Nelson Mandela yesterday joined forces to urge world leaders to make good on the promises they made to Africa at last year's G8 summit.
Geldof said that while pledges on debt have been honoured, agreements on aid were flagging and trade agreements were unfulfilled.
They were speaking on the release of the first report by Debt Aids Trade Africa (Data), which has looked at the progress G8 leaders have made since the Gleneagles summit last year, when they announced an ambitious plan to accelerate Africa's economic development.
"They started to climb an Everest, but over the past year they got lost at base camp," Bono said in an interview after the release of the report.
"I'd like to think that the Data report is a kind of a GPS system for how to get back on track and back up the mountain," said Bono, who formed Data with Geldof.
Their words were echoed by Nelson Mandela in a speech recorded for the event.
The former South African president said: "We can keep Live8 alive, we can be the great generation that makes poverty history, but to make poverty history we must now make promises happen one by one."
The report said wealthy countries had delivered on their promise to cancel the debts of 19 poor countries, most of them in Africa, with a total of 44 countries eligible under programmes of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
"Overall, there is one cheer on debt, half a cheer on Aids and boos and wolf-whistles for what is happening on trade," Bono said.
Globally, funding to fight HIV/Aids has grown to $8.3 billion (€6.6 billion) in 2005 from $300 million (€240 million) in the late 1990s. In Africa, the number of people with access to treatment rose to 800,000 last year from 100,000 in 2003.
However, Data said donors were spending only half of what was needed to get Aids treatment to at least four million Africans by 2010.