He has been nominated for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. And even though he is Irish he was voted one of the most important Britons of the last 100 years, in a BBC poll. In December last year, Time magazine named him one of its Persons of the Year (the list included Bill and Melinda Gates).

So how does a pop star get to be so influential?

Bono has managed it by being the singer of a best-selling and musically acclaimed band, and using the popularity and money he earns to campaign against world poverty.

Bono, whose real name is Paul Hewson, was born in Dublin, Ireland. While still in his teens, in 1976, he joined Adam Clayton, Larry Mullen and Dave Evans to form what would eventually become the band U2. Over the years, U2 has sold over 150 million albums worldwide, had six number one albums in the US and nine in the UK, and has won 21 Grammys. Today the band is widely considered to be one of the most successful ever.

As a band, U2 and its most recognisable singer, Bono, has always shown great social commitment. Many of its songs deal with social issues; its tours support the human rights organisation Amnesty International.

Usually pop stars who do so well are content to sit back and enjoy their fame and fortune, living extravagant lifestyles and making it to the society pages of glossy magazines. Not Bono. In 1984, Bono appeared in Band Aid and performed at Live Aid. These were a record and live concert put together by another singer, Bob Geldof. Geldof had seen the poverty in Africa, and how it affects the poorest of the poor. He decided to raise money to fund charities that work towards alleviating poverty and hunger.

Bono studied the situation and tried to figure out what more could be done. He realised that one of the reasons poor countries stay poor is that any money they earn is used to pay back countries they’ve borrowed money from.

Richer countries lend, not give, money to poorer countries. It works like a bank: when you borrow money from a bank you have to return the money (called the principal) and pay interest on the principal. Many of the poorest countries are so poor they can never hope to pay back the principal. But they have to keep paying back the interest, which keeps getting larger and larger as they borrow more and pay back less. Every penny repaid by a poor country is a penny less spent on its own people. In many cases, countries end up borrowing money from richer countries just to pay back the interest on their debts.

Bono realised that allowing poor countries to stop repaying their debts could make a massive difference to them. It meant they would have a clean slate, a way to start afresh in the debt cycle, so that they can use the aid money to actually help the poor instead of using it to pay back their debts. This ‘drop the debt’ idea is what Bono has been trying to sell to the leaders of richer countries.

Thanks to his celebrity status as a pop star, Bono gets to meet many leaders and influential people. He has had private meetings with popes, prime ministers, presidents, World Bank and IMF officials -- all to convince them of the seriousness of poverty in Africa and the need for Third World debt relief and removal of unfair trade rules that hurt Africa.

Bono is not content to take a back seat and just let charities use his name. He is a spokesman for the Jubilee 2000 Campaign for debt relief and has set up his own organisation called DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade and Africa) to publicise and raise awareness on the problems that hamper Africa’s development, and possible solutions. He is a spokesperson and an important part of the Make Poverty History campaign. And he gets other celebrities to join in too.
 
But not everybody thinks Bono is wonderful. For, although the anti-debt campaign is important it is difficult to judge exactly how useful it is. And because Bono is always seen with important politicians, sometimes praising them, it appears as though he approves of them and what they stand for. Like American president George Bush, who, a lot of people believe, is responsible for many of the policies that stop poor countries from developing.

-- Manoj Nadkarni

InfoChange News & Features, March 2006