What Bono says and what he does

There is nothing preordained about any of this: in 1950, what was then the Belgian Congo had a higher GDP per capita than either China or India. But today it’s literally the last place in the world you’d want to start a business. Well, okay, a big chunk of the Congo’s been a war-torn hellhole for the last decade. So what about, say, Guinea-Bissau? Starting a business there requires overcoming 17 government hurdles, takes 233 days and costs 257.7 per cent of income per capita. Which is why Bono can’t put his money where his mouth is.

A quarter-century ago at Live Aid, Bob Geldof stood on the stage of Wembley Stadium and bellowed at the developed world: “Give us yer fokkin’ money!” By the time of Live 8 in 2005, the message had evolved: the rockers were no longer demanding our money, only that we in turn beseech our governments to give more “aid” to Africa. In her new book, the Zambian economist (actually, more of an econo-babe) Dambisa Moyo takes aim at Sir Bob and Sir Bono beginning with the very title: Dead Aid. Government-to-government aid, says Miss Moyo, all but guarantees corruption and barbarism: a country that seeks private business investment will be accountable to the global markets; a country that raises public funds from taxes will be accountable to its own voters. But a government that gets “aid” from other governments is accountable to no one and nothing, and decades of easy money that make self-absorbed Western do-gooders feel swell about themselves have debauched the political culture of a continent. Which is why so much of the trillion dollars lavished on Africa since the earliest days of decolonization has wound up in this week’s president-for-life’s Swiss bank account while the conditions for domestic wealth generation improve not a whit.

But lowering the obstacles to business formation in the Congo doesn’t have the cachet that celeb-led moral posturing does. On the face of it, listening to a bunch of leathery old rockers ululating their ancient hits would seem an unlikely way to end poverty in the world, but it does absolve one of having to think about Africa—or even about which bits of “Africa” work (Mauritius) and which don’t (Somalia), and why. The historian Niall Ferguson, who wrote the introduction to Dead Aid, says that he was left “wanting a lot more Moyo, and a lot less Bono.” And, as much as any policy she proposes, this lèse-majesté to the beshaded knight of compassionate cool seems to have driven his humanitarian non-profit group to launch multiple if somewhat obsessive assaults on Miss Moyo.

I love elderly rock stars—not for their “music,” which is mostly ghastly, but for their business acumen, which totally rocks. Sir Paul McCartney owns the publishing rights to Guys & Dolls. David Bowie was the first pop singer to hold a bond offering in his back catalogue and had $55 million worth of Bowie “Class A royalty-backed notes” snapped up in nothing flat after Moody’s gave them their much coveted triple-A rating. Madonna cleans up with a book of nude photographs featuring such unsettling sights as her naked bottom propped up like a novelty bike rest, and then decides to relaunch her literary career with some improving children’s stories, but, either way, is savvy enough to headquarter her business interests in the United States and United Kingdom.

Yet ask her to help Africa and she climbs up on stage, as she did at Live 8, and urges people to “start a revolution.” Like Africa hasn’t had enough of those this last half-century? You can run a farm or factory in relatively primitive societies. But the protection of intellectual property—of products as flimsy as sung words and crotchets and quavers—requires the most evolved form of capitalist society. The aristorockracy are the last people who want a revolution. Africa should do as Bono does, not as he says.