(Ed. note: Reuters correspondent Lesley Wroughton has been traveling with Bono on a six-nation tour in Africa. She interviewed Bono at the end of the trip. Here is what he said.)

On working in Africa… There are multi-dimensional problems. You have to fight a war on at least three fronts and I would call them health, education and the interface with commerce. I couldnt point you to a single time when these pennies, or dollars, or euros dropped on me and Im not sure it fully came into focus until this trip.

Ive moved a distance. Were all seeing something. Were more evolved than we were. We used to only see despair and we wanted to help and we wanted to make the funds available to ease that despair. For what was once called foreign assistance, we now need two names: one you can call mercy and response to pandemic-type aid and you cant hold people ransom to their governments on that. Then there is other aid called investment.

On aid strategies… We have to be very careful where that (investment) aid goes and that is going to be unpopular with some of our activists and it is going to be very unpopular if youre in a country where your government is not deserving of this new investment and youre left carrying the can. Oddly enough, it is the activists here on the continent of Africa who are doubly hard on this point. We have to listen to them. They are saying, do not invest in our countries while we have crooked leadership. Theyre saying it and I think we have to listen to them. That is hard. That is depressing.

We didnt go to those countries, so in one sense, this one trip is being skewed in the direction of promise.

On aid limits… We are coming out of the adolescence of optimism, where we thought just putting on our marching boots and pulling a big number could transform the lives on the continent of Africa. You cant.

There were people campaigning alongside without any conditionality. I dont agree with them. I dont agree with the burdensome conditionality that forces liberalization but I do agree with conditionality of tackling of corruption. I think we are growing up.

For somebody who by my trade should be more suited to barricades than the negotiating table, that is part of growing up. The problems are much more complex than we thought they were and I think Africans must have been smiling and cringing at times when they saw us just thinking that money could solve their problems.

To think when we started Live Aid, it was the first kind of aid, the response to famine in Ethiopia. Look how a whole generation has educated itself off the back of that to move from charity to justice and then to move from justice to debt and trade. Its quite an arc and I think Ive gone through that. That is the arc of my whole involvement.

The depressing thing again is there are still so many on the continent being held ransom.

(Pictures: (R) Bono visits a market in Ghana’s capital Accra, (L) Bono kisses Hajia Alima Mahama, Ghana’s Women and Children’s Affairs Minister. REUTERS/Yaw-Bibini)

Ghana’s stock exchange is the newest and one of the fastest-growing in Africa, having quadrupled the number of listed companies in just a few years to 29. So when Bono landed in the capital Accra on the last stop of his visit, he headed for the trading floor to see what it’s like — with NBC anchorman Brian Williams who had just joined the tour.

By the time he got there, most of the trading had stopped for the day — it runs until noon every day — but he managed to catch a few of the traders and the exchange’s bosses. The trading floor is a small room with a few desks and a ricker board. Among the biggest foreign companies listed is South Africa’s mining group AngloGold and a Gambian Bank.

When Bono heard GGB stood for Guinness Ghana, he exclaimed: “As an Irish man I want you to know it is a little confusing that Guinness is more popular in Africa than in Ireland.”
When the Kofi Yamoah, the exchage’s managing director, said that Guinness was not only popular but tasted better in Africa, Bono replied, “Oh you’re hurtful! A mortal wound!” (Picture: Bono accepts a gourd during a visit to the cotton-growing town of Dafara, May 22, 2006. REUTERS/Rainer Schwenzfeier )

Ed. Note: We received close to 200 questions and comments from readers following Bono’s six-nation African tour in our blog. Many thanked the Irish rock star and activist for his aid efforts in Africa, others were skeptical about the effectiveness of relief programs. The questions from Bono’s critics and fans crossed a wide range. You can read all of the comments here. Reuters correspondent Lesley Wroughton, who is traveling with Bono, got answers to a few of the questions as they flew from Tanzania to Nigeria on Sunday.

Here’s what Bono said:

Why does it take a celebrity like Bono to get the West engaged in Africa?

Celebrity is a big subject to try and get through in a short blog. I’ve always thought it ridiculous and very silly but it is currency and I use my hard currency to have access and influence for people who can’t be present in those rooms, those meetings.

We may have fancy shoes, or in my case flip-flops, and we may be the worst examples of the excesses of  the West but in these meetings we represent the poor and take that job very seriously. I try to use my celebrity as a loudhailer for those who have lost their voice.

Multinational corporations have enormous purchasing power. Why can’t they buy from African suppliers?

Doing business is sexy. Trade is sexy. Aid is not sexy if you’re an African. Africans don’t want aid but they need aid. What they really want and what their heart desires and what they truly deserve is trade as a way out of their present circumstances; to do business and the dignity of doing business together on an even playing field.

So, the thing I will come away with at the end of this trip, apart from some of the more tragic moments that are hard to forget, is this rather intoxicating ‘can do’ attitude that we’ve just discovered in this new Africa, like the A to Z textile company we visited that makes bed nets and polo shirts for its next door neighbor. There are new burgeoning African businesses about to break through if we give them the right breaks. 

How do you choose the countries you visit and why don’t you focus on war-ravaged countries?

If we are really honest, we need in the next 10 years success stories. We need three or four in the next five years and 10 in the next 10 years. If we don’t have them we will lose all momentum…  This trip is about trying to find countries that might prosper and become new models for other African countries, which will hopefully come out of their conflict.

Im the biggest disaster groupie of them all, but this trip is about finding out what Africa is doing to transform itself.

How do we know that aid is going to the people who need it?

Much work is being done to fight corruption both from the African civil societies’ point of view and from the donor communities. The Nigerian finance minister is a hero in the fight against corruption. She has a model called the Virtual Poverty Fund as an example of where money is freed up in debt cancellation and can be monitored as (it) journeys through the economy. In Uganda, they have this Poverty Action Fund.

Transparency is the key word for any new increases in aid and no one wants to see redecorating of palaces when a country is starving at the side of the road.

What song is going through your head?

I have a radio on in my head most of the time and I was smiling to myself about the fact that a lot of the songs on the radio Ive never heard before, which is to say Im making them up. I suppose that is what I do. Im a songwriter.

Sometimes I have a song in my head from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, I have a song in my head from Massive Attack called Protection, I have a whole album in my head from Arcade Fire. In fact, their songs are starting to haunt me. They were on the road so I actually cant get them out of my head but they are very inspiring songs. Im lucky to have that particular virus.

But a lot of the time they are songs I havent heard before and Im sort of tuning in listening. Sometimes I find myself humming a melody into my phone. I call melodies into the phone or write the words down into a notebook.

I had a great one the other day called Love is All we Have Left. Its like an old Broadway tune. I thought it was a Frank Sinatra song. 

Ed. note: Correspondent Lesley Wroughton spoke with Richard Feachem, who heads The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, about your questions and concerns about accountability in the aid efforts in Africa. The group receives all the Red funding and distributes it to countries. Here’s what he said:

The reason that the Red campaign and the major corporations like Motorola and American Express have chosen the Global Fund to be the recipient of the money is that the Global Fund has an extraordinarily good track record in investing the money that produces results, produces results quickly, and is accountable and transparent. It is confidence in that system that has caused this relationship between Red and the Global Fund.

Red money flows into the Global Funds red account and is then allocated through normal Global Fund systems initially to Rwanda for projects that help women and children fight HIV/AIDS and in the future to Swaziland and Ghana and after that to other countries. At the first hint of corruption all those standard Global Fund procedures and systems apply to the Red money just as they apply to all the other money that the Global Fund is investing.

That confidence in the Global Funds systems to finance only those people who are delivering the goods and actually improving the lives of ordinary men and women and to take a very tough stance on corruption, that system is the essence of Red. (Pictures: Above right, Clifton Beach in Cape Town/Reuters. Left: Richard Feachem/The Global Fund)

Ed. note: Many of you asked Lesley Wroughton, the Reuters correspondent on the six-nation African tour with Bono, when the charity-dedicated Red products will be more widely available. Lesley spoke with Bobby Shriver, chief executive of Product Red. He’s also chairman of DATA, the lobby group formed by Bono and is travelling with Bono. Here’s what he said:

“If we can get the iconic branding companies to us, sure wed expand. Right now, however, with the five Red companies weve got, three of them havent fully launched their products yet. The only fully featured product out there is the American Express card and as of Monday, the Motorola phone. Gap has only had a T-shirt. In the fall, they will have a full line including leather jackets, jeans, bags, belts and accessories. Whole sections of Gap stores will be Red. Similarly, Armani right now has sunglasses but in the fall theyll have a whole series of things that Mr. Armani (created in collaboration) with a Ghanaian artist.

Getting those things to actually work and work together is the near-term focus for this year, but next year we would love to have more. (Picture: Bono holds a child at a clinic in Butha Buthe near Lesotho’s capital Maseru May 17, 2006. REUTERS/Mike Hutchings)

Bonos last day in Tanzania the least hectic yet on his six-nation African tour. We’re at a factory in Arusha, the only one in Africa manufacturing insecticide-treated bed nets using a new technology developed by Japans Sumitomo Chemical.

To Bono, the idea of ending Africas biggest killer malaria is like watching Armstrong walk on the moon. But there was something more about the factory that got Bono excited: The fact that an African-based company is making a product for Africa, is profitable and creates jobs. The factory employs 3,000 people with a start-up salary of around $45. The minimum wage in Tanzania is less than $40.

It is the most extraordinary story cutting edge 21st Century technology and Africa making its own solution to its own problems, he tells the factorys CEO Anuj Shah.

Seeing a photo opportunity, Bono jumped onto a bed covered by a bed net and joked: You heard of John and Yokos bed-in for peace? This is called ham for peace.

I feel very safe in here, he grinned at the cameras. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria which benefits from all of Bonos Product Red profits is the biggest distributor of  free bed nets in Africa and a customer of the A to Z factory.

The use of bed nets alone without any other intervention can bring down malaria rates in children by 30 or 40 percent. The most successful malaria control program in Africa today is in South Africas KwaZulu-Natal region where effective diagnosis and treatment of malaria, use of bed nets, and indoor spraying has reduced malaria infections by 90 percent in just two or three years.

Later in the day, Bono drives outside town to the lush Samasha area where farmers are growing Artemisia Annua, a herb used in a new combination drug ACT (Artemisinin-based Combination Therapies). Supplies of Artemisia, mainly sourced from China and Vietnam, are limited. A U.S-based group, TechnoServe, is helping farmers in Tanzania cultivate Artemisia, which provides families with cash, while maize is grown on the side for food.

On tour in Africa, Bono is more activist than rock star. Aside from his trademark shades, which he never takes off, Bono dresses down rather than up and has an easy manner. Informality is his game.

When Bono speaks of his campaign for debt relief, trade and more aid for Africa, he refers to it as a movement. In just over a year, the ONE campaign in the United States to Make Poverty History has recruited 2 million people through the Internet for the fight against AIDS and poverty and hopes to increase that number to 5 million by 2008.

At a clinic in Arusha, Tanzania, where pregnant women are seeking treatment for malaria and HIV/AIDS, Bono tries to explain to doctors and nurses the support they have overseas. We campaigned for you to have these drugs in Europe and in America and we are very proud to see you rolling them out and rolling back malaria, he says.

Bono is in Rwanda for the first time ever. It is very very very exciting and almost overwhelming to see the work come home as it has in Rwanda, he says.

At the Centre Hospitalier de Kigali, foreign aid from the Global Fund to Fight Aids, U.S. government and World Bank has helped buy equipment that does all the testing for HIV/AIDS in Rwanda, while also paying for the voluntary counseling, testing and treatment for AIDS.

Also here, the Rwandan government has embarked on an ambitious project that tracks HIV indicators and patients status, and alerts clinics when health supplies are running low known as TRAC, or Treatment and Research AIDS Center.

But what Bono sees in the pediatric ward at the same hospital reminds him of Africa’s vast needs. I feel that I have let you down, he says. I do not want to return to Kigali ever to see three to four people living in a bed bringing extra trauma, extra infections to children who are already distressed.”

Under the circumstances pop stardom seems ridiculous to Bono. I come from a culture of people who think our work is heroic, he says. They think film stars and rock stars are heroes, which is preposterous. The people I have seen today are actual heroes and these people should be the subject of movies. (Ed. note: Reuters correspondent Lesley Wroughton is traveling in Africa with Bono. She’s not easy to reach, but she has your questions and comments from May 18 and is keen to get some replies. Pictures by REUTERS/Antony Njuguna)

In the small community of Butha Buthe, a two-hour drive north of the Lesotho capital of Maseru, Bono and his wife Ali Hewson have invested in a clothing factory that produces their ethnically-conscious fashion brand Edun.

For every T-shirt sold $10 goes to fighting AIDS in Lesotho, which has the fourth largest HIV rate in the world. Many of the AIDS victims work in the countrys textile and apparel industry that employs about 45,000 people.

Hewson, an activist herself, told Reuters while touring the factory on Tuesday that country’s textile and apparel industry was hard hit by the expiry last year of the Multi-Fiber Arrangement that elminated the advantages to many investors of setting up in developing countries.

To keep workers at the Clothing Zone employed, Hewson has kept it in business with the Edun line and is currently in talks with retailers to bring their business to Lesotho.

At the nearby Qalo high school in Butha Buthe, profits from the sale of Edun Live T-shirts have been used to build a water well. Bono and Hewson visited the school on Tuesday to see for themselves how the money was spent — to the delight of U2 fans at the school. We love Lesotho because we think the mountain kingdom is very cool, he said. (Pictures: REUTERS/Mike Hutchings)

When Bono disembarked from a 737 chartered plane in the tiny kingdom of Lesotho on Tuesday at the start of a new African visit, executives from Gap and Motorola were with him. Both companies are part of his Product Red branding initiative in which products associated with it help to raise money for a global fund to tackle AIDS. Teaming up with a celebrity like Bono also has its public relations perks.

Bono acknowledges that four years ago when he toured Africa with then U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul ONeill, bringing private sector with him would never have crossed his mind.

It’s a signal of changes in Africa over the past decade, but in part it’s Bonos own advocacy that has helped shift attitudes toward the African agenda.

I think it is bizarre that Africa got me interested in commerce, chuckles the U2 lead singer in an interview with Reuters. I am an activist but I looked at the mosaic of problems facing this magical place and I could see so many of the pieces intersected with commerce, trade and entrepreneurial spirit.

And Im saying, I believe that Africa can compete with China in terms of offering jobs to its people in the apparel sector, I believe Africa can compete with India in terms of offering jobs to people in the IT sector, if this problem of business efficiencies and strangulation of red tape and corruption can be dealt with, he said. Africas political leaders know the influence he wields. Lesothos Minister of Trade and Industry Mpho Meli Malie is one of those who knows that having Bono pitch for Lesothos apparel sector could bring new investments. A celebrity like Bono and with his organization DATA they should be able to penetrate and encourage some of the brands to consider Lesotho as a destination, said Malie.

(Ed. note: Reuters correspondent Lesley Wroughton is traveling with Bono in Africa. You can send questions or comments to her with the comment link below. The picture: Irish rock star Bono speaks to HIV positive workers at a clothing factory in Lesotho’s capital Maseru May 16, 2006. Bono began a new African tour on Tuesday in Lesotho where he will unveil a new initiative to fight AIDS in its ailing textile industry. REUTERS/Mike Hutchings)