On the day that U2 were announced as headliners for next year’s Glastonbury Festival, a spoof press release about the band got the world talking, and twittering, about global poverty.

The piece, entitled “African leaders advise Bono on reform of U2” mocked Bono & Co. by turning around his headline-courting activism on Aid and suggesting that Nelson Mandela and a commission of African leaders would be advising the band on how to “reform” their music.

It continued ““Our youth today are imperiled by low quality music,” said Commission chairman Nelson Mandela. “We will be lending African musicians to U2 to try to refurbish their sound to satisfy the urgent and growing needs for diversionary entertainment at a time of crisis in the global music and financial sectors.”” You can read the rest of the article here.

But this wasn’t just another chance to laugh at Bono. Although, while we're doing that, does anyone remember that South Park episode where he turned out to be the biggest crap in the world? This was also a chance to expose the hypocrisy of the West when it comes to dealing with Aid, particularly for Africa.

The spoof post was written by Bill Easterly, who’s a Professor of Economics at New York University. He’s also the author of a book called ‘The White Man’s Burden’, which argues that countries who give Aid are doing it primarily as a way of assuaging the guilt they feel for preventing poor countries generating wealth themselves. He’s extended his wrath to the likes of Bono and Bob Geldof before, dubbing them as suffering from ‘The White Band’s Burden’.

What Easterly argues is that rather than acting as ‘Planners’, people who go in and tell poor countries what to do by imposing top-down plans, we in the West should be acting as ‘Searchers’ if we want to help end poverty. ‘Searchers’ are people who work with local people to find solutions to problems on the ground.

This is the point Easterly was making with his U2 press release. Nelson Mandela teaching guitar riffs to The Edge would be absurd, but so is thinking that we know better than Africans how to help Africa develop. Up to now, Africa still hasn't found what it's looking for.

Words: Kevin E.G. Perry

Photo: Andy Mettler

To be fair to Bono, he does occasionally stop taking himself so seriously. Check out his cameo appearance with Ricky Gervais: