Aid to poor countries works, but the rich countries are not keeping their promises. That's the bottom line in DATA's 2007 report. launched by Bono in Berlin.


The DATA Report finds that the G8 - the leading industrialised countries - increased aid by less than half the sum needed from 2004-2006 to meet their 2010 goals. In 2007 they are planning to do only about one third of what's needed to get back on track. The promises from the G8 Summit in Edinburgh in 2005 are not being met.

'The G8 are sleep walking into a crisis of credibility.' said Bono, launching the report with activists Bob Geldof, Herbert Gronemeyer and former Nigerian Finance Minister Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. 'I know the DATA report will feel like a cold shower, but I hope it will wake us all up. These are cold facts, but I know they will stir up some very hot arguments.

'These statistics are not just numbers on a page, they are people begging for their lives, for two pills a day, a mother begging to immunize her children, a child begging not to become a mother at age 12.'

The report shows how aid is turning around the lives of millions of people - for example every day 1,450 Africans living with AIDS are put on life-saving medications. Due in part to debt cancellation and increased aid, 20 million more African children are going to school for the first time in their lives.

Read the DATA press release.

Catch Bono talking with CNN about the report here