Bono, the rockstar/anti-poverty campaigner, does not like having his wisdom questioned. At a Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) conference in Tanzania in June 2007, the Ugandan journalist Andrew Mwenda did just that. He argued that 30 years of aid to Africa had achieved precisely nothing. In fact, he maintained, all that aid had exacerbated poverty by enticing bright Africans into corrupt government, rather than into entrepreneurship. Bono, squirming in his seat, looked ready to explode. Then came Mwenda’s killer line: "What man or nation has ever become rich by holding out a begging bowl?"
"Bollocks," Bono shouted.
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