PARIS (AFP) — High profile rockers-turned-campaigners Bob Geldof and Bono on Wednesday hammered G8 countries for falling far behind in aid pledges to Africa and urged France to take a stand as next EU president to end the “disgrace”.

Flanked by French tennis star Yannick Noah and Benin singer Angelique Kidjo, the pair of Irish rock’n'roll aid icons said a 2005 pledge by G8 nations to deliver an extra 22 billion dollars to Africa by 2010 was currently only 14 percent fulfilled.

“It is a disgrace that the rich world has failed so miserably,” said Geldof. “It is a disgrace that the lucky part of the world give a small fraction of its wealth to poor who live just 12 kilometres away,” he said, referring to the smallest distance between Europe and Africa.

With French aid to Africa cut back last year and the country due to take on the key post of rotating European Union presidency next month, President Nicolas Sarkozy had a special role to play, the campaigners said.

“European credibility is on the line,” Bono said.

Yet aid reaching the world’s poorest continent was making a measurable difference on the ground, the celebrity activists said.

Around 100,000 African lives a month now were being saved through programmes run by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, said its executive director Michel Kazatchkine.

Increased assistance meant more than two million Africans were on life-saving AIDS medication against only 50,000 five years ago, while 29 million children had entered school for the first time between 1999 and 2005.

“This is a continent that is going to take off,” said Bono, referring to Africa’s six percent annual growth rate.

“We are their neighbours, we should be their partners. If we fail, we have no right to that special relationship.”

Ireland had done well out of aid, as had Germany and France, he added. “Aid is a necessary foundation for the building-blocks of the 21st century,” said the U2 frontman.

Both Bono and Geldof were in Japan recently to urge Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda to recapture Tokyo’s position as the global leader in overseas development as the next G8 summit approaches in July in Hokkaido.

France’s Sarkozy too, whom the pair have met several times, “could be a great help to us” in his six months at the EU helm, Bono said.

But as the country that propelled human rights onto the world stage, France must dig into its own pocket too to help Africa.

While Britain and the United States were on course to meet their G8 commitments, and Germany had taken difficult steps, France needed to pump up its aid flows “in the next few weeks so we can say we have at least half of the G8 on course,” Bono said.

G8 nations as a whole have delivered only three billion dollars to Africa at the halfway point between their 2005 pledge and 2010 deadline, according to figures from DATA, an anti-poverty advocacy group, and ONE, a non-governmental organisation that campaigns against global poverty.

- AFP

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