Bono

Bono is the lead singer of the Irish rock group, U2. U2 released their first record in April 1980, and have since sold over 100 million albums worldwide, winning fourteen Grammy music awards in the US and six Brit Awards in the UK along the way. In 2002 U2 were awarded MTV's Lifetime Achievement Award and honoured at the Brits for An Outstanding Contribution to Music. U2 have supported Amnesty International, Greenpeace, and the Burma Action Campaign.

Since 1998, Bono has been an active supporter of the international Jubilee 2000 Drop the Debt campaign, which campaigned for the unpayable debts of the world's poorest countries to be written off to mark the new millennium. He has used his fame to get the media to pay attention to debt, poverty and AIDS in Africa, and to get access to the world's most powerful politicians.

He has spent the past three years lobbying international politicians, the IMF and World Bank, and has met many world leaders including George Bush, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Thabo Mbeki. In 1999, he went to Rome to join forces with Pope John Paul II to persuade the Group of Eight richest nations (G8) to increase debt cancellation. In 2000, he joined Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo, to present the world's largest petition (24 million signatures) to UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, calling for much more debt cancellation for the poorest countries. In 2001, Bono helped bring together American music artists including Destiny's Child and Puff Daddy, to record Marvin Gaye's 'What's Going On?' to raise money and awareness to fight AIDS in Africa. In 2003, he helped lobby for an increase in overseas aid to Africa, which resulted in a promise from President Bush to add an extra $5 billion a year for poor countries. Bono also spent two weeks on a highly-publicised trip with US Treasury-Secretary, Paul O'Neill, to Ghana, South Africa, Uganda and Ethiopia to make the case for more money for AIDS and fighting poverty.

Bono, along with Live Aid's Sir Bob Geldof, has set up a network called DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade in Africa), which targets rich governments to increase resources and improve their policies towards African countries.

Bono lives in Dublin, Ireland, with his wife and four children.