Name:
Sir Bob Geldof
Area of work:
Poverty alleviation in Africa
The challenge:
Africa is a continent in crisis. According to the World Bank and Oxfam, there are some 28 million people with HIV/AIDS, life expectancy is just 46 (and falling), over 300 million people live on less than US$1 dollar per day and 40 per cent of children are out of school.
Bob Geldof sees the challenge clearly, and articulates it in his own, unique way, after a recent visit to Africa:
“Africa had uniquely grown poorer by 25%. A typical African country today has the GDP of a town of 20,000 in the UK. Half of its people subsist on 65 pence or less a day, this at a time when we grotesquely pay each individual cow in the EU $2.50 per day in subsidy. The U.N. was spending $1.3billion a year on peacekeeping but a fifth of all Africans lived in countries riven by civil war. This instability helped spread Aids which unknown in 1984 was now killing 6000 a day. The dead can’t plant so people were starving again. Only one in 400 victims was taking anti-retrovirals. Net investment south of the Sahara was a pathetic $3.9 billion and was worse than in the past 6 years.”
Key achievement in 2004 – Breaking the Cycle:
Starting out as lead singer with the Dublin based Boomtown Rats in the 1970s, Geldof has had an illustrious rock and roll career winning Grammies and Brit Awards to name a few. It is away from the music however that his impact has arguably been the greatest. Most famed for initiating the Band-Aid project, he was responsible for convening 40 British pop musicians (including Sting, Bono and Paul McCartney) to record the tune "Do They Know It's Christmas" a charity set up for the victims of famine in Africa, which culminated in the 1985 Live Aid concert.
In 2004, Geldof has brought the Africa agenda to the fore once again, having lobbied for the creation of the Commission for Africa (for which Geldof is one of 17 commissioners alongside Tony Blair and Gordon Brown), after a visit to the continent in which he saw worse conditions that 20 years previous. He suggested to Tony Blair the idea of a follow-up Brandt report, the last large scale report on the way forward for Africa. According to Geldof: “an attempt to understand the newer factors at work in Africa was necessary before we could even begin to compose a workable solution to the terrible conditions of the lives of the poorest and most wretched people on our planet.”
Geldof suggests that his new project, Band-Aid 20 is more political than its predecessor. Band-Aid in 1984 was about raising awareness and funds to help those in need. The agenda of Band-Aid 20 is action oriented, towards the political consciousness, 20 years after the issue was first raised. It is essentially a ‘report card’ from the Live Aid generation, who now hold positions of power, to see whether their rhetoric holds true.
Geldof says: “By accepting the idea, Tony Blair would at the very least keep Africa at the forefront of the political, developmental and media mind throughout 2005 but much more importantly the commission would, unlike Brandt, have real power and be reporting directly to these leaders on a newer, contemporary understanding and implementation of what we will see are ancient and historic dilemmas.”
An author once said of Bob Geldof: “For all his skill as a populist, Bob Geldof could not shift the agenda from one of Charity to one of justice.” Geldof recognises it’s not the job of musicians to make the world a better place. But he realises that you can create art out of political or social events, to raise the profile of issues and reach out to the mainstream. With the Commission for Africa, Geldof is breaking the cycle of all talk, no action, by engaging leaders who can create action and communicating the issues of Africa to a mainstream audience, on a scale the like of which hasn’t been seen since 1984.
Looking forward:
“We could level the trading playing field and even tilt it slightly towards them. We could cancel all their debt that will enable them to actually get onto the pitch to play. We should dispense whatever medicines are necessary to stem the horror of their Aids, malaria and TB pandemics, we could make aid flows completely predictive…but will we? The work needed to deliver Africa is vast. Indeed it is limitless since as one plateau is reached another looms up and the totality of misery is such that once again I believe that only a Total Plan for the continent will succeed.”
Geldof does not understate the challenge that Africa faces. Indeed, he recognises the huge task ahead, but sees the opportunity presented by the Commission as an immense one, far exceeding that of any project that has come before.
Sources:
Also in this feature:
© Article 13 2005
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