November 14, 2004
Band Aid II wants to run the world, not just feed it
Martin Wroe and Ben Dowell
TODAY, at Air studios in Hampstead, north London, pop and rock acts will raise their voices — and millions of pounds — to alleviate disaster in Africa, just as Band Aid did 20 years ago.
Then it was famine in Ethiopia, now it is Darfur in Sudan. Then it was Boy George, Sting and George Michael. Today it is Robbie Williams, Dido, Justin Hawkins, Ms Dynamite, Jamelia and Chris Martin. Once again the cover will show a black child against a westernised Christmas scene after an alternative by the artist Damien Hirst showing the grim reaper was rejected as “too scary”.
You might think nothing has changed. But since Band Aid there has been a quiet revolution in the way the glitterati of pop have come to understand how fame can effect change.
It was Band Aid — and its successor concert Live Aid — that proved the catalyst. The concert, in July 1985, powered by the righteous indignation of Bob Geldof, raised £110m for emergency famine relief. But although the money was spent wisely in Ethiopia, Chad and other countries, a decade later a simple statistic led to an epiphany about Africa’s poverty.
That figure of £110m turned out to be the equivalent of what the world’s poorest continent returned to the West in debt repayments — every week. It was instrumental in U2’s Bono signing up to the Jubilee 2000 campaign aimed at cancelling those debts. It was, he said, “a chance to revisit that situation — but this time to look at the structure of poverty”.
It was also an early signal that the argument was shifting from feeding the world to fixing the world. So when Geldof showed up to launch the Live Aid DVD last weekend, he had just flown in from the Congo, undertaking research for Tony Blair’s Commission for Africa.
The commission is Geldof’s idea, which he ceaselessly lobbied Blair to launch. It is made up of 17 commissioners, including the prime minister of Ethiopia, the president of Tanzania and Blair and Gordon Brown. Its report, in the spring, is likely to demand radical change in relations between the rich and poor world if abject poverty is to be vanquished.
And while Bono is the one star from the first Band Aid who will guest on today’s recording, he, like Geldof, is convinced that harnessing his fame to propel a political lobby is more fruitful than mere fundraising. The Jubilee 2000 campaign, for example, led to £60 billion in debt being cancelled for 30 countries, which translates into millions of Ugandan or Tanzanian children finally going to school.
Bono has also learnt how to work Washington. Years of lobbying have yielded meetings with George Bush, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice — and significant commitments to new aid. “Celebrity is currency,” he says, “and I want to spend mine well.”
Musicians are taking the cue, as the argument about global inequality moves from charity to justice. Ronan Keating, the former Boyzone singer turned solo artist, spent 10 days last spring in Ghana examining how global trade worked against poor communities.
“I met a farmer called Kofi who used to send his kids to school and feed his family by growing tomatoes,” said Keating, who discovered that the tomato business was long gone and Kofi now works in a quarry breaking stones for £1 a day.
Ghana has been flooded with cheap tomatoes, grown in European Union countries and subsidised by EU taxpayers, making his own efforts unsellable.
Like millions of small farmers in the developing world, he is a victim of the global trading environment, which, Keating argues, is loaded against the poorest. Any number of charity singles won’t fix the problem.
“We have to rewrite trade rules if people like Kofi are to survive,” he said. “Poor countries must be allowed to support their own people and use whatever tools they have to lift their people out of poverty.”
Chris Martin, the millionaire singer in Coldplay, is lending his vocals to Band Aid today but since visiting Haiti with Oxfam he has no doubt that the most direct route to a fairer world lies in political reform.
In part this means popularising complex arguments about subsidies and surpluses in the global trading system, a harder sell than asking someone for loose change. Yet in Cancun, Mexico, last year he delivered 4m signatures to the World Trade Organisation summit.
Many believe 2005 could prove a turning point with Britain both chairing the G8 group of leading economic powers and holding the EU presidency.
But it is not just the rich and famous who have political power to use on behalf of the developing world. Tomorrow, at the House of Commons, Geldof launches A Rough Guide to a Better World (of which Martin Wroe is co-author) showing that fighting global inequality is too important to leave to charity. We have power as citizens to remake the world as a fairer place. “The cost of our success must not be the misery of others,” says Geldof.
However important giving to charity remains, life for people in the poorest countries will only really improve when enough “ordinary people” regard global development as part of their everyday thinking. From volunteering with aid agencies to buying fairly traded foods, justice for developing countries is taking over from sympathy.
And that suits African governments. The Ethiopian government, for example, is less interested in another benefit than in a reduction in the debt burden.
“Live Aid’s humanitarian assistance is not our destiny,” says Fisseha Adugna, the Ethiopian ambassador. “Our destiny is economic growth.”
Band Aid II wants to run the world, not just feed it
Martin Wroe and Ben Dowell
TODAY, at Air studios in Hampstead, north London, pop and rock acts will raise their voices — and millions of pounds — to alleviate disaster in Africa, just as Band Aid did 20 years ago.
Then it was famine in Ethiopia, now it is Darfur in Sudan. Then it was Boy George, Sting and George Michael. Today it is Robbie Williams, Dido, Justin Hawkins, Ms Dynamite, Jamelia and Chris Martin. Once again the cover will show a black child against a westernised Christmas scene after an alternative by the artist Damien Hirst showing the grim reaper was rejected as “too scary”.
You might think nothing has changed. But since Band Aid there has been a quiet revolution in the way the glitterati of pop have come to understand how fame can effect change.
It was Band Aid — and its successor concert Live Aid — that proved the catalyst. The concert, in July 1985, powered by the righteous indignation of Bob Geldof, raised £110m for emergency famine relief. But although the money was spent wisely in Ethiopia, Chad and other countries, a decade later a simple statistic led to an epiphany about Africa’s poverty.
That figure of £110m turned out to be the equivalent of what the world’s poorest continent returned to the West in debt repayments — every week. It was instrumental in U2’s Bono signing up to the Jubilee 2000 campaign aimed at cancelling those debts. It was, he said, “a chance to revisit that situation — but this time to look at the structure of poverty”.
It was also an early signal that the argument was shifting from feeding the world to fixing the world. So when Geldof showed up to launch the Live Aid DVD last weekend, he had just flown in from the Congo, undertaking research for Tony Blair’s Commission for Africa.
The commission is Geldof’s idea, which he ceaselessly lobbied Blair to launch. It is made up of 17 commissioners, including the prime minister of Ethiopia, the president of Tanzania and Blair and Gordon Brown. Its report, in the spring, is likely to demand radical change in relations between the rich and poor world if abject poverty is to be vanquished.
And while Bono is the one star from the first Band Aid who will guest on today’s recording, he, like Geldof, is convinced that harnessing his fame to propel a political lobby is more fruitful than mere fundraising. The Jubilee 2000 campaign, for example, led to £60 billion in debt being cancelled for 30 countries, which translates into millions of Ugandan or Tanzanian children finally going to school.
Bono has also learnt how to work Washington. Years of lobbying have yielded meetings with George Bush, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice — and significant commitments to new aid. “Celebrity is currency,” he says, “and I want to spend mine well.”
Musicians are taking the cue, as the argument about global inequality moves from charity to justice. Ronan Keating, the former Boyzone singer turned solo artist, spent 10 days last spring in Ghana examining how global trade worked against poor communities.
“I met a farmer called Kofi who used to send his kids to school and feed his family by growing tomatoes,” said Keating, who discovered that the tomato business was long gone and Kofi now works in a quarry breaking stones for £1 a day.
Ghana has been flooded with cheap tomatoes, grown in European Union countries and subsidised by EU taxpayers, making his own efforts unsellable.
Like millions of small farmers in the developing world, he is a victim of the global trading environment, which, Keating argues, is loaded against the poorest. Any number of charity singles won’t fix the problem.
“We have to rewrite trade rules if people like Kofi are to survive,” he said. “Poor countries must be allowed to support their own people and use whatever tools they have to lift their people out of poverty.”
Chris Martin, the millionaire singer in Coldplay, is lending his vocals to Band Aid today but since visiting Haiti with Oxfam he has no doubt that the most direct route to a fairer world lies in political reform.
In part this means popularising complex arguments about subsidies and surpluses in the global trading system, a harder sell than asking someone for loose change. Yet in Cancun, Mexico, last year he delivered 4m signatures to the World Trade Organisation summit.
Many believe 2005 could prove a turning point with Britain both chairing the G8 group of leading economic powers and holding the EU presidency.
But it is not just the rich and famous who have political power to use on behalf of the developing world. Tomorrow, at the House of Commons, Geldof launches A Rough Guide to a Better World (of which Martin Wroe is co-author) showing that fighting global inequality is too important to leave to charity. We have power as citizens to remake the world as a fairer place. “The cost of our success must not be the misery of others,” says Geldof.
However important giving to charity remains, life for people in the poorest countries will only really improve when enough “ordinary people” regard global development as part of their everyday thinking. From volunteering with aid agencies to buying fairly traded foods, justice for developing countries is taking over from sympathy.
And that suits African governments. The Ethiopian government, for example, is less interested in another benefit than in a reduction in the debt burden.
“Live Aid’s humanitarian assistance is not our destiny,” says Fisseha Adugna, the Ethiopian ambassador. “Our destiny is economic growth.”
