LA Times
A Silver Medal for Project Red
The star-powered effort to help Africa by selling hip clothes and
gadgets is admirable, but it also reveals how far behind the continent
is.
By Dan Turner
October 26, 2006
Better Red than dead. That's what I figured when I stopped by a Gap
store the day after Project Red's Oct. 13 U.S. launch to pick up a
T-shirt and, incidentally, save the world.
Project Red, the brainchild of U2 frontman Bono and Santa Monica City
Councilman Bobby Shriver, is a cross-branding partnership in which
Apple, Motorola, Converse and other companies earmark profits from Red
iPods, RAZR phones and sneakers for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS,
Tuberculosis and Malaria. Thanks to Gap's nationwide celebrity
billboard campaign and Bono's appearance on "Oprah," the line of
shirts, jackets and sweatshirts is a hit. At the Gap I went to,
shoppers were picking over the few remaining Red shirts.
Project Red's success to date is inspiring stuff. Yet there was one
slightly sour note as I thumbed through the short stack of Gap
T-shirts. Right under the XL on the label (hey, these things are
designed for 19-year-olds) were the words "Made in Cambodia."
Cambodia has its own problems with AIDS and other diseases. Yet Asia,
unlike Africa, has developed a sophisticated manufacturing industry,
especially for apparel. The bulk of the money raised by Project Red
will go to fight AIDS and malaria in Africa, which in turn will reduce
poverty -- but not as much as a vibrant manufacturing sector would. If
Bono and Project Red's other heavy-hitting backers really want to help
Africa, wouldn't it be better to make the Red products there?
In fact, some of Gap's Red clothes are made in Africa; those T-shirts
with messages such as "INSPI(RED)" and "BO(RED)" are made in Lesotho by
Precious Garments, a Gap contractor that employs 4,500 people. That the
rest of the line is made elsewhere is no fault of San Francisco-based
Gap Inc., but it does point up the logistical nightmares that make
turning Africa around far more complicated than handing out AIDS drugs.
Fabric mills use expensive, high-tech machines to weave thread into
fabric, and Africa has very few of them. If a retailer wants an
African-made shirt, it typically has to ship the fabric from Asia so it
can be cut and sewn in Africa. This made some economic sense when
textile exports from powerhouses such as China and India were
restricted by World Trade Organization quotas. In January 2005, those
quotas were lifted. Now retailers can get all the clothes they want
from Asia faster and cheaper than it would take to get them from
Africa.
So why not build more fabric mills in Africa? Sub-Saharan Africa still
lacks the infrastructure -- stable governments, power lines, paved roads
-- to support industry. Also, the workforce is so sickened by AIDS and
malaria that business owners never know whether their workers are going
to show up.
Bad as this situation is, it could get worse. One of the few remaining
competitive advantages for companies such as Precious Garments is that
its clothing can be exported to the United States duty-free under a
trade deal with sub-Saharan Africa signed in 2000. A provision that
applies to apparel made in Africa out of fabric made elsewhere expires
in less than a year. If it isn't renewed by Congress, much of Africa's
fledgling apparel-export industry could be crushed.
Shriver, Project Red's chief executive, says the success of Gap's
clothing launch has piqued the interest of other companies that want to
sell Red products; he has recently been contacted by car companies, a
beer company and even a candy maker that wants to sell Red chewing gum.
None of these things are likely to be made in Africa (though Addis
Ababa Hubba Bubba Gum has a nice ring). For now, we'll just have to
settle with saving millions of people from needless death; Bono and Co.
can tackle trade inequities next week.
And maybe also come out a little less jaded about human potential and a little less likely to make uninformed presumptions about how "other people" think and what they value. Celebrityworld is a fishbowl of self-fulfilling prophecies.
After reading your previous post, I was totally going to respond with a 
