Bob Geldof and African poverty
Andrew Lodge
It’s nearing three months since Bob Geldof, along with Bono and others, led the Live 8 carnival with the professed goal of raising awareness about the desperate plight of Africa. In these three months, the African tragedy could not have changed any less.
Live 8 was sold as a world-changing idea — simultaneous concerts held around the world with the goal of convincing the G8 leaders to change their policies towards Africa. In a spectacle that conjured up images of that fabled “people power,” Geldof and Bono proclaimed that their concerts would raise awareness about Africa around the world to a previously unimagined level. This would force the men in charge of the most powerful economies on the planet to extend a benevolent hand to end the suffering. Following Live 8, Geldof, who had previously led the Live Aid concert back in the ’80s to raise money for the famine in Ethiopia, trumpeted the success of his endeavour.
Sadly, things weren’t meant to be. Following the concerts, Geldof pointed to the promises he had ostensibly secured from the G8 leaders as evidence of the bright future to come. In reality, however, many significant amendments were made to the G8 position during or immediately after the summit. It turns out the 100 per cent debt relief was not 100 per cent after all. It turns out that the U.S. wasn’t on board, now that John Bolton, the new ambassador to the UN, has proposed hundreds of alterations severely compromising the possibility of poverty reduction. It also happens that Germany and Italy will not meet their promises, having announced a scaled-back version of their original commitments. And, it turns out that the baseline goal of G8 countries providing 0.7 per cent of their GDP to development aid simply will not happen.
Nor were the notions behind the Live 8 project viewed with unanimous approval. Geldof’s brainchild was not without criticism from the same populations he purported to be helping. African voices throughout the continent protested the lack of involvement of people and groups originating in Africa itself. For many, it seemed to be another case of the terms being dictated by the very countries that had, to varying degrees, engaged in the colonizing process, which has contributed so substantially to the current crisis.
Geldof’s project itself was not colonialist, but the lack of African involvement in agenda-setting and decision-making did raise a spectre of Africa’s perennial disempowerment on the world stage.
Of course, this was not Geldof’s intention, but, at the very least, the awareness he was hoping to raise was fuelled by his press conferences and grandstanding, and not articulated by Africans themselves.
In 2000, leaders from around the world agreed at the UN to set what became known as the Millennium Goals. The language of the document was bold and deliberately imbued with a strong sense of social justice. The leaders promised to work together to, among other things, reduce by half the one billion people living in absolute poverty around the globe by 2015.
Recently, in anticipation of the UN summit, the powers-that-be behind the Millennium Goals released a report chronicling the development of the plan over its first five years. It was not entirely bleak. Some progress has been made in combating poverty, principally in East and Southeast Asia, and other social correlates have tagged along meekly in those regions.
However, the progress report on other regions, particularly Sub-Saharan Africa, was disturbing enough to negate moderate successes in other places. In the Sub-Sahara, people are, on the whole, poorer than they were five years ago. Not coincidentally, the region has also seen deterioration in other elements of the social fabric, including education, health and conflict resolution.
Now, as the world’s leaders have successfully reduced the UN Human Development position right down to meaninglessness, it has become clear that the political will that is necessary to even begin alleviating the plight of the planet’s most desperate simply does not exist.
In a sense, Geldof and Bono were right in pointing out that awareness of the origins, scope and quality of a given problem is necessary before that problem can be effectively addressed. It’s hard to imagine, though, that a lack of awareness is actually the obstacle in the African case. The stereotype of poor, wasting-away Africa is well known (though, many African critics argue that the stereotype shows only one angle of a diverse social, economic and cultural kaleidoscope), and one is hard-pressed to find someone who hasn’t seen the emaciated and fly-covered poster children of Africa. The problems in Africa, and the strategies needed to change them, require much more at this point than “awareness.”
Perhaps what is so galling about all of this is the arrogance. Geldof and Bono flit around to press conferences in stretched limos, strutting and berating world leaders. And Africa’s saviors didn’t shy away from the spotlight following Live 8. As Geldof so absurdly stated after the concerts: “A great justice has been done . . . . On aid, 10 out of 10; on debt, eight out of 10 . . . . Mission accomplished, frankly.” Sadly, the reality is very different.
It is not that Geldof or Bono are necessarily bad men. Megalomaniacs, quite possibly, but probably not bad people. But, whether it is Geldof’s naive dream or the idealism of the Millennium Goals, these kinds of projects illustrate the degree to which the tragedy of Sub-Saharan Africa cannot be resolved through grand statements. Instead, it will require a massive sea-change not only in Africa, but throughout the global geo-political landscape. Under the current climate, it is difficult to imagine this happening.
Andrew Lodge is a third-year medical student.
