International
Bob Geldof
Bob Geldof on the Millennium Development Goals
Earlier this month ONE co-founder Bob Geldof spoke at the UK Department For International Development (DFID) conference on the Millennium Development Goals.
Watch what he had to say:
For more information on the conference visit www.dfid.gov.uk/conference2010
Invictus
South African football captain Aaron Mokoena and ONE co-founder Bob Geldof at the screening of the film Invictus
On Monday night ONE was lucky to host an advance screening in London of the new film Invictus, which opens this month in much of Europe.
Directed by Clint Eastwood, Invictus tells the inspiring true story of how Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) joined forces with the captain of South Africa’s rugby team, Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon) to help unite their country. Believing he could bring his people together through the universal language of sport, Mandela rallied South Africa’s underdog rugby team as they made an unlikely run to the 1995 World Cup final.
As the world’s attention turns to the continent this year for the football world cup, it’s time to unite once again to celebrate the successes we’ve achieved, and renew our energies to go the distance to achieve the rest of the Millenium Development Goals by 2015.
We were joined on the night by journalists, politicians, footballers, celebrities, and a lucky ONE member, Benjamin Palafox, who won our online contest.
After the film ONE co-founder Bob Geldof and South African football captain Aaron Mokoena, spoke passionately about the importance of this 2010 for Africa and how the world cup can focus the eyes of the world, including the 3 billion or more who will watch the competition, on the good news that’s coming from the continent.
Keep an eye on the ONE blog for video from the event, which we will be posting shortly.
P.S. To find out more about Invictus visit the the official movie website.
How climate change is affecting Ethiopia
Last month Bob Geldof, co-founder of ONE, visited Ethiopia, 25 years after he helped spur the world into action over the then famine in East Africa.
As well as finding out how much progress has been made since then, he saw first hand how climate change is threatening the development gains of recent years.
Watch the video:
Africa can and must be part of the solution to climate change
Bob Geldof, co-founder of ONE, contributed a piece in today’s Telegraph newspaper in the UK:
It’s now 25 years since the Ethiopian famines of the 1980s and the British public’s unprecedented outpouring of generosity to their fellow human beings on another continent. The question I’m always asked, of course, is: was it all worth it, what’s changed in Ethiopia and in Africa as a whole? A great deal, I answer – for both better and worse.
Recently, I was back in Ethiopia, where these two types of change are quite apparent. On the positive front, economic growth has boomed; indeed, next year Ethiopia is expected to be among the top five fastest growing economies in the world. Education enrolment has been doubled, malaria death rates halved and HIV/AIDS is on the decline.
Mobile telephony is spreading (though it would be faster if privatised) and rural roads are linking remote communities to markets and health and education services. Above all, while too many people are still reliant on food aid, famine will be avoided this year as it has been for the last 18 years, as distribution and early warning systems have improved. Certainly, the government could be more transparent, but on the whole this is a country making progress, in a continent that has been doing likewise.
Then there is the negative change – that of the climate. Many of the villagers I’ve met mark the mid 1980s as the moment when they really saw how their weather patterns were changing. Since then, increasingly erratic rainfall has forced them to radically alter their farming practices.
Communities we visited in Tigray have had to rename the months of the year because the names were based on the seasons. They’ve now given up as the pattern of the seasons has changed so quickly. People told us how reduced rainfall has cut their income from farming. This in turn strains the social fabric. Thefts are becoming more common, and the children are forced out of the home to work.
If allowed to spread and worsen to its logical conclusion, the kind of social disintegration we’re now seeing in Ethiopia could have a chilling trajectory. It is all too easy for extreme poverty and climate change to feed a vicious cycle, making communities more vulnerable to extremist politics. A band of extreme poverty and instability across the Sahel and Sahara – worsened by climate change – would be very bad for a Europe just eight miles to the north. It is completely avoidable.
The tension between the positive and negative changes in Ethiopia is palpable. Which direction wins depends on the choices Ethiopians make, and to some extent upon us. And it’s not all about us having to make sacrifices; there are opportunities, too. Whether or not you believe the scientific consensus about climate change, there’s an inevitability to the way our own economies are adapting – and an economic rationale for us to buy into this change.
The inefficiencies of the hydrocarbon economy will be replaced by clean, cheap renewables; carbon finance trading will be a major industry in the near future. China is charging into renewables as Germany has already, with green jobs the fastest expanding new source of employment. Rather than deny these inexorable processes, we should embrace the opportunity they present if we are not to be left behind.
Carbon finance and the market can help link solutions in the UK to solutions in Africa. For example, growing trees to capture carbon could become a new cash crop for Africa’s farmers if the right framework is agreed in Copenhagen.
Investing in agriculture in Africa, both through government aid and private funds, is critical; it can also be highly profitable. Of all our undelivered development promises, the rich world’s promises on agriculture are especially key.
Twenty-five years ago, the story was one of Africa starving. Now, in spite of ongoing food shortages in some regions, there is a new story. It is a story backed by hard statistics, of an Africa rising. The last continent to be developed, with a burgeoning middle class and 900 million producers and consumers,
Africa is where some of the best returns on investment will be made in the next few decades. We must partner as we have promised with these people, for the sake of our global economy as well as our global environment, because in another 25 years we may just need them more than they need us.
Bob Geldof
Bob Geldof on Ethiopia and climate change
25 years ago Bob Geldof, co-founder of ONE, was spurred into action by the images of famine in East Africa that flashed across our TV screens. The events that followed, such as Live Aid, helped inspire millions of people around the world to take action in the fight extreme poverty.
Last week Bob returned to Ethiopia to see how much progress has been made there, but also the challenges the country faces today.
Find out what he had to say:
As world leaders prepare to gather next week in Copenhagen for the international climate change meeting, Bob’s message is more pressing than ever.
Climate change not only adds another challenge for many of those living in extreme poverty, but it threatens to erode the development gains that have been made in recent years.
We simply cannot afford for the negotiations in Copenhagen to fail.
We’ll be posting more from Bob in Ethiopia soon, but in the meantime check out the excellent piece by the Independent newspaper’s Paul Vallely, who accompanied Bob on his trip.
Bono’s Latest NYT Piece Covers Some Notable History
ONE co-founder Bono is a contributing columnist for the New York Times and his latest column appears today.
Written as a screenplay that spans 20 years, the piece focuses on both the artistic process and some important work in Germany during the 2007 G8 summit. Below is an excerpt from a scene at the 2007 G8 in which Bono, Bob Geldof, Youssou N’Dour and ONE’s policy team speak with Chancellor Angela Merkel about Germany fulfilling its aid commitments. You can read the full piece here.
The atmosphere is tense. The activists are not getting what they want. The leaders are not getting what they want, either, which is to be left alone by the activists, including the Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour, Bono and another grizzled Irish rocker, BOB GELDOF, and their policy team from ONE. The organization took its name from the song — over the protests of the songwriter, who felt that if history eventually repeats itself as farce, then irony, the next time around, sounds annoyingly earnest.
BOB (whose humor and intellect more than excuse the percussive expletives that pepper even the most formal meetings) Chancellor, what Germany has done is awe-inspiring. You’ve spent most of the last 20 years spending something like 4 percent of your G.D.P. on reunification … and yet you’re still willing to commit 0.7 percent of G.D.P. to global economic development. The lives of people you will never know or meet will be owed to this decision…. The 2008 budget backs that up, but the rest of the world will need to see ’09 to know you’re serious.
BONO (interrupting) Trajectory is everything. If the ’09 is like ’08, Germany will show the rest of the G-8 that they have to put money on the table as well as words.
MERKEL (who has met these men before and appeared to enjoy the encounters, but today is running out of patience with anyone who threatens to rain on her G-8 parade) I’m not prepared to commit beyond 2008. We will of course do our best.
BONO (at his least appealing) Let me just say, Madam Chancellor, that, like Bob, I’m intoxicated by the new Germany. Fifty thousand turned up today to stand in solidarity with the world’s poor. You yourself are so committed…the government…the coalition. And we absolutely take you at your word, but if the others don’t come through … well, you know nothing creates cynics faster than when leaders accept applause for commitments they then fail to meet. It’s one thing to break a promise to yourself or to your own electorate, but to break a promise to the most vulnerable people on the planet is profane.
MERKEL (in a quiet, calm voice) My father taught me a very important lesson when I was a girl growing up in East Germany. He said, “Always be more than you appear and never appear to be more than you are.”
Bob Geldof talks Canada
Yesterday Bob Geldof, advisor to ONE, appeared on the Canadian Television News segment “Power Play” to discuss Canada’s progress in meeting the 2005 Gleneagles Summit commitments and its role in hosting the upcoming G8 Summit. He had some very kind words for Canada’s strong commitments (and strong follow-through) in ending extreme poverty.
You can check out the clip here:
Berlusconi in Geldof Interview: “Africa, I’m Sorry”
Sunday’s special edition of La Stampa which Bob Geldof edited, also presented an opportunity for Geldof to interview Italy’s Prime Minister Berlusconi. In the interview, Geldof asks some very pointed questions about Italy’s failure to deliver on their promises to Africa, and the fact that Italy has only met 3% of what it had promised.
Full account of the interview, courtesy of Eloise Todd, below:
Silvio Berlusconi and Bob Geldof met each other in the courtyard of Palazzo Chigi. The Prime Minister was suffering from a stiff neck, but kept the promise to respond to the criticisms of the rock star famous for his public efforts for Africa. Geldof, straight in from London, wanted to go over the questions and data on Italian aid to Africa.
They found each other again a moment later outside the study of the Prime Minister. They sat in the centre, next to one another, their teams were on two sofas facing each other, the advisers of ONE, the NGO for Africa, on one side, and the men of the Foreign Ministry and Palazzo Chigi on the other, including Gianni Letta and Paolo Bonaiuti.
What followed was not a conventional interview, but an exchange which almost resembled a boxing match. I thought at times that first Berlusconi, then Geldof, would get up and abandon the meeting, but in the end they managed to get to the end of the interview and the encounter stayed gentlemanly.
Geldof: “Signor Presidente, let’s get straight to the point. You are the senior statesman of the G8. In 2001 in Genoa, you created the Global Fund for HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria, which made ARVs available for free for 3 million people in Africa. Then you participated in the Gleneagles Summit, where you committed to invest 0.51% of GNI in ODA by 2010 and 0.7% GNI by 2015: right now Italy has met only 3% of that promise. From the hope of Genoa to the delusion of Gleneagles: do you feel the weight of this responsibility?”
Berlusconi begins reading from a statement: “You are right. It’s a delay in payments. We, however, were out of government for two and a half years. When we returned, we found a deficit of 110% GDP. Now, because of the economic crisis, this deficit is up to 120% and the European Union will not allow us to stay at this level. When considering the budget law, the Parliament has decided to cut spending. Unfortunately they also cut aid to Africa, and we have started a debate on this. The Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti is committed to getting us back on track with our commitments in 3 years.”
Geldof becomes agitated: “The G8 is in 3 days, not 3 years, as President of this Summit, what are you going to do?”
Berlusconi: “Look, what has happened is absolutely the opposite of what I have been doing personally: this year I financed an orphanage in Thailand and a hospital for children in Brazil. I understand your worry and I very much appreciate the work that you have done for the poorest, but we have had external obstacles standing in our way.”
Berlusconi gives the floor to the diplomatic adviser of Tremonti “we have begun to repay the World Bank our outstanding payments, as well as other international financial organisations. In 2010 we will reach 0.33% of GDP to ODA, and we’ll get to 0.51% by 2015…”
Geldof interrupts: “Excuse me, I am aware of all this. Thanks for the explanation,” and he turns towards the Prime Minister: “I don’t believe you. In order to reach those levels you will have to do an incredible job. And we don’t need any more plans, right now we need action. I’m sick of plans, we just need to act. We must have more ODA. When we cut aid, we take food from the mouths of the starving. We literally take the needles from the arms of patients. Why must we behave like this? Africa is the second biggest emerging market after China. It’s got more democratic countries than Asia. We’re talking about tiny amounts of money: why is it so difficult to find this money for aid? The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel Prime Minister Brown, even President Sarkozy have increased aid, but Italy has cut by €400m. All these countries’ economies are a disaster, but all have kept their promise they made to the poor. Except Italy. How can you lead the G8? Where is your credibility? This is a human question, not a tactical question. We are tired of seeing people that die of hunger!
Berlusconi starts to nod, he has been struck by the image of starving children.
Geldof’s LaStampa Causing A Stir
Bob’s guest editing of today’s special Africa edition of La Stampa has caused quite a stir in Italy, particularly his interview with Prime Minister Berlusconi.
In the interview, Berlusconi apologised to Africa for not having kept Italy’s aid promise. La Stampa’s headline is: “Africa, I’m sorry”. Berlusconi promises to rectify his “mistake”. Bob pressed him on Italy’s record of only having provided three per cent of the aid for Africa he promised at the Gleneagles summit in 2005 and said his credibility as G8 host this week was at stake. We will be campaigning further on this in the coming days before the start of his L’Aquila G8 summit on Wednesday. We’ll be looking for concrete actions to show how he will turn Italy’s dismal record around.
But today’s La Stampa edition newspaper is about much more than just Italy’s aid record. Headlined “Africa the Opportunity” its aim is to present a different, more rounded image of Africa to Italian readers, to show all the diversity and vibrancy of the continent on Italy’s doorstep. The newspaper and its respected young editor Mario Calabresi have shown great commitment to the issue, publishing around 30 pages of African content today, and promising more in the week to come.
There are articles from 30 guest contributors covering a range of themes, from Archbishop Tutu’s sermon on the morality of promise-keeping, to Bono’s “Love letter to Italy” and Sophia Loren’s story of growing up with poverty and war. There’s a preview of President Obama’s upcoming Ghana trip, and pieces ranging on subjects as diverse as Africa’s potential for trade and investment, climate change, immigration, music, fashion, and football.
You can see them all, plus photos and video of Bob in action as editor at www.lastampa.it/Africa . There’s an English language section too. You can also read about Bob’s Berlusconi interview in this Reuters story.
-Helen Palmer
Bob Geldof to edit La Stampa
Bob Geldof will be guest editing the Italian newspaper “La Stampa” this weekend as part of ONE’s campaign to encourage Italy to improve its record on Africa when it hosts the G8 summit next week.
La Stampa is a respected Italian newspaper based in Turin in northern Italy. Its editor has turned over Sunday’s paper to a dedicated Africa/G8 edition. It will feature stories on a wide range of African themes, and contributions from prominent African, Italian and global figures including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Bono, Kofi Annan and Sophia Loren.
So far Italy has delivered just three per cent of the development aid to Africa it promised at the 2005 Gleneagles Summit. ONE is calling on Prime Minister Berlusconi to seize the opportunity of next week’s summit to turn around this abysmal record or forfeit all credibility as G8 host.
-Helen Palmer
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TAGS: Bob Geldof, Millennium Development Goals, Spotlight