Why does it take a celebrity like Bono to get the West engaged in Africa?
Celebrity is a big subject to try and get through in a short blog.
A big subject indeed. Enormous. Bloated. Almost as big as Bono's bank account. Or ego.
Multinational corporations have enormous purchasing power. Why can’t they buy from African suppliers?
Doing business is sexy. Trade is sexy.
Blood-borne pathogens and 419 Scams, however, are decidedly un-sexy, and seem to be Africa's two leading exports at the moment. Well, those, and re-tread Maoist politics. Multinational corporations just really don't need to buy any of that, no matter how much it would help prop up failed African economies.
How do you choose the countries you visit and why don’t you focus on war-ravaged countries?
If we are really honest, we need in the next 10 years success stories. We need three or four in the next five years and 10 in the next 10 years.
Plus, in a war-ravaged country, you might get your celebrity ass shot off or kidnapped.
How do we know that aid is going to the people who need it?
Much work is being done to fight corruption both from the African civil societies’ point of view and from the donor communities.
Translation: It's all being used to buy chrome dub deuces for President-for-Life Corporal M'bekebeke's Gelandewagen.
What song is going through your head?
I have a radio on in my head most of the time and I was smiling to myself about the fact that a lot of the songs on the radio I’ve never heard before, which is to say I’m making them up.
"Pretty Vacant", by the Sex Pistols.
Good ol' Bono. You can always count on just some amazing surrealism from a guy who was happy that the G8 summit was held on his home turf so he could get there via Bentley rather than Gulfstream to deliver his rants about the unfairness of capitalism. I don't know what he's doing; it must be art.
5 comments:
Multinational corporations have enormous purchasing power. Why can’t they buy from African suppliers?
His familiarity with multinational record-companies should at least alert him to certain issues, like suppliers who steal from other people, attempt rip-off the corporations by imposing all kinds of tarriffs, fines, tribute, kickbacks, graft and drug payments-in-kind - and then stuff the profits in personal Swiss bank accounts.
Who benefits from that?
Just look at Liberia as a good example for what the climate is in Africa. Keeping it to under 10 words is that tribes/clans are fighting it out for the country. Not a very safe place to do business.
I don't think that Bono can fathom all that goes on there. He goes there and cares about the hunger and pestilence there enough to say stuff about it but then goes home to a nice house and pats himself on the back for a job well done. He may get a better seat in Heaven than I will because of his actions but I'm not going to give money to help over there to have it disappear into a dictators bank account...
Pretty Vacant sums it up nicely.
"You'll always find me out to lunch" Great post, Tam. It's delightful when mega-rich celebs run about telling the mere mortals where their hard-earned and comparably meager money ought to go. Oh, and Bono is jaw-droppingly presumptuous to deign whose debt should be forgiven by the USA. It's insulting.
Bono, he's the one who used to call some unsuspecting victim live from the stage as a party trick during conserts, right? Usually someone less politically correct than Himself, giving him a chance to stroke his ego in front of the crowd. Probably thinking that any crowd that has been standing in line and paid a wad of hard earned cash just to see him, is representative of the rest of the world.
A few years ago at a concert in Norway he chose the Norwegian secretary of state for fisheries, in order to make a fool of him regarding the government's stand on whaling. Yes, he really got the unsuspecting cabinet minister on the line, it's a small country. The result? Roaring applause and wild cheering from 25,000 people - every time the politician scored a point (he scored all the points)... and a very confused and increasingly frustrated Irishman on the stage. :)
Ultimathule
One may think about whaling as one likes, but it's a bad idea to try to lecture a country on environmental protection where natural gas-fuelled power plants are considered 'dirty'. *hehe*
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