What Africa needs: Powerpoint to the People
Mark Steyn explains:
Let’s take it as read that Sir Bob and Sir Bono are exceptionally well informed and articulate on Africa’s problems. Why then didn’t they get the rest of the guys round for a meeting beforehand with graphs and pie charts and bullet points in bright magic markers, so that Sir Dave and Dame Madonna would understand that Africa’s problem is not a lack of “aid”. The tragedy of Live8 is that its message was as cobwebbed as its repertoire.
Don’t get me wrong. I love old rockers – not for the songs, which are awful, but for their business affairs, which so totally rock. In 1997, David Bowie became the first pop star to hold a bond offering himself. How about that? Fifty-five million dollars’ worth of Bowie “class A royalty-backed notes” were snapped up in minutes after Moody’s in New York gave them their coveted triple-A rating.
Once upon a time, rock stars weren’t rated by Moody, they were moody – they self-destructed, they choked to death in their own vomit, they hoped to die before they got old. Instead, judging from Sir Pete Townshend on Saturday, they got older than anyone’s ever been. Today, Paul McCartney is a businessman: he owns the publishing rights to Annie and Guys & Dolls. These faux revolutionaries are capitalists red in tooth and claw.
The system that enriched them could enrich Africa. But capitalism’s the one cause the poseurs never speak up for. The rockers demand we give our fokkin’ money to African dictators to manage, while they give their fokkin’ money to Winthrop Stimson Putnam & Roberts to manage. Which of those models makes more sense?
July 5th, 2005 at 9:29 am
I was listening to a show called “Outlook” on the BBC last night. Towards the end of this “round the continent” interview bit the female reporter was doing she starts talking to this guy who hosts a radio show in Uganda (I think). This guy blew me away. He sounded like a Randian. He was all, “The donors give more to our government than the citizens pay in taxes so our governments respond to the donor community more readily than the citizenry. If we want to end corruption we must make our governments accountable to the people again. If we don’t, it doesn’t matter how much you send, the poverty will never end. The African govts need to talk to “local producers” and ask them what they need to get their goods to market and what kind of infrastructure is needed to grow their businesses.” Then she was all, “If the aid stops then thousands will die immediatly and millions will die soon…”. But he CUTS HER OFF IN THE MIDDLE with “Oh please, they have been sending money for thirty years and people are still dying on a large scale. The money isn’t preventing deaths. Let us have our governments back.” I was cheering him on. It was awesome.
July 6th, 2005 at 6:41 pm
I saw this interview in Der Spiegel at Vodka pundit (via Insty). It’s more of what I was writing about above.