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The education of Bob Geldof
By IAN SMILLIE 

Wednesday, July 6, 2005 
Updated at 1:33 AM EDT

Special to Globe and Mail Update

When Bob Geldof began his crusade for Africa more than 20 years ago, he had a simple idea: He was going to save lives. Disgusted by the apathy and global inattention to the famine in Ethiopia, he criticized what he regarded as an overfed, sluggish, bureaucratic aid establishment. He rallied his friends and colleagues and they made music. Mr. Geldof raised millions of dollars, promising that he would get the money directly to those who needed it most.

Mr. Geldof was not the first rock star with this sort of idea. George Harrison organized a highly successful Concert for Bangladesh in Madison Square Garden in 1971, bringing together luminaries such as Ravi Shankar, Billy Preston, Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr and Eric Clapton.

Mr. Harrison handed over the cash to Unicef and other aid agencies in Bangladesh. But Mr. Geldof went to Africa, discovering very quickly that he could not deliver the goods any better or faster than the organizations that were already there. The talk about sluggish aid bureaucracies diminished as he learned how difficult it is to move food and medicine in a political world, to protect it, and to make sure it is given to the most needy.

In recent years, Mr. Geldof and fellow Irishman Bono have been singing another song entirely. Angered by the continuing plight of Africa, they have been targeting the governments of rich countries instead of asking for charity from individuals. They have demanded that "donor" governments cancel African debt, and that they remove the agricultural subsidies that allow European and American agricultural produce to undercut African farmers. And they argue that stingy Western governments should pony up the 0.7 per cent of their collective GNPs that they have been promising in aid for more than three decades. (Canada and the United States spend less than one-third of this amount.)

Here is a new and more mature Bob Geldof, no less petulant, but one much more savvy in the ways of the development business, one who can talk to government ministers and World Bank presidents on their own terms. And they don't like it. The International Monetary Fund has responded to him, saying that spending 0.7 per cent of Western GNPs on aid is not a good idea. Other pundits have joined a lengthening queue to attack the idea as well. It is as though all of the feeble promises over the years to reach the 0.7-per-cent target were never even remotely intended to be taken seriously. "We need to fix our own problems first," say indignant callers to phone-in radio shows. "It would be inflationary," warn economists. "We are already doing a huge amount," say the apologists. "I'm fed up with seeing that Geldof," says a resident of Gleneagles, site of the G8 meeting - echoing, no doubt, the sentiments of many world leaders.

The most ill-informed in the surge of anti-Geldof attacks has come from some who pose as experts on foreign aid: "Aid doesn't work anyway - just look at Africa." Much aid certainly does not work for the poor, because it was never intended to. A huge proportion of it has always been about politics and trade and business. But vaccinations do work. Smallpox has been eradicated, and much has been done to stem the onslaught of polio, tuberculosis and malaria. Primary education, especially for girls, works. Small loans - the micro credit revolution - work. Refugees on half rations in a dozen war-torn countries would undoubtedly agree that a little more food and a lot more peacekeeping would go a long way.

Mr. Geldof and his friends have done more to raise awareness about the political dimensions of aid, debt and trade than anyone else in three decades. They have provoked the first genuine public debate on the 0.7-per-cent target since it was broached by Lester Pearson in 1969. They have embarrassed world leaders, prodding some into defensive blather and possibly a few into action. Perhaps some of them will actually follow the lead of Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway and Denmark, countries that reached the 0.7-per-cent target long ago without sliding off the planet.

Congratulations, Bob Geldof, on all you have achieved. Congratulations on your education over the years, and your transformation from a purveyor of charity into a statesman for development. And thank you for trying to educate the rest of us on how to make a difference.

Ian Smillie was in Dhaka when the first cheque from the Concert for Bangladesh was given to Unicef. With Larry Minear, he is co-author of The Charity of Nations: Humanitarian Action in a Calculating World.

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