Do benefit concerts like Live Aid, and Live 8 make a difference?

[Newbie 0]

With the Live 8 concert coming up, i was wondering, how much of a difference did the original Live Aid concert make to famine in Africa? What benefits has it brought about. What would doubling aid for African countries do for the poor and starving, and how would the aid get into THEIR hands, and not those of the corrupt governments there?

Are benefit gigs like this merely stages for self promoting do-gooders, or do they actually do some good?

I was only 9 but i was at the original Live Aid concert with my parents. Now that 20 years have gone by, and i've grown up, and realise the reality of what happens in the world, i'm sat here trying to find info online about just what benefits have been reaped, and why there is now "another Live Aid" type concert,

If anyone can back up their opinions with linked articles/news stories, that would be great.

Edited to add this link which partially answers my own question, but thought i would post it up if anyone was interested in reading it...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/live8/story/0,16066,1513359,00.html?gusrc=rss

"Skydiving is a door"
Happythoughts

[mr2mk1g 10]

I remember reading rebuttals on this sort of thing several times in the past. They claimed things like the sudden influx of aid killed off what domestic grain market there was and thus all the farmers went under. The next year round all those would be farmers were in the queue for free grain and no one at all was producing domestic grain.

Plus there were stories about how we sent loads of tractors to help plough their fields so they could grow grain etc... then once the fuel ran out the tractor sat at the end of the field and rusted.

I have no idea how much of them were true.

I’m sure our initial attempts in the 80’s at mass aid projects were much like our attempts to help the victims of concentration camps during the first couple of days of liberation. They were fuelled by good ideas at the time which in hindsight were perhaps not as good as they could have been. I think the international aid community has learned from those past mistakes and I figure Live Aid 20 could possibly have a better effect than the original live aid simply because we are now doing things right.

Then again wasn’t there a head line from last week from one of the UK papers listing the amount of aid we’d given to Africa over the last X years and the amount of money amassed by African dictators over the same period?

One thing’s for sure; if we want the people to be brought out of poverty, something has to happen about the frightening levels of corruption on the continent.

In summary, I think someone should shoot Mugabe... be the sniper Nigerian, British, American, Martian, I don’t think it matters... but someone needs to cap the guy.

[namgrunt 0]

no

59 YEARS,OVERWEIGHT,BALDIND,X-GRUNT
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[wmw999 2,589]

Quote

perhaps not as good as they could have been.

Nothing is ever as good as it could be. I'm sure there are people who are helped, and yes, corruption is endemic. Horrible corruption. But to punish the people because their leaders are bad is sometimes kind of like letting children in one's own city starve because their parents suck.

How to get emerging countries to have better governments? I'll be dipped if I know. I do know that a lot of colonial governments didn't exactly provide a good example.

Wendy W.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)