Geldof remarks on the One Young World Summit in SA

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Geldof remarks on The One Young World Summit in SA --

Fri, 18 Oct 2013 12:19

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Rock star and political activist Bob Geldof shared some cynical views at The One Young World Summit in South Africa and has followed them up in an interview with Al Jazeera Englishs South 2 North talk show, airing on Friday 18 October at 19h30, saying that his own generation and the next had failed .

Founder of the music-focused charity, Band Aid and charity super concert Live Aid, Geldof discusses his ideas for advancement in Africa with stand-in host Haru Mutasa.

Says Geldof: The first thing is education. Out of that will come an economy, an economy of scale. You do need aid, you do need debt cancellation, all those things I ve banged on about for 30 years. You do need massive inward investment from the Chinese and the West.

Geldof goes on to identify the need for mobile phones as a tool to boost Africa s economy: There s very little infrastructure here; this became a virtual infrastructure. Once you had the money available to trade, they began trading through this and you got lift-off on the African continent, so that seven of the 10 fastest-growing economies in the world today are on this continent.

He continues: All generations fail, but ours more spectacularly than most. Geldof agrees that the youth of today are right in holding this generation responsible for the problems in today s world.

However, he believes that this generation is headed for failure as well: If you seriously think you will escape this century without horrendous wars, without awful plagues, without deadly famines, if you think you ll escape that, forget it.

On climate change Geldof remarks: The poorest people, the most vulnerable, those who contributed the least to this, they will be affected the most. Some of the countries out there won t even be here in 20 years.

The episode also features discussions with Bethlehem Alemu, the Ethiopian founder of global shoe brand SoleRebels; Nokia s Yiwen Wu; and Jeremy Lamri, the French founder of Monkey Tie, an online recruitment platform.

Repeat screenings will take place on Saturday at 14h30, Sunday at 04h30 and Monday at 08h30.

For more information, visit www.aljazeera.com/programmes/south2north/.

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