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During the past 20 years, the author has watch China move from being a developing country into an industrial superpower
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Get Four
|  | JANUARY 27, 2006
By Jack Ewing For Bono, Star Power with PurposeEven he admits that his new efforts to fight poverty could lead to only fleeting improvements. But he's sure giving it his allHow do you get global business leaders to put down their BlackBerrys for a few moments and talk about African poverty? Easy: Just get rock star Bono and a few other famous people to show up -- Britain's Lord of the Exchequer, perhaps, and maybe the President of Nigeria -- and the execs will come in droves. Who knew so many CEOs were U2 fans? But a Jan. 27 session on Africa at the World Economic Forum in Davos was packed to overflowing, with organizers turning away people at the door. U2 front man Bono wasn't the only celebrity. Actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie sat in the audience, as did rock star Peter Gabriel. The other panelists weren't exactly nobodies either. They included World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, Britain's Lord of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, and President of Nigeria Olusegun Obasanjo. "I never thought that in any discussion about Africa we would have a full room like this," Obasanjo said dryly. NEW ACTIVISTS? Perhaps no celebrity alive today is more effective at leveraging his fame for social good than Bono. A day earlier, he had launched a new fund-raising effort called Product Red, an effort to exploit famous brands such as Armani, Gap, and American Express to raise money for efforts to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria in Africa. Gap, for example, will sell an African-made T-Shirt (guess what color...uh, red), and Giorgio Armani is designing a pair of sunglasses. American Express will issue a Red credit card. A percentage of the sales that the products generate will go to the cause. No question that Bono's intentions are good. But celebrity-led relief efforts still make some people uneasy. Star power generates publicity, but it's not so clear what the lasting effect is. "This could be something to put poverty on the map," said Douglas Holt, a professor of marketing at Saïd Business School at Oxford University, speaking between sessions at the Davos Congress Center. But Holt said such efforts are unlikely to motivate passive consumers to become anti-poverty activists. "It builds awareness, but what we need is a new social movement." Better, Holt said, are programs such as the fair trade movement. Popular in Europe, fair trade products such as coffee guarantee that farmers enjoy better working conditions and get a bigger share of the proceeds from their product, rather than seeing most of the revenue go to traders and middlemen. "You are making direct contact between the consumer and the producer," Holt said. "GET OUT OF THEIR WAY." To Bono's credit, his understanding of the issues is far from shallow, and he's articulate. He held his own against the intellectual firepower of Wolfowitz and Brown, at one point launching into a history lesson about how Alexander Hamilton's policies early in U.S. history had paved the way for economic expansion. And he surpassed the other panelists in the use of bon mots. Expanding on the Confucian maxim that it's better to teach a man to fish than give him a fish, Bono said, "It's better to teach him how to sell fish." His point was that wealthy nations should remove trade barriers so African farmers can compete on world markets. "Africans are very entrepreneurial people. Let's get out of their way," he said from behind a pair of purple-tinted shades. Still, Bono acknowledged the risk that awareness could quickly fade. "It could go cold," he said. In any case, he added, African progress ultimately doesn't hinge on aid at all. It depends on creating stable, transparent governments and reducing corruption. On that issue, Bono, Brown, Wolfowitz ,and Obasanjo were singing from the same hymn sheet.  Ewing is BusinessWeek's Frankfurt bureau chief Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page  | | |
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