Geldof remakes daily into plea for Africa

BERLIN – Germany’s best-selling newspaper Bild took its daily diet of sex, crime and topless women off of page one on Friday and replaced it with a full-page image of a starving African child writhing in agony.

The impact of stand-in editor-in-chief Bob Geldof was striking after the Irish rocker and anti-poverty campaigner took the job for a day and turned the influential daily with 12 million readers into a moving 24-page rallying cry for Africa. With by-lined contributions ranging from US President George W Bush to American actor George Clooney, an impressive line-up of columnists appealed for world leaders to do more to help the world’s poorest continent ahead of next week’s G8 meeting in Germany.”You Germans were once a poor country …you were ruined …you were defeated …and you were hungry,” Geldof wrote.”Now the poor in Africa are asking you to speak for them.Germany hasn’t forgotten its past.An amazing 71 per cent want Germany to keep its word and do MORE for the poor.”That’s the Germany I know, respect and love.Chancellor Angela Merkel has to set a good example and tell world leaders: ‘Now is the moment to fulfil our promise.No more cynicism’.”A study released on Tuesday by African Monitor, an independent group formed in 2005 to track pledges made by the Group of Eight industrialised nations, found despite promises to boost aid, rich nations have cut contributions to Africa and ignored vows to improve trade conditions for the continent.The study said after what was dubbed “the Year of Africa” in 2005, real aid inflows began to decline as early as 2006.Geldof grilled Merkel in an interview about past promises Germany and the G8 made to help Africa, and pressed her hard to agree to honour the pledges.Also writing contributions in Bild for Africa were: Pope Benedict, former US President Bill Clinton, ex-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and Nobel prize winner Nelson Mandela.”We’re not expecting new promises from G8 leaders but rather want them to honour and uphold the past promises,” Annan wrote.Clooney described an encounter he had while on a visit to a refugee camp in Sudan last year.”A little girl pulled on my finger and asked when I’d come back with help,” Clooney wrote.”I told the translator ‘soon’, tell her ‘soon’.She then pulled on my finger again and answered: ‘That’s what they always say’.”Even the sports and celebrity pages of Bild, a tabloid-style broadsheet that is continental Europe’s best-selling daily thanks to its racy take on the news, were devoted to Africa.Bild ran a photo montage of an African dream team led by Chelsea’s Ivory Coast striker Didier Drogba.The newspaper even found a local human interest story.An African waiter in Stuttgart found a wallet with 20 000 euros in it on the way to work.He turned it over to police and later even declined a finder’s fee from the man who had lost it.Nampa-ReutersWith by-lined contributions ranging from US President George W Bush to American actor George Clooney, an impressive line-up of columnists appealed for world leaders to do more to help the world’s poorest continent ahead of next week’s G8 meeting in Germany.”You Germans were once a poor country …you were ruined …you were defeated …and you were hungry,” Geldof wrote.”Now the poor in Africa are asking you to speak for them.Germany hasn’t forgotten its past.An amazing 71 per cent want Germany to keep its word and do MORE for the poor.”That’s the Germany I know, respect and love.Chancellor Angela Merkel has to set a good example and tell world leaders: ‘Now is the moment to fulfil our promise.No more cynicism’.”A study released on Tuesday by African Monitor, an independent group formed in 2005 to track pledges made by the Group of Eight industrialised nations, found despite promises to boost aid, rich nations have cut contributions to Africa and ignored vows to improve trade conditions for the continent.The study said after what was dubbed “the Year of Africa” in 2005, real aid inflows began to decline as early as 2006.Geldof grilled Merkel in an interview about past promises Germany and the G8 made to help Africa, and pressed her hard to agree to honour the pledges.Also writing contributions in Bild for Africa were: Pope Benedict, former US President Bill Clinton, ex-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and Nobel prize winner Nelson Mandela.”We’re not expecting new promises from G8 leaders but rather want them to honour and uphold the past promises,” Annan wrote.Clooney described an encounter he had while on a visit to a refugee camp in Sudan last year.”A little girl pulled on my finger and asked when I’d come back with help,” Clooney wrote.”I told the translator ‘soon’, tell her ‘soon’.She then pulled on my finger again and answered: ‘That’s what they always say’.”Even the sports and celebrity pages of Bild, a tabloid-style broadsheet that is continental Europe’s best-selling daily thanks to its racy take on the news, were devoted to Africa.Bild ran a photo montage of an African dream team led by Chelsea’s Ivory Coast striker Didier Drogba.The newspaper even found a local human interest story.An African waiter in Stuttgart found a wallet with 20 000 euros in it on the way to work.He turned it over to police and later even declined a finder’s fee from the man who had lost it.Nampa-Reuters