World Geldof to youth: "Your generation will fail too"

[curator]

Geldof: Africa needs aid, debt cancellation, Western and Chinese investment, and mobile phones

Days after declaring his own generation had "failed," rock star philanthropist Bob Geldof has told Al Jazeera that the next generation will do so too.

Geldof had struck the previous pessimistic note at The One Young World Summit in South Africa, and has followed it up in an interview with Al Jazeera English's South2North talk show.

Geldof was nevertheless still brimming with ideas on what should happen in Africa. The force behind Band Aid and Live Aidtold host Haru Mutasa in the interview to be aired tonight:

“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. And you do need a social glue: in Africa’s case, that’s the mobile phone. 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 liftoff on the African continent, so that seven of the ten fastest-growing economies in the world today are on this continent.”

He says the youth are right to blame his generation for the problems in the world today. “All generations fail, but ours more spectacularly than most.”

However, he‘s not optimistic that this generation will do vastly better. “Your generation will fail as well,” he tells Haru. “You just try and ameliorate the future and steer it in a way that you think will work out. But 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.”

He warns that climate change has already happened. “There’s no avoiding it now, so now you have to offset the effects. 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. Be very careful: wherever you look there’s a sense of unease. Name one country where there isn’t…”

Haru Mutasa is standing in for Redi Tlhabi, who is on maternity leave. She also talks to 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.

This week’s episode of South2North premieres at 19:30 GMT tonight and also screens on Saturday at 14h30, Sunday 04h30 and Monday 08h30. For more info, visit www.aljazeera.com/programmes/south2north/.

You can also tweet your questions, comments and opinions to @AJSouth2North or find South2North on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/South-2-North/255419671252120.

Catch up on last week’s episode, where Haru discussed youth leadership, at

 

[curator]

So what do we think. Please also cast your vote

@Vunderkind @Jules @Bolanle Akanji @Lequte @Sandra Chiefe @zacman @The_HeadCase @The_Astutian @phealip @Kenneth Chimaobi

 

[Vunderkind]

Who is this Nostradamus? I never even heard of him.

 

[curator]

Here you go Sir.

Who is this Nostradamus? I never even heard of him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_Aid

 

[Bolanle Akanji]

Of course, it will tke an awfully long time to right the wrongs in this world. Generation failure or not, people are resilient and they will survive. Maybe the Hunger games is/was a prophecy.

 

[MsChiefe]

Of course, it will tke an awfully long time to right the wrongs in this world. Generation failure or not, people are resilient and they will survive. Maybe the Hunger games is/was a prophecy.

And what, pray tell, does he define as "failure"?
We will be resilient and fight when we see a common threat to humanity - a common and dangerously imminent one.

People tend not to care till its quite late in the day to do so

 

[curator]

And what, pray tell, does he define as "failure"?
We will be resilient and fight when we see a common threat to humanity - a common and dangerously imminent one.

People tend not to care till its quite late in the day to do so

What would make us stand up?

 

[Tannoy]

I see a man who set out to try to bring change to the world, thinking it would be an easy task. A man who, later on in life, realizes that the work is bigger than he assumed, so he lies despondent, bereft of hope.

I have read about his exploits on the Wikipedia article. Commendable stuff. It would have been exemplary, even, if I hadn't read this news report.

When you attempt to make Africa a better place, for example, and fail, don't take it as a personal failure. Do what is humaly possible in your lifetime and encourage others to build on your precepts.

Becoming a prophet of doom is basically undoing your own work, and it is very low. Shameful is the word I am going for, but I am trying to be diplomatic.

Geldof, you've done what you could. Don't douse our fire with your doom prophecies. Let us go ham on this.

 

[curator]

I think he is just disappointed with governments around the world. If he achieved this with his 'band of brothers and dreamers' then the world has no excuse. But commerce and self interest gets in the way of fairness. There you are 'life is unfair'. That is why you get 30 years for stealing a phone and 6 months for $2 billion.

 

[Tannoy]

My point is, it is not his place to predict our failure. He's done his bit. Curtains closed. Final act. He should let the new actors get on stage. We'll know if we've had enough rehearsal as the play goes on...

I detest spoiler alerts by the way.