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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
And there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas time/The greatest gift they’ll get this year is life (oooh)/Where nothing ever grows, no rain or river flows/Do they know it’s Christmas time, at all?
Forty years ago, these excruciating lyrics to Do They Know it’s Christmas?, written by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure, captured the west’s emotional response to what television broadcaster Michael Buerk had called a “biblical famine” in Ethiopia. They represented a heartfelt, if patronising and clumsy, effort to reckon with the unfolding tragedy and to raise money. The song was number one for five weeks and brought in £8mn.
This week, singer and songwriter Ed Sheeran said he would prefer it if his vocals, recorded for a 2014 revival of the Band Aid charity single, were left off a 40th anniversary version to be released this Christmas. “A decade on and my understanding of the narrative associated with this has changed,” he said. He is right.
Sheeran shared a post by British-Ghanaian vocalist Fuse ODG who said the lyrics “perpetuate damaging stereotypes that stifle Africa’s economic growth, tourism and investment [and] fuel pity rather than partnership”.
At this point, some readers will be decrying another “woke” deconstruction of good intentions. They’d be wrong.
In Ethiopia, which adopted Christianity in AD325, a few centuries before its architects carved glorious churches into the rocks of Lalibela, people knew full well it was Christmas. Calendrical confusion was not the issue. The problem was drought and, more importantly, the willingness of dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam to crush rebellion using starvation as a tool of war.
To sing that may not have aroused as much sympathy. It would certainly have been harder to scan. But at least it is an approximation of the truth. As Amartya Sen has written, any lasting effort to eradicate famine, in Ethiopia or anywhere else, has to start with politics, not the weather.
The song’s unfortunate use of the word “Africa” supposedly came about after Ure pointed out that Ethiopia had too many syllables. It was an unfortunate artistic switch, conflating a tragedy in one country with the alleged reality of an entire continent of 54 nations — bigger than China, India, the US and Europe combined.
It is true there won’t be much snow this Christmas in Africa, which can be quite hot, particularly in the Sahara, though there will be some on the peaks of Mount Kilimanjaro several thousand kilometres south. As for “no river flows”, it might be pertinent at this point to recall the Nile and the Congo, the world’s longest and deepest rivers respectively.
Treating Africa as a single country, as well as geo-illiterate, can have practical implications. When there was an outbreak of Ebola in Guinea in 2014, tourists cancelled safaris to Kenya 8,000 kilometres away. That is the equivalent of striking New York off your bucket list because there’s trouble in Santiago, Chile. Some financiers believe African states and companies pay too much to borrow because investors misunderstand African risk.
This is not about phoney boosterism. Forty years on, tragedies are still unfolding in parts of the continent. In Sudan there is a ghastly civil war that could also lead to famine. There is drought in the Horn of Africa, and in the Sahel a jihadist insurgency and a domino-chain of coups are threatening stability. Ethiopia has gone through another vicious war, though since Mengistu was toppled in 1991 it has been one of the world’s fastest growing economies.
In short, there are things to celebrate, things to lament and things to shake your fist at. Nigeria’s Afrobeats stars are packing stadiums, a Tanzanian writer won the Nobel Prize, artists from across the continent are wowing audiences at the Venice Biennale.
Africa’s cities are throbbing with youthful creativity and in too many cases ruled by ageing thugs. The use of mobile money has spread to virtually every corner of the continent. In the past 40 years, average life expectancy has risen by 14 years. British economist Joan Robinson’s characterisation of India is true of Africa: whatever you say about it, you can also say the opposite.
All this, admittedly, might be hard to capture in a song, especially one designed to open tear ducts and wallets. But the Band Aid single is years past its sell-by date. Geldof knows as much, calling it one of the two worst songs in history. He also admitted to writing the other one. This Christmas, hum along if you must. Just skip the lyrics.
