Last updated on December 29, 2013
That’s actually quite a controversial question, one that is still debated in humanitarian circles. Some people will say that the musicians selflessly raised large amounts of money to help the world’s neediest. Others – myself included – would say that when projects like this don’t involve professional humanitarianism and the beneficiaries (i.e. the people who are supposedly being helped), the law of unintended consequences allows for the best of intentions to pave a road straight to H-E-double-hockeysticks.
There’s three broad ways that Celebrity Aid is often asserted as a success, or conversely, criticized as a failure. Namely they are (1) the amount of aid that actually hit the ground, (2) the stereotypes of Africans it created in the media, and (3) that they may have actually been complicity in ethnocide in the Sub-Saharan African context. I’ll address each separately.
From Reddit user wilbarp, in thread that popped up over the holidays asking “Did celebrity efforts like Band Aid’s ‘Do they know it’s Christmas?’ and USA for Africa’s ‘We Are The World’ actually help alleviate famine in the 1980s?” His answer — which should be required reading in any intro to Africa-type classes — deserves to be read in full.