Band Aid’s good work still in evidence today

MEDIA reports (March 8) which claimed large sums of money raised in the early 1980s by Bob Geldof’s Band Aid were siphoned off to buy weapons in Ethiopia have met with a furious response from the anti-poverty campaigner.

The reports alleged that up to 95% of the aid that went into rebel-held areas of Tigray province in 1985 was used to buy arms. These hugely damaging claims have been rejected in robust terms by Geldof who said there was “not a shred of evidence” to support them.

Self Help Africa was established in the immediate aftermath of the 1984 famine in Ethiopia, and while we do not work in Tigray, we did receive a major grant from the Band Aid Trust at that time.

The funding award of more than $1 million was the first major grant we received and it enabled us to implement a programme to increase food production in the Adami Tulu area of Oromia province over a period of three years. A return visit to Adami Tulu by a group of Irish journalists in 2008 showed the positive effects of that Band Aid-funded intervention are still in evidence today.

In one district close to Lake Ziway a 23,000-member farmers’ co-op now produces tonnes of tomatoes, onions cabbage, garlic and other food crops for sale in local markets.

This project was started as an irrigation scheme with funding from Band Aid and graphically illustrates to us the huge and lasting impact that can be achieved by investment in long-term development and poverty eradication programmes. We are extremely grateful to Band Aid for its backing for our work, and are happy to state that in this and many other instances the backing of Band Aid not alone saved millions of lives, it also set many more of Ethiopia’s rural poor on the path to a self-sufficient and food secure future.

Ray Jordan

Self Help Africa

Annefield House

Portlaoise

Co Laois