Opinion: ‘Live Aid Model’ a Failure for Africa Relief

Despite their success in raising funds and awareness, the 1985 Live Aid concert and other strictly aid-based efforts have failed to combat hunger in Africa, according to a Wall Street Journal opinion column.

Fighting corruption and instability in famine-struck nations will do more good than purely monetary aid, the writer John-Clark Levin contends.

Citing recently released CIA records and a BBC investigation, Mr. Levin says most of the $283-million raised by the star-studded concerts for Ethiopian relief, held 25 years ago Tuesday, was used for arms instead of food. Four-fifths of the food aid supplied to Somalia as part of a 1992 United Nations Humanitarian mission was stolen, he writes.

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