"My name is Bob. I’m a PE [private equity] whore and I’m looking for £25million," he said during speech to investors at the invitation-only the annual Super Return International investment conference, a jamboree hich sees billionaire big beasts and corporate raiders of global finance descend upon in their private jets in search of one thing — profit.
This was Geldof in his new incarnation, as chairman of a £125 million private equity firm, seeking to make large profits for its rich clients by investing in Africa. Geldof has sunk some of his own £32million fortune — though his spokesman refuses to say exactly how much — into the fund. It is called 8 Miles, after the shortest distance between Southern Europe and North Africa. In 2010, he launched 8 Miles with the ambitious aim of raising £630 million from private and business investors. The fund’s spokesman told me this week that because of the economic downtown, expectations have been lowered and managers now hope to raise up to £290 million. Nonetheless, they are huge sums, and in February the fund announced it had already raised £125 million from rich private investors as well as the African Development Bank and CDC (the UK government’s development finance institution). The fund’s managers are ploughing money into agriculture, financial services, health and telecommunications firms on behalf of its rich investors. His PR man Robin Hepburn explained "He’s not using anybody else’s money, it’s his money that he’s made. Of course, it is for profit, that’s why the investors are going in there [to Africa]. They wouldn’t go into it to lose money, and you wouldn’t expect Bob Geldof to put his money in to lose it. No, people expect him just to carry on doing everything for charity — he’s not a saint!"
So true, no other businessman would invest simply out of altruism - they all seek a return. Geldof, as non-executive chairman, who has become 8 Miles’s biggest cheerleader is no different. The private equity fund’s website features pictures of him and boasts of his charity work in Africa, his humanitarian causes and the honorary knighthood he received in 1986, plus his links to international politicians such as Tony Blair. Indeed, when pitching to potential investors, he has talked up their chance to make big returns on their cash. Reports in the international financial media tell of potential profits of 25 per cent. On the company’s website, Geldof describes: "Africa is now a continent of extraordinary business opportunity...Africa is seriously open for business." In a speech, he defended his move into the world of high finance, saying: "Money is not an evil thing...it depends what you do with it. I’m rich, I did well. I’m the chair of several companies. I like business." Without doubt true as he is a director of 12 companies and his business acumen has made him far richer than his music career ever did. Despite living in England since the Seventies, his non-dom status enables Geldof legitimately to avoid paying large sums of tax on overseas earnings although he still has to pay tax in the usual way on his UK earnings. On his latest trip to the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, during which he met former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan Geldof is said to have exploded with rage when one journalist asked about his tax status. Jabbing his finger, swearing and yelling, he exclaimed: "I pay all my taxes. My time? Is that not a tax? I employ 500 people. I have created business for the UK government. I have given my ideas. I have given half my life to this. How dare you lecture me about morals."
Geldof can now proudly line himself alongside the other tax-evaders and investors expanding its capital into Africa such as the likes of Del Monte which grows pineapples on several thousand acres on an estate in Kenya. Locals report that they pay their workers a mere $2.40 a day, less than the minimum wage, but actually more than the $2.05 per day the other large farms in the area pay. Water that used to be shared by all is now taken or polluted by a powerful few. Near Kitengela, an enormous cash-crop flower farm has drilled wells to irrigate its plants, which are for export. With so much water going to irrigate flowers, the nearby Isinya River now runs dry. Elsewhere, Lake Naivasha suffers the same problem, also due to flower farms. And a day after Nderitu took his goats to graze near a local river, all five goats were dead. The autopsy revealed the deaths were from pesticides. Nderitu blames the enormous Del Monte pineapple plantation just across the river from where his goats grazed. Mwangi, who lives within sight of Del Monte's land, feels ill whenever they spray pesticides. The land could likely support more farmers, and more successful farmers, if it wasn't concentrated in the hands of a few corporations. Investment to help African agriculture does nothing to address the problems that are at the core of hunger and malnutrition. More often, it serves only to further poverty and inequality across the continent. The elites of the first world work together with the elites of the third world in the name of helping peasant farmers, but it nobody consults the peasant farmers themselves. Organic farming in Kenya is not about tree-hugging. It's about yields and budgets because those who over-rely on purchased chemical inputs must use their scarce income to buy them.
To an untrained eye, much of Africa looks desolate and devoid of food, but the locals know better. Walking through their rural village, they can point out leafy greens, fruits and crops used for building materials, medicine and rope, all growing wild. These aren't a replacement for cultivated staples like corn, cassava or sorghum, but they provide micronutrients in local diets and improve local food security. With so much natural abundance, one must wonder why the Gates Foundation has sunk so many millions of dollars into creating staple crops with the full range of required nutrients genetically engineered into them. An internationally celebrated farming technique called the push-pull method has also helped Kenyan farmers increase yields – by a factor of 3.5. The yield increase is due to elimination of an insect pest, the stem borer, and a parasitic weed, striga, as well as an increase in soil fertility. The farmer pulls the stem borer away from the corn by planting a cattle feed crop called napier grass nearby. Napier grass is more attractive to egg-laying stem borer moths than corn, but few of the larvae that hatch on it survive. A second cattle forage crop, desmodium, is planted between rows of corn. Desmodium, a legume, fixes nitrogen in the soil. It also releases chemicals into the soil causing striga seeds to “suicidally germinate.” It releases yet more chemicals into the air that repel stem borer moths and attract parasitic wasps that prey on stem borers. All of the crops used in the system are native, so no corporation profits, only the farmers themselves.
Knowledge is free. Robert Mwangi learned how to farm organically and soon saw his income increase. With five acres, he was never destitute, but now he has enough money to help family members out when they are in need. Mwangi's neighbors have seen his success and he is helping them adopt organic methods too. At the same time, he conducts experiments on his land to see which methods or crops give him the best results. As each farmer in the community conducts an experiment or two on their land each season, they can share their results with one another and all will benefit.
45 corporations such as Monsanto, Cargill, DuPont, and PepsiCo, have pledged a total of $3.5 billion in investment in Africa, dwarfing Geldof's fund. Yara International intend to build a $2 billion fertilizer plant in Africa. Syngenta pledged to build a $1 billion business in Africa over the next decade. These promises are not charity; they are business decisions.
Perhaps Geldof should actually spend two or three months living with African farmers instead of his Kent estate or or hob-knobbing with politicians and princes to find out what they actually want and need before he suggests another program to “help” the people of Africa.
Sourced from here and here
This was Geldof in his new incarnation, as chairman of a £125 million private equity firm, seeking to make large profits for its rich clients by investing in Africa. Geldof has sunk some of his own £32million fortune — though his spokesman refuses to say exactly how much — into the fund. It is called 8 Miles, after the shortest distance between Southern Europe and North Africa. In 2010, he launched 8 Miles with the ambitious aim of raising £630 million from private and business investors. The fund’s spokesman told me this week that because of the economic downtown, expectations have been lowered and managers now hope to raise up to £290 million. Nonetheless, they are huge sums, and in February the fund announced it had already raised £125 million from rich private investors as well as the African Development Bank and CDC (the UK government’s development finance institution). The fund’s managers are ploughing money into agriculture, financial services, health and telecommunications firms on behalf of its rich investors. His PR man Robin Hepburn explained "He’s not using anybody else’s money, it’s his money that he’s made. Of course, it is for profit, that’s why the investors are going in there [to Africa]. They wouldn’t go into it to lose money, and you wouldn’t expect Bob Geldof to put his money in to lose it. No, people expect him just to carry on doing everything for charity — he’s not a saint!"
So true, no other businessman would invest simply out of altruism - they all seek a return. Geldof, as non-executive chairman, who has become 8 Miles’s biggest cheerleader is no different. The private equity fund’s website features pictures of him and boasts of his charity work in Africa, his humanitarian causes and the honorary knighthood he received in 1986, plus his links to international politicians such as Tony Blair. Indeed, when pitching to potential investors, he has talked up their chance to make big returns on their cash. Reports in the international financial media tell of potential profits of 25 per cent. On the company’s website, Geldof describes: "Africa is now a continent of extraordinary business opportunity...Africa is seriously open for business." In a speech, he defended his move into the world of high finance, saying: "Money is not an evil thing...it depends what you do with it. I’m rich, I did well. I’m the chair of several companies. I like business." Without doubt true as he is a director of 12 companies and his business acumen has made him far richer than his music career ever did. Despite living in England since the Seventies, his non-dom status enables Geldof legitimately to avoid paying large sums of tax on overseas earnings although he still has to pay tax in the usual way on his UK earnings. On his latest trip to the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, during which he met former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan Geldof is said to have exploded with rage when one journalist asked about his tax status. Jabbing his finger, swearing and yelling, he exclaimed: "I pay all my taxes. My time? Is that not a tax? I employ 500 people. I have created business for the UK government. I have given my ideas. I have given half my life to this. How dare you lecture me about morals."
Geldof can now proudly line himself alongside the other tax-evaders and investors expanding its capital into Africa such as the likes of Del Monte which grows pineapples on several thousand acres on an estate in Kenya. Locals report that they pay their workers a mere $2.40 a day, less than the minimum wage, but actually more than the $2.05 per day the other large farms in the area pay. Water that used to be shared by all is now taken or polluted by a powerful few. Near Kitengela, an enormous cash-crop flower farm has drilled wells to irrigate its plants, which are for export. With so much water going to irrigate flowers, the nearby Isinya River now runs dry. Elsewhere, Lake Naivasha suffers the same problem, also due to flower farms. And a day after Nderitu took his goats to graze near a local river, all five goats were dead. The autopsy revealed the deaths were from pesticides. Nderitu blames the enormous Del Monte pineapple plantation just across the river from where his goats grazed. Mwangi, who lives within sight of Del Monte's land, feels ill whenever they spray pesticides. The land could likely support more farmers, and more successful farmers, if it wasn't concentrated in the hands of a few corporations. Investment to help African agriculture does nothing to address the problems that are at the core of hunger and malnutrition. More often, it serves only to further poverty and inequality across the continent. The elites of the first world work together with the elites of the third world in the name of helping peasant farmers, but it nobody consults the peasant farmers themselves. Organic farming in Kenya is not about tree-hugging. It's about yields and budgets because those who over-rely on purchased chemical inputs must use their scarce income to buy them.
To an untrained eye, much of Africa looks desolate and devoid of food, but the locals know better. Walking through their rural village, they can point out leafy greens, fruits and crops used for building materials, medicine and rope, all growing wild. These aren't a replacement for cultivated staples like corn, cassava or sorghum, but they provide micronutrients in local diets and improve local food security. With so much natural abundance, one must wonder why the Gates Foundation has sunk so many millions of dollars into creating staple crops with the full range of required nutrients genetically engineered into them. An internationally celebrated farming technique called the push-pull method has also helped Kenyan farmers increase yields – by a factor of 3.5. The yield increase is due to elimination of an insect pest, the stem borer, and a parasitic weed, striga, as well as an increase in soil fertility. The farmer pulls the stem borer away from the corn by planting a cattle feed crop called napier grass nearby. Napier grass is more attractive to egg-laying stem borer moths than corn, but few of the larvae that hatch on it survive. A second cattle forage crop, desmodium, is planted between rows of corn. Desmodium, a legume, fixes nitrogen in the soil. It also releases chemicals into the soil causing striga seeds to “suicidally germinate.” It releases yet more chemicals into the air that repel stem borer moths and attract parasitic wasps that prey on stem borers. All of the crops used in the system are native, so no corporation profits, only the farmers themselves.
Knowledge is free. Robert Mwangi learned how to farm organically and soon saw his income increase. With five acres, he was never destitute, but now he has enough money to help family members out when they are in need. Mwangi's neighbors have seen his success and he is helping them adopt organic methods too. At the same time, he conducts experiments on his land to see which methods or crops give him the best results. As each farmer in the community conducts an experiment or two on their land each season, they can share their results with one another and all will benefit.
45 corporations such as Monsanto, Cargill, DuPont, and PepsiCo, have pledged a total of $3.5 billion in investment in Africa, dwarfing Geldof's fund. Yara International intend to build a $2 billion fertilizer plant in Africa. Syngenta pledged to build a $1 billion business in Africa over the next decade. These promises are not charity; they are business decisions.
Perhaps Geldof should actually spend two or three months living with African farmers instead of his Kent estate or or hob-knobbing with politicians and princes to find out what they actually want and need before he suggests another program to “help” the people of Africa.
Sourced from here and here
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