Buying stuff may not be best way to aid Africans

By now, you have failed to register on the coolness barometer if you've not been to Africa or had a baby in Africa or taken a baby out of Africa. In these matters, as in most, the Jolie-Pitt juggernaut trumps all in accomplishing a well-publicized trifecta.

Purchasing a Gap Hamme(red) T-shirt "made in Africa with an organic look and feel to reflect the continent's land and spirit" is a good intention though not quite the same. Close, but no Senegal.

This week, Vanity Fair - the magazine of serious fabulousness - announced that rock apostle Bono will guest- edit the July issue in an effort to, as the New York Times put it, "rebrand Africa."

Branding a product, let alone a massive continent, is no tiny task. The vast veldt of Africa is terribly chic these days, what with Oprah and Bills Gates and Clinton visiting regularly. Vanity Fair, which views the environment through the green hemp-gauze of Hollywood, is just the publication to pounce on the philanthropy zeitgeist. Can't wait for the African version of the Oscar party.

As Bono puts it, "Africa is sexy and people need to know that."

It says everything about our current climate, the sense of global connectedness through the gift of technology, plus the dependence of slick advertising and seriously styled celebrities, that (Product) Red's ambition is huge yet deceptively accessible and acquisitional: Shop so the unfortunate can live. A percentage of the proceeds go to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

A sense of connectedness, however, is not the same as sharing those experiences. There's a remove, literally and emotionally.

Commerce is one route out of poverty, but only if the rewards find their way to the neediest. A year into the Red campaign sponsored by the Gap, Apple and Motorola, fund-raising fell seriously short of the $100 million earlier projected, Advertising Age reported this week, ironically on the same day as the Vanity Fair issue was announced. Charitable proceeds total less than a fifth of that goal, only $18.5 million, while marketing costs are estimated to be as absurd as $100 million.

When it comes to seeing Red, it's advertising and the publications that house those ads, publications like Vanity Fair, that are deeply in the black.

As a musician, philanthropist and visionary, Bono has contributed significantly to improving our world, not without some attendant self-righteousness, but his intentions seem consistent, mammoth and true.

"We are trying to deal with the Sally Struthers thing," Bono said, referring to the Christian Children's Fund's spokeswoman. "When you see people humiliated by extreme poverty and wasting away with flies buzzing around their eyes, it is easy not to believe that they are the same as us."

That may be precisely the point. We have shoes. We have clean drinking water.

And it's Africa's otherness, it's exoticism that attracts the filmmakers of Babel, Blood Diamond, and The Last King of Scotland, style appropriators Ralph Lauren and Paul Simon, and luxury travelers who embark on $20,000 safaris.

Bono is correct when he says donors want to feel that whatever gesture they make, no matter how small, improves those lives, diminishing the AIDs, tuberculosis and malaria pandemics. Otherwise, people tend to turn away.

"We need to be better at storytelling," the rock star said, and here he's correct, too. Compelling stories are the narrative that enrich life and spark compassion. Like music, they're how we connect, a verbal map transporting us to other locales, new ideas and people.

But how to tell those stories of Africa? It's reductive to make blanket statements about a continent of 900 million, many faiths, myriad tribes, and 53 or 55 nations, depending on which organization is counting. Communication is another barrier when Guinea, not to be confused with its northwestern neighbor Guinea-Bissau, is home to 33 living languages.

Let Bono and Vanity Fair try telling better stories. The road to help is paved with good intentions.

In the meantime, it seems prudent to forgo shopping Red for the T-shirt, the iPod, the Motorazr. Instead, give all the green directly to theglobalfund. org.