Paul Noonan was shocked when he came face-to-face with the realities of life in Africa. The Bell X1 singer visited Tanzania to see the work done by Oxfam, whose Make Trade Fair campaign is supported by the band.
But he was taken aback when he saw the plight of AIDS sufferers. “We weren’t prepared for it,” he admits. “We were more familiar with the trade issues.”
Bell X1 struck up a relationship with Oxfam when Noonan’s bandmate Brian Crosby began putting together his plan for an album of collaborations, inspired by The Reindeer Section.
“We wanted to do it for a charity,” Noonan explains, “and we became aware of Oxfam’s Make Trade Fair campaign.”
The band invited Oxfam to come on tour with them to rally support for control of the arms trade, and donated the song ‘Still Selling Shoes’ to Oxfam’s Generation Why? website as a free down-load. Having embraced the cause, Noonan felt it was time to make a trip to Africa, so the band headed off to Tanzania for eight days at the beginning of August.
“We just wanted to get a better sense of the issues if we were going to be talking about them,” he says.
During the visit, Bell X1 saw three projects run by Oxfam and it was their work with AIDS sufferers that left the deepest impression on Noonan. 9% of the adult population in Tanzania is HIV-positive – if this figure sounds shocking, other countries in the region have an infection rate of 20%. But bleak as the situation is, Noonan saw grounds for hope.
“I don’t think it’s as bad in Tanzania as in other parts of Africa,” he says. “There’s definitely been progress, but there’s still a huge gulf between the western world and the developing world.”
One example of this gulf is the availability of anti-retroviral drugs. In the west, medical breakthroughs have made it possible to manage AIDS. Africa lacks the resources to match this achievement. Things have improved though, because of a high-profile campaign by activists against the big pharmaceutical companies, who were accused of hoarding patent rights for AIDS treatment and charging extortionate prices.
“A lot of drugs are available much more cheaply now,” Noonan observes. “Because of legal battles generic drugs can be made at a much lower price.”
Progress has also been made in changing social attitudes. AIDS victims were often ostracised by their families in the past, but it is now less of a stigma. Noonan witnessed the popular education classes that spread awareness of sexual health, using dancing and singing to inform people in remote rural areas about safe sex practices. Oxfam also work with farmers in Tanzania, running credit unions that help them reach markets for their produce and become self-sufficient. This is dependent, of course, on the global trading system, and Oxfam is calling for radical reform.
Noonan is keen to stress that anti-poverty campaigning didn’t end with last year’s G8 concert.
“It’s an ongoing thing,” he says. “The promises made at Gleneagles have to be kept.” Oxfam’s priority is to put pressure on western governments to give developing countries a fair crack of the whip when it comes to trade. And Bell X1 will be supporting them: “There’s a lot of pressure on Third World countries to open up their markets and sign unbalanced trade agreements. We need to raise awareness of this in Ireland and get our politicians to take up the issue.”