By Lauren Gelfand
Dakar - Some of Africa's biggest stars gather in Dakar for a weekend music extravaganza billed by Senegal's Youssou N'Dour as the continent's response to Live Aid, ambitiously aiming to raise enough funds to eradicate malaria.
The all-star Africa Live line-up will be led by N'Dour - a recent Grammy winner for his album Egypt - and includes Senegalese hitmakers Baaba Maal and Orchestra Baobab, a flock of songbirds from Mali including Oumou Sangare, Ari Farka Toure, Salif Keita and Rokia Traore, and Cheb Khaled of Algeria among others.
Also taking the stage on either Saturday or Sunday will be Tiken Jah Fakoly of Ivory Coast, French rapper Joey Starr and Seun Kuti and Tony Allen, the son and drummer for Nigeria's most famous musical export, the late Fela Kuti.
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| 'Malaria is a silent tsunami' |
"We may not have a lot but we do have something: we have our music, and that music is power," N'Dour told reporters on Thursday to introduce the concert, a brainchild of his that was announced at this year's gathering of the global elite in Davos, Switzerland.
"With all of us coming together, with this musical force, we can accelerate the rhythm of action against malaria, and help rid our continent of this scourge."
Forty thousand people are expected to attend the concert in Dakar, which will be beamed around the continent and the globe to a hoped-for one billion people.
According to the World Health Organisation, between 350-million and 500-million people worldwide annually contract one of the most virulent strains of malaria, a disease that kills more than one million people - most of them children - each year.
Ninety percent of the cases are experienced in sub-Saharan Africa, transmitted by parasites passed into the bloodstream with every bite from an infected mosquito.
| The admission fees will be used to buy mosquito nets |
According to the WHO, malaria costs the world's poorest continent more than $12-billion annually in lost GDP, though prevention can be achieved at a fraction of the price.
"Malaria is a silent tsunami - but it can be controlled, and even prevented," said Kathy Bushkin of the UN Foundation, one of the partners in the Roll Back Malaria Partnership sponsoring the weekend event.
Launched in 1998 in an effort to promote global awareness of the relatively inexpensive ways people can protect themselves against malaria, the Roll Back Malaria Partnership is a joint effort of UN agencies and the World Bank aiming to halve the incidence of malaria by 2010.
Organisers hope that the admission fees will help purchase 10-million insecticide-treated mosquito nets to distribute around the continent between now and 2007.
"It's tempting to suggest that Africa Live is the continent's response to the Live Aid concert 20 years ago, and it is tempting to suggest that it is Africa's response to Woodstock in the United States, so many years ago," said filmmaker Mick Csaky, who along with N'Dour will produce a film about the event.
"But it's really a force to be reckoned with, to show Africa's commitment to rid itself of this disease."
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