Live 8 a Huge Success as Pressure Builds on G8 to Change the World

London’s Hyde Park drew the world’s attention towards the plight of Africa, as the showpiece leg of the series of Live 8 concerts around the world took place on Saturday 2nd July 2005.

Commentators around the globe have been declaring Bob Geldof’s extraordinary vision a huge success today as he brought together worldwide celebrities to unite the world in crying out for the world’s richest nations to take action and fight poverty in Africa.

Geldof has demanded that the leaders of the richest nations in the world, who will gather next week for the G8 Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, wide out the debt, offer trade concessions and double aid for the African continent.

Twenty years ago singer Bob Geldof held a charity event called Live Aid which showed the world for the first time the horrifying situation in Africa. At that time in 1985, 72,000 gathered in Wembley in London, but now twenty years later that number more than doubled to 205,000 as the calls get louder and louder for something to be done.

Overall, the Live 8 event took place in 10 separate stages across four continents, which in total gathered more than a million at the live events, with approximately 3 billion estimated to have tuned in on television and radio.

Top singers, such as Madonna, Paul McCartney, Robbie Williams, Mariah Carey, Sting among a whole host of others, came together in central London to amplify the calls to the G8 leaders. In addition, other such celebrities such as Bill Gates and David Beckham came to speak to the crowd in support of Geldof’s G8 issues.

Joining the event was also the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and in Johannesburg was former South African Nelson Mandela, who also came to London earlier this year to give his full backing to the UK based Make Poverty History campaign.

Several African natives were also brought on stage, which included one young survivor of the Ethiopian famine that was the focus of world so long ago.

To ensure that the concert did not turn into simply a music event, Geldof and others kept the serious message continually coming out, and giant graphics around the stadium carried messages such as "8 men in one room can change the world" and "this is the week when poverty can be beaten".

As the event continued with emotions overflowing, the London concert went more than two-and-a-half-hours behind schedule. However, the worldwide Live 8 marathon came to an end with Stevie Wonder performing in the Philadelphia leg, and now all eyes shift towards the G8 leaders who are already gathering for the Summit that will take place on 6th July.