A Nelson Mandela Remembrance Concert in December shall celebrate 100 years since Nelson Mandela’s birth while also making attempts at dealing with poverty around the world.
The concert will put some of Africa’s most popular musicians like Nigerian artists Wizkid, D’Banj and Femi Kuti alongside world renowned acts like Beyonce, Jay Z, Pharell Williams, Usher, Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder, Ed Sheeran and Coldplay frontman Chris Martin.
The December 2 event, which will be internationally broadcast, will celebrate the late anti-apartheid icon and draw a number of leaders in an attempt to throw a spotlight on fledgling efforts to eradicate the world’s worst poverty, Global Citizen announced. Global Citizen said it hoped that the run-up to the festival would raise commitments of $1 billion to help the world’s poorest, with half of the amount aimed at women and girls.
“On every way that we measure outcomes the number of citizens engaged, the number of policy outcomes that are achieved, the number of lives that are affected as a result of those policy outcomes we believe it has the potential to be the most significant campaign we’ve ever been part of,” Evans told AFP.
Evans also said that Mandela offered a model for the Global Citizen movement through his magnanimous efforts at racial reconciliation and democracy as well as through his focus on tackling poverty and global health.Unlike traditional benefit concerts, Global Citizen distributes tickets for free to supporters who pledge to take actions such as writing their governments to support international development assistance.
Global Citizen said that South African President Cyril Ramaphosa as well as the leaders of Norway and Ghana plan to attend the December 2 festival in honor of Mandela, who was born on July 18, 1918.