In 1984, Ethiopia was in the grip of one of the worst famines in the country's history - its 26th - following a prolonged drought in the middle of a civil war. Â
This is the type of image that flooded the news media from 1984. It came from the Tigray region, where it is estimated between 400,000 and a million people starved to death.Â
Images filed by African photojournalists like Mo Amin spurred the world to action, and it reached the home of one of the most famous musicians of that time.
Boomtown Rats singer Bob Geldof is the man who everyone associates with Live Aid and Band Aid, but he was in fact inspired by his wife, television presenter, Paula Yates.
Yates famously left a note on their fridge door encouraging her family to do something about the situation in Tigray after she burst into tears while watching this television report below:
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Geldof contacted Scottish musician Midge Ure and they put together a supergroup to produce a Christmas album called “Do They Know It’s Christmas?â€. The album was released on 25 November 1984 and went straight to Number 1.
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"Do they Know It’s Christmas" spurred other American artists to produce a matching single “We are the Worldâ€, which became the fastest selling single in the world.
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The next step was an international concert held billed as the greatest rock concert ever.
On July 13 2014, Live Aid was held in two cities and on two continents simultaneously.
About 72,000 people attended the event at Wembley Stadium in London, and about 90,000 the event at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia, while an estimated 2 billion viewers, across 150 countries, watched the live television broadcast.
The charity drive was largely successful. By the middle of 1984, Band Aid and Live Aid â€" billed as the greatest rock concert ever - had raised almost $200 million.
The funds were only intended to alleviate the worst of the famine. The money was converted into emergency aid - food, medicine, medical supplies, which were flown in to Ethiopia.
The only real criticism came from a documentary that claimed at least some of the money was in fact used to purchase arms by the then government of Mengistu Haile Mariam.
Birhan Woldu, one of the Ethiopian children who featured in the video shown at Live Aid, later said food aid was not the solution to famine. Instead, she believed investment should be made in preparing countries for disasters that might befall them.
Organisers were also accused of being patronising, for not including African artists in the lineups of the two concerts. They responded by saying black superstars were either too busy or uninterested to participate.
Geldoff was knighted by the Queen of England for his Band Aid and Live Aid efforts.
However, Ethiopia was hit by another famine in 2002.
While Ethiopia is one of the fastest growing economies in Africa, it remains one of the world's poorest countries and still suspectible to drought and food insecurity.
It has, however, developed an early warning system for identifying areas at risk of hunger, as well as building up sizeable grain reserves, currently standing at some 400,000 tons.
- eNCA
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