Geldof on Africa

Geldof is still, 20 years on, unshakeable in his belief he did the right thing. "I wrote at the time that I would shake hands with devil if I can get to the devil's victims," he said.

"It mattered to me that Mengistu was a thug and a killer, but [because I was apolitical] he couldn't throw me out. We didn't have a choice. If one person was helped, it was worth it."

He may have been a naive 31-year-old rock star in 1985, but he is - certainly not naive now. He is staggeringly well read. He agrees that Adam Hochschild's book, King Leopold's Ghost, about the rape of the Congo by Belgium, should be a set book in schools.

He has many, many facts at his fingertips. In answer to the problem of corruption in Africa, he cited the track records of Berlusconi, Chirac and Kohl.

When I asked if debt relief really was the answer, he shouted: "Why not eliminate debt? Have we noticed anything since Gordon Brown eliminated debt? No. Are their economies thriving? Yes."

How on earth does he manage to find the energy to keep campaigning? He has just finished filming a sixpart documentary for BBC1 about Africa. "It was f***ing hard," he admitted, dragging his fingers through unwashed hair.

"It took about four months in total. This year I have been to 15 or 16 African countries. For 30 years I've been in bands and I've been well off and I've been everywhere I've wanted to go but there isn't a shadow of a doubt, Africa is staggering. Beautiful.

"I wanted the programme to steer clear of the hand-wringing. I didn't want to be in almost every shot, but Lorraine [Heggessey], whose idea it was for the BBC to devote time in its schedules to Africa] kept shouting, 'Bob, get in shot, get in shot!'"

The misconception about Geldof is that he only became interested in Africa when he saw Michael Buerk on the six o'clock news, but he had fallen in love with the continent many years before.

"Since I first read Conrad's Heart of Darkness, since I first saw The African Queen when I was small or heard the phrase, 'Doctor Livingstone, I presume', I've wanted to go there," he said.

Part of the fascination came from being Irish. He describes his childhood as "crap"; his mother died when he was six; his father, a travelling salesman, was away a lot. They had no telly, no fridge, nothing. From that came an awful lot of anger.

I ventured he might be in danger of romanticising the continent. There are lots of shots of noble savages with spears. "I hope I don't romanticise anything," he said, anxious.

"I wanted to film something other than childlike primitives, walking skeletons. Africa is in a state of flux right now because we've imposed our view of the world on them. They will arrive at something that works for them.

"Every kid in Africa will come to you not asking for food but for a pencil. It isn't cute or sweet or tragic, it's just a driving need to connect up, and they're connecting big time. You are in these straw huts and they have a satellite dish and they point at the sky and say, 'David Beckham'.

"They say to me, 'Where are you from?' And I say, 'Ireland', and they say, 'Roy Keane!'

"You see all these Masai warriors with spears and they sh** these German women on the beach. The lads are mad for it. Then they walk back to Masai land.

"They know about globalisation - Africa is the fastest growing market for mobile phones - but they can't be arsed."

Geldof was keen, though, to disabuse me of the notion that teenage Africans are any different from Western ones. "I saw this kid in a f***ing Eminem shirt in a straw hut; I must remember to tell Marshall [Mathers] when I next see him.

"I remember saying, 'Film these guys, they're f***ing great! They could be down the King's Road.'"

Did he miss his own children - Fifi Trixibelle, 20, Peaches, 16, Pixie, 14, his daughters with Paula Yates, and Tiger Lily, eight, the orphaned daughter of Yates and rock star Michael Hutchence - while he was filming? He is keen to stress he is in constant contact with all of them. "I was being driven in the Congo , surrounded by bandits with AK47s. I said, 'Lights off and f***ing floor it.' I'm praying we don't get a puncture and the phone rings. It's one of my kids saying, 'Can I stay at Xanthe's tonight? I said, 'What day is it? No, you can't. It's a school day.'

"She didn't ask where I was or anything. That's it. The unexpectedness of Africa."

What Geldof has tried to do with his film is explode some of the myths; standing in the dungeons at Cape Coast Castle in Ghana, he points out that even before Europeans arrived, 60 per cent of Africa's economy was based on slavery.

He explores voodooism and pronounces it as "a wholly understandable religion with a full theology", even if he found its rituals as boring as he found Mass in Ireland as a child.

I took issue with the segment where he cosies up to the leaders in Somaliland; no women seem to be involved. "It is part of the culture. That is not to say women are acquiescent ... far from it! They are loud and noisy and argumentative and bloody gorgeous!

"Bizarrely, Aids is, and I hate using the word, 'empowering' for women. Women are binding together and there is the notion now of abstinence, the word is written on chalk on huts and on billboards."

Geldof said last week that, importantly, this time around Live8 is not just about aid; just as well when a survey at the weekend revealed 80 per cent of Britons believe handouts alone won't work. This time, it is about changing policies.

"Twenty years on, is it still right that more people die of hunger every year in Africa than of war, Aids, TB and polio combined?" he told me. "Is that not intellectually absurd and morally repulsive? Twenty years ago I hadn't wanted to go to Africa and hold dying babies, but the papers said to me, 'You are the excuse for us to go there'.

"For seven years the Congolese were involved in the biggest conflict since World War II. Four million people died, yet we barely heard about it.

"The Congo is, in terms of national resources, one of the richest countries on the planet. Now, it has a fragile peace. One day it will be like the United States."

Geldof is right. Africa is indeed back on the front pages. Will it also get back on its feet? "I'm an optimist," he said. "The people have grace and resilience. They are too resilient for the pain to continue."

Geldof in Africa is on BBC1 on Monday, 20 June, at 7.30pm