Success of Live 8

Looking back at the Live 8 concerts and their stated goal of building the foundation to end world poverty I cannot help but be pessimistic. How many of the attendees understand that merely throwing money at nations will not end the crisis? The major impediment to changing the fact that 21% of the world's population lives on less than one dollar a day is corruption. To his credit the face of the movement to end poverty, U2's Bono, has readily acknowledged the role corruption plays in the cycle of poverty saying, "this is the number-one issue and there's no way around it." I am not convinced by Bono's idea that now "targeted money" will be able to be re-routed from the governments to the NGOs with much success. One thing is certain and that is the governments have squandered away much of the money for their own private use. In Nigeria alone "past rulers stole or misused £220 billion." This is almost equivalent to the entire amount of aid given to Nigeria! Money is part of the solution, but vast changes in the structures of many governments is almost as important.