Unless you were somewhere in the deepest forest or the remotest desert, by the end of last week you knew that Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, had died. Africa will certainly remember him – probably most for the song he co-wrote: We Are The World.

That tune probably did more than anything else to usher Africa into the celebrity era. The man who started all this was of course Bob Geldof, who in 1984 organised a world-wide pop extravaganza called Band Aid, for the starving people in Ethiopia.

And today, everyone who is famous for being famous jets into Africa. Angelina, Madonna, Oprah, Bono...who hasn't been to Africa to save their slice of the continent?

Question is: why is this happening? And does it do any good?

Eveline Meltzer, the media contact person at UNICEF Netherlands thinks it works very well. After all, as she explains, UNICEF, the United Nation’s Children’s Fund,  has been a celebrity-heavy organisation right from the beginning.

‘More than 50 years ago,’ says Meltzer, ‘we started with the American actress Audrey Hepburn, who was famous worldwide. She became the first Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF.

By using Goodwill Ambassadors we can get the media attention we like to have. For example, without the English football player David Beckham visiting Sierra Leone, as he did last year, we would not have had world-wide attention for the children of Sierra Leone.’

But visiting celebrities can have a downside too, as Namibian human rights activist Phil Ya Nangoloh found out. He witnessed American actress Angelina Jolie descend on his country…

‘There was a crackdown on the media, a restriction of the freedom of movement, simply because people weren’t allowed anywhere close to the place where she was supposed to deliver her baby…’ 

But away from excesses such as these, does Ya Nangoloh think celebrities can do any good at all in Africa?

‘They can attract media attention. But they should not be the only ones to do so. After all, a celebrity is not a development activist or a human rights advocate.’ He is certainly not enamoured with the short-term view many of them take. ‘What is missing is the long-term, the holistic view.’

Case in point? Sir Bob Geldof himself, who had this to say when he revisited Ethiopia 20 years after Band Aid and found that the food crisis there was still very much in evidence. ‘It’s glaringly obvious what needs to be done; I don’t want to hear about structural arrangement…stop it. Just stop it and do it.’

But perhaps it would be wise to focus some of that celebrity attention towards those structural causes. It is what Africans themselves have been dealing with for the longest time. They already know that their challenges will not be solved by a soundbite - or a song.