Poor Bob Geldoff. He seems to have slammed his shaggy-maned head straight into a wall of African and diaspora ire that has been building up steadily for at least half a decade.

It isn’t clear how he managed to misstep so badly. Here he is now a target for all of the vilification that one well-meaning pop star could attract.

The continent is struggling to rebrand itself as capable, intrinsically rich, diverse, innovative and problem-solving. The new Africa is striving to arrive and its proponents are articulate and ferocious. Perhaps he could have researched this phenomenon before embarking on this latest adventure in unwitting condescension.

Of course Mr Geldoff’s heart seems to be in the right place, but this Ebola effort got him tripped up. His skewed vision of delivering help in a difficult health crisis has called down the wrath of the righteous.

It is politically incorrect at this time to sympathise with him while living in Africa simultaneously, but I want to just say something: I kind of get where he’s coming from. It’s called the 20th century and some cultural artefacts can be found in history books and the rapidly disappearing memories of generations older than the Millenials.

I can still sing the entire first part of the original We Are The World — remember that, circa 1985 — and feel that thrill of mighty celebrity caring that convinced me that a global “we” can make all the difference.

Those were much simpler times: No Twitter battles with celebrities, no Facebook streams afire with every cause every one of your 700 “friends” has ever reposted from the New York Times or Buzzfeed. Just the hopeful sound of people singing for change with a wide-eyed optimism that would likely get you shot today.

Looks like what we’ve carried over from then is the idea that more is more. Now I have to live on a steady diet of background noise for behaviour change and social activism because, hey, this is Tanzania and on the basis of our vaunted African Oral Culture apparently everything must be done through song and dance.

There is a song for everything. A song to help you pay your taxes. A song to help you make up your mind at the voting booth. A song to keep you HIV-free. A song to keep the girls in school, and the unemployed youth off of drugs.

A song for Tanzania in case you need a patriotism boost, jingles to sell you anything from government-subsidised fertiliser to mosquito nets. Songs to encourage singing.

And we shimmer and shake and bop our heads to the endless stream of behaviour-change messaging, since it provides an occasional break from pop music and the endless stream of advertising, maybe remember to actually change our behaviour from time to time. Maybe.

Mr Geldoff clearly didn’t note this but it’s hard — make that impossible — to get ahead of Africans in terms of socially significant songs. In the case of Ebola, it seems West Africa is on top of things, having produced several of its own tracks. Which makes him our most recent major public example of how to fail at 21st century activism.

If the lyrics of his first Band Aid song were offensive, the ones in aid of Ebola awareness and fundraising are completely indefensible in the 21st century.

They provide more than ample ammunition to his detractors and have generated meticulous refutations of the many, many, oh so many, mistakes the song makes about the geography, culture and societies that live on this vast continent.

For which I thank him. Band Aid 2014 has united not only Africans but also perhaps the entire aid and development industries in pointing out a crucial problem.

When one isn’t careful and diligent and most of all humble enough to respect the recipient of their noble behaviour, a certain casual and probably unintended prejudice can creep into efforts to help “the less fortunate.”

Seriously: Research saves.

Elsie Eyakuze is an independent consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report, http://mikochenireport.blogspot.com. E-mail: [email protected]