You wouldn’t be mistaken if you’d detected in recent years the steady ascent of a being known as the “celebrity-come-human-rights-activist”. It’s a trend marked by choice publicity photos and megalith aid gigs, humbling revelations and a rhetoric of global togetherness – all for a just cause, even if the image of Madonna in Malawi rings a little hollow. But few have grasped the true potential of stardom as a means to incite change quite like Baaba Maal. One of the greatest musicians to emerge from the west African state of Senegal, and certainly one of its most well-known, Baaba Maal has thrown himself into the fray of social activism with a zeal rarely seen in one whose career could so easily have followed a path of relative ease, filled with travel and high-profile performances. Instead he’s set his sights on a lofty goal – a vision to uplift the African continent.
Appointed as a youth emissary for the United Nations Development Programme in 2003, he has worked to improve the living stands standards of young people whose futures were threatened by illiteracy, poverty and disease. In early 2012 Oxfam announced Maal as their global ambassador – he held a concert in Matal, Senegal to raise funds for the food crisis appeal in the arid region of North Africa known as the Sahel. He has performed for Live Earth, the Nobel Peace Prize Concert and led the African Soul Rebels (a radical political/feminist group of musicians who toured Britain in 2009).
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