TONY Blair's off to Ethiopia this week. I was there last week - and I hope the Prime Minister's heart is in good working order, because it will be sorely tested by the mind-boggling poverty he will witness.

As Mr Blair pointed out at the Commission for Africa launch earlier this year, the continent is the only one to have grown poorer over the past 25 years.

Millions of children don't go to school. Millions more die through famine, disease or war.

Along with photographer Richard Crease, I was in Ethiopia to visit VSO volunteers, including a former Poole High School teacher called Michela Norman. The feature, and some of Richard's fantastic photos, will be appearing soon.

The PM, no doubt, will be hooking up with some serious big-wigs. All of us, however, whether high-ranking government officials or humble local newspapermen, will come home with our eyes and minds prised wide open.

There were beggars everywhere we went. Old men with sad eyes, sitting silently and deathly still outside church gates. Young men with twisted or missing limbs, hopping through the suffocating diesel haze of Addis Ababa's jams of blue Lada taxis. The children who would appear from nowhere to loiter alongside perpetually harassed ferengi (foreigners), pleading: "You, you, me hungry, me very hungry... you, you, give me money."

And, for me at least, most heart-rending of all, homeless young mothers trying to stop their babies crying as they prepared for another night on the cold streets.

That's right, cold streets. This is the world's third-highest capital city, after all - although the image of Ethiopia that's probably burned in your collective memory is of sun-scorched deserts and big-eyed little mites with distended bellies.

It's 20 years now since the devastating famine that inspired Band Aid, then Live Aid - and got Bob Geldof so agitated.

But the "Live Aid legacy", as it's known in aid agency circles, isn't necessarily a true reflection of the current situation in Africa - and may even be hindering attempts to try and redress the balance.

It's not enough now for a gaggle of well-intentioned rock stars to sing for someone else's supper - not that it ever was, of course.

HIV and Aids is now a major killer (and will remain so for many years to come), and with so many illiterate people and so many cultural barriers to be overcome, education and getting the message across is just as important as filling all those hungry bellies.

Whatever you may think of Mr Blair (and obviously there are plenty whose opinion of him doesn't amount to very much), he is to be applauded for his passion and desire to do something for Africa.

It's easy to feel helpless when faced with a tragedy of such magnitude, and with no quick-fix solution in sight - and now I know because I've been there - but surely it's better to do something.

First published: October 5