A member of the Italian hip-hop band Gemelli Diversi (Different Twins) on stage during a rehearsal in Rome. (Reuters)

London, July 1 (Reuters): Organiser Bob Geldof promises it will be the greatest concert ever, as final preparations for the Live 8 gigs are made and hundreds of pop stars prepare to leave their egos backstage to raise awareness of poverty in Africa.

The 50-year-old Irishman is hoping that Live 8 will eclipse Live Aid 20 years ago, when 1.5 billion people tuned in to see the likes of U2, David Bowie and Mick Jagger perform to raise money for Ethiopia’s famine.

This time it is about people power, with organisers hoping that huge crowds at the venues and a television and Internet audience in the billions will put pressure on world leaders meeting next week in Scotland to do more to fight poverty. “I can’t wait for the end. I’m so tired,” Geldof told an audience of young people on MTV late yesterday.

“I tell you something ... you will never see it again. It will be the greatest concert ever.” In a typical tirade, he explained why he had decided to go ahead with Live 8. “Plan B is that we continue to watch the carnival of death every night on our television screens forever, in full glorious colour and stereophonic sound.”

Concerts will be held in all the Group of Eight industrialised nations, plus one in Johannesburg and another featuring African acts in southwest England. Tokyo will open proceedings in the east and the event winds up in North America.

The initiative, costing an estimated ?5 million to stage, has been widely praised by aid groups, and Geldof can point to a recent $40 billion debt forgiveness deal and US pledges to double aid to Africa as signs of progress. “We’re on the way,” he said, sharing the MTV platform with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. “It’s incredible to think after 20 years we’re almost there.”

The Live 8 concerts are linked to the Make Poverty History campaign, which is organising events around the world over the coming days in a bid to halve global poverty by 2015. But not everyone is convinced that the Live 8 initiative will directly affect the outcome of the G8 meeting in Scotland on July 6-8.

“Highlighting the problems of Africa is a noble thing, but beyond that, stars’ solutions to the problems are suspect,” said Franklin Cudjoe of Imani: The Centre for Humane Education in Ghana. And there are still question marks over how smoothly Live 8 will run. Organisers say they have had eight weeks to plan a show on a par with the Olympic Games in terms of the complexity of the technology and size of the audience.