Living the Live Aid ideal in Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso's low-lying capital which hums to the sound of thousands of mopeds speeding down main roads or bumping along red-dirt tracks.

Pelzer was a 17-year-old music fan when stars staged the Live Aid extravaganza. He watched the shows in the German town of Bocholt and the experience changed his life, inspiring him to head to Burkina Faso, one of Africa's poorest countries.

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Twenty years on, he is still there.

Pelzer recalls that life-changing day as he sits in his home in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso's low-lying capital which hums to the sound of thousands of mopeds speeding down main roads or bumping along red-dirt tracks.

"There was a buzz. We were in awe of what had been achieved -- seeing so many musicians coming together to solve the world's problems," he said. "Live Aid gave me the emotional impetus to start out on the path I have taken afterwards."

"I wanted to play a role and move things, even in a very small way ... I didn't give any money to Live Aid. I gave a lot of time and energy afterwards."

Live Aid started a voyage of discovery for the 37-year-old.

"Africa was very far away to a young German at the beginning of the '80s. Germany doesn't have a strong colonial past. It doesn't have a black population. Live Aid was a wake-up call."

After watching the shows, Pelzer joined a school discussion group about the developing world and they started fundraising for Burkina Faso, a landlocked dusty state where more than 80 percent of people live on less than $2 a day.

"I was 17 years old ... trying to find my way and where I stood in the world. It was the right thing at the right time."

Four years later, he was in Burkina Faso building schools and digging wells.

Pelzer will be watching again when many of the same musicians who captured his imagination two decades ago take to the stage in the Live 8 concerts on Saturday to pressure world leaders to do more for the Africans he now lives among.

"Music can transport topics like debt relief and subsidies to a broader audience and make people interested in Africa. Not everyone has to become an activist, but it prepares the people watching the concert for the discussion," he said.

Now married to a French woman working for the European Union mission in Burkina Faso, the father of two believes that on a continent where corruption is a major brake on development, money is not always the answer.

"It's a real problem being so dependent on international donors. Aid falls out of the sky, so people do not always see the need to use it responsibly."

"It wouldn't be a bad idea for an African country to say to the West 'keep your money, we're going to try and improve our situation with what we've got'."

Pelzer is trying to do just that. In 1997 he was part of an archaeological team that discovered well-preserved mud-brick ruins dating from the 10th century among the sand dunes near Oursi in the north of Burkina Faso.

He studied African history at a German university, but never completed his post-graduate studies as he had already become involved in Africa. His development of the Oursi ruins is jointly funded by the U.S. and German embassies in Burkina Faso.

He has excavated the ruins and put up a roof to preserve the site. A museum has been built nearby using mud bricks made by villagers, who will have communal ownership of the building.

Pelzer admits some of his ideas have changed since 1985, but he is still an idealist at heart.

"I want to believe that music with a cause can change the world."