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Move over Bono, Angelina Jolie, and George Clooney. Here comes 50 Cent.

The rap star from New York flew briefly to the Somali town of Dolo along the Ethiopian border to visit a refugee camp run by the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights. 50 Cent, or Curtis Jackson as he is also known, has committed to providing 1 billion meals to the hungry, and according to the Associated Press, he is donating 10 cents from the purchase price of every bottle of a new energy drink called Street King, which he promotes. Ten cents covers the cost of a typical meal provided by the World Food Programme, the UN’s emergency food relief agency.

In addition to his visit to Dolo, 50 Cent also visited the Nairobi slum of Kibera, billed as Africa’s largest slum.

When stars get involved in global issues, there is inevitably a frisson of excitement in the entertainment press about that star’s commitment and bravery, and in the news press, there tend to be a slew of snarky articles about how such trips are self-serving, self-promotional branding exercises. Both can be true, of course. And when powerful aid agencies such as the United Nations Children’s Fund asks a starlet like Angelina Jolie visit refugee camps in the Darfur region, they can be almost assured that her visit – and their agenda – will gain the attention of the world’s media. In a world of short attention spans and decreasing foreign news budgets, it’s a logical choice to make.

Rap and rock stars, action heroes, and yes, even comic book characters – DC Comics recently sent its Justice League to take on hunger in the Horn of Africa – do their job well, raising public awareness about world crises.

But some critics have begun to ask whether any of this attention does any actual good.

In her biting critique of the reporting of influential New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, published this week by the W.E.B. Dubois Institute at Indiana University, Kathryn Mathers writes that the twin events of the growing AIDS crisis and the post-traumatic shock of the Sept. 11 attacks created a new mood of American humanitarianism. Laudable as it is for Americans to want to contribute to solutions – rather than, say, launching another war – this new humanitarianism was wrapped up in some very old and repulsive assumptions about Africa as a helpless and hopeless continent, which had almost no role in contributing to those solutions or determining its own future:

For the news media, these are very valid criticisms. Are we being led by the nose, and by our desire for increased readership and viewership, to cover the stories that Mr. Clooney, Ms. Jolie, and Mr. Cent – and their backers – want us to cover?

By giving so much attention to their issues, heightening awareness about war, conflict, drought, and disease, are we diminishing the importance of other trends in Africa – the emergence of new democracies, the growing economic strength of resource-rich nations, the blossoming of technology? 

By focusing on foreign celebrities, do we in the news media end up diminishing also the efforts of ordinary aid workers and activists who work on issues of hunger and conflict year-round? I would welcome a discussion on this issue on Twitter, by the way.

As for the rap star 50 Cent, his entry into the humanitarian field is not entirely new. It has its roots in a concert tour of Africa that the rap star took last year.

That first African trip gave him the impetus to use his fame as a platform to make a difference.