Baaba Maal: We Can Do Much Better

Make Poverty History, perhaps mindful of some of the criticism of today's events as white and "Anglo-Saxon", pulled out Senegalese rock star Baaba Maal for the final press conference before today's march in Edinburgh.

In rock-star shades, and dressed in an immaculate grey suit with white lace strips, the musician and HIV campaigner pulled no punches, telling a packed and sweaty tent crammed full of reporters that this week's events in Scotland and the concerts around the world were just the beginning.

We can do much much better. We can do much more than Live8. It is very important for me as a black African musician travelling the world that there is this energy. It speaks to the young generation on the continent of Africa. They understand what to do. This is the time to fight poverty. The first problem of Africa is the lack of education. Now it is important to make African leaders realise the money is coming in for classrooms for communities.

If there ever had been a dictat from on high from Make Poverty History not to mention the Iraq war, as was rumoured yesterday, that was blown out of the water by the Filipino activist Walden Bello, a director of the think tank Focus on the Global South, who ripped into the Japanese, Italian, British and US G8 leaders for their participation in the conflict.

He said: "We did not come here to Edinburgh to make the G8 leaders feel like special people.

People are here to manifest their solidarity with the three billion people suffering extreme poverty. We are not here to march for charity, we are here to march for justice. Free trade and corporate exploitation are not divisible from the suffering in Iraq, now in its third year of military occupation. When the leaders talk of wiping out $25bn of debt, remember they found $30bn for the Iraq war at the drop of a hat. Get out of Iraq now!

With a number of shops in Edinburgh city centre boarded up, noticeably jewellers, chemists and off-licences, it was left to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, Lesley Hinds, to welcome the world's press to the Scottish capital. She promised them today's event would be "memorable, safe and successful."

With the sun streaming down on the Meadows – the park in the city centre which is the centrepiece of today's march – and the crowd swelling by the thousand every few minutes, that looks a very plausible prediction.