Yeah, I agree and I'd actually like to recant a bit on my first post. The lyrics might be clumsy inasmuch as they refer to 'Africa' rather than specifically the Eritrean province of Ethiopia (where the famine mainly was centered), but pedantically sneering at lines such as "Where nothing ever grows / Nor rain nor rivers flow" by saying that the writer was obviously unaware of geographical facts such as the source of the Nile, or agricultural facts like they grow yams in Ghana, or the details of the two rainy seasons in the Serengeti is a cheap shot IMO. It can, and should, be excused under the banner of 'poetic licence'; the song wasn't meant as a geography lesson. (And yes, they did know it was Christmas).
And, as I said before, at least they did something which is more than a lot of people have done, either before or since.
