Rock Groups to Buy 100 Trucks for Africa Famine Work

The U.S. Live Aid Foundation and the Band Aid Trust, the rock-star fund-raising groups from the United States and Britain, announced Wednesday that they will spend about $10.3 million to buy 100 trucks for food transportation in Ethiopia and to continue famine relief efforts in Sudan.

These will be among the largest expenditures made by the groups since they raised nearly $50 million from concerts in London and Philadelphia last July and from a British rock recording released late last year.

A spokesman for Live Aid estimated that it will cost $7 million to add the 100 trucks to a fleet of 150 vehicles to be sent to Ethiopia by the U.S. Agency for International Development. All the vehicles will join the U.N. fleet already in the country.

In addition, Live Aid and Band Aid will contribute $1.3 million to help maintain the U.N. fleet and will give $2 million to the U.N. World Food Program for its feeding program in central, northern and eastern Sudan through Dec. 1.

The U.S. aid agency, meanwhile, will send 150 long- and short-haul trucks and 200 trailers to Ethiopia within the next eight weeks, according to Administrator M. Peter McPherson. The agency will spend $13.2 million on one-year leases for these trucks.