January 18, 2003 — Nelson Mandela'a AIDS Awareness concert has been canceled because of problems over broadcast rights and sponsorship, his spokeswoman said today.

"The aim of the whole thing was to broadcast this concert across the world, and to tell people that the world was standing together to fight HIV/AIDS because they see the impact it has had on human rights," Mandela's spokeswoman Zelda La Grange said.

"We could probably pull off the concert... but at the end of the day you don't just want to have a concert and not reach the aim of it all," she said.

La Grange said the foundation was considering trying to stage another concert in future.

Some of the world's best recording artists had come together to answer Nelson Mandela's SOS to eradicate the AIDS pandemic. Artists scheduled to appear at his historic "Mandela SOS" human-rights concert, Feb. 2, 2003, included Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics, Queen, Yusuf Islam (aka Cat Stevens), Bono, Baaba Maal, Macy Gray, Nelly Furtado, Jimmy Cliff, Coldplay, Deborah Cox, Ms. Dynamite, Shaggy, Eve, Ludacris, and Lamya, Angelique Kidjo, Yvonne Chaka Chaka, Johnny Clegg, Bongo Maffin, Vusi Mahlasela and Femi Kuti.

Dave Stewart was to have been the musical coordinator for the concert.

AIDS has had a devastating impact on people under 20. To date, 28.1 million Africans are infected with HIV, approximately 1.5 million of whom are children. There are currently 11 million AIDS orphans in Africa, and if no urgent action is taken, there may be more than 25 million by the end of this decade. Faced with this global crisis artists like Macy Gray, Shaggy, Eve, Coldplay, Ludacris, Nelly Furtado, Deborah Cox are refusing to lose another generation -- their generation -- to AIDS.