ABSTRACT
The post-Washington Consensus promoted the use of 'private aid', or public–private partnerships, as a means for funding development interventions. The reason why the post-Washington Consensus came to dominate development policy across the developing world was in one sense only a matter of timing. The expanded role for private aid led to an increasing overlap between corporate interests and international development, which for a number of reasons conferred an elevated role upon celebrities. The fact that all of this was happening in a context of increasingly complex global media environments further fuelled the rise of celebrity humanitarianism. The result of all of these factors has been a deepening relationship between international development and media celebrity. The image caused a huge media storm at the time of its release – although this, ironically, only increased the media profile of the campaign itself.
