East Africa crisis: Sir Bob Geldof tells ITV News the world must do more to help starving millions

The world needs to come together to do more to help the millions of people facing starvation in East Africa, Sir Bob Geldof has told ITV News.

While the singer and Live Aid campaigner praised Britain's leading role in the international appeal for action, he accused the globe's superpowers of so far failing to follow.

"Russia, China, the Middle East (nations) ... We never talk about them, but where are they?" he said.

"They claim to be, you know, mature states, honourable countries, where are they? Where are they? They're never there."

Drought and conflict has left more than 16 million people across South Sudan, Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia in desperate need of food, water and medical treatment.

Sir Bob said the UK had the "moral and political authority" to lead the global appeal, praising the Department for International Development as "without question the Rolls-Royce of this whole game".

He said he had been impressed by the words chosen by the Secretary of state Priti Patel in her demand for action in support of the Disasters Emergency Committee's East Africa Crisis Appeal.

"There's a certain rage contained to them that I like," he said.

Sir Bob said "the world is very different" from the 1980s, when the Boomtown Rats rocker emerged as a central figurehead in the global appeal to help famine victims in Ethiopia.

But he said poverty remained the "root cause" of the world's suffering and helped terror groups to recruit young men with "absolutely no future" as paid-for killers.

"A lot of the thugs in al-Shabaab and ISIS and Boka Haram are literally just killers and murderers, gangs, you know, enriching themselves," he said.

Sir Bob said he hoped the fact that the East Africa crisis was partly a man-made catastrophe would not deter people from helping the starving.

"You've got to picture it actually," he said. "They go about their lives, out in the boondocks, making whatever they can, getting a living, enjoying their lives, enjoying their families, enjoying their children. Transplant that to a British city.

"You go about your life, get your family, go to the pub, go whatever, and the next minute, nothing. Now, they are survivors, but they're not going to survive thuggery, thuggery married to an existential climactic moment. They're not going to survive that.

"But they will. If there's the political ability to get to them with your cash. And every quid you get is a vote that says, nope, not in my name pal."

You can see more of the interview with Bob Geldof in Famine: Millions on the Brink on the ITV Hub.