"Do they Know it's Christmas?": Adventures in Self-righteous Ethnocentric Holiday Tripe

I realize this song has been around for a while.  I don't care, I only recently found out about it, and I would like to beat the lyricist(s) to death with my righteous fists of educated fury and also a geography book.  Following are lyrics.

It's Christmas time,

there's no need to be afraid.

At Christmas time

we let in light and banish shade

And in our world of plenty

we can spread a smile of Joy

Throw your arms around the world

at Christmas time.

But say a prayer,

Pray for the other ones.

At Christmas time it's hard

but when you're having fun...

There's a world outside your window

and it's a world of dread and fear

Where the only water flowing is

the bitter sting of tears

Where the Christmas bells that are ringing

are the clanging chimes of Doom

Well, tonight thank God it's them instead of you.

And there won't be snow in Africa this Christmas time

The greatest gift they'll get this year is life.

Ohh....

Where nothing ever grows

No rain or rivers flow

Do they know it's Christmas time at all?

Here's to you...

Raise a glass for everyone

Here's to them

Underneath that burning sun

Do they know it's Christmas time at all?

Feed the world...

Feed the world...

Feed the world,

Let them know it's Christmas time again.

Feed the world,

Let them know it's Christmas time again.

(Repeat several times and fade)

First of all, I need some clanging chimes of Doom, posthaste.  That sounds awesome.   Now that's off my chest, let's discuss geography.  Africa, being a large place, has, amazingly enough, a multitude of geographic conditions.  Some of which not only get snow, but have snow all year round.  Altitude is an amazing thing.  I'm at ~5,000 feet, and I wear sweats and slippers in the mornings.  As far as the assertion there are no rains or rivers, Africa is home to some of the world's largest rivers.  The Nile, for example.  Victoria is the world's third largest lake, and interestingly enough, for the part of the continent in the tropics, Christmas can fall during the short rains, meaning that not only can rain flow, it makes transportation difficult because not all roads are paved.  Furthermore, if truly nothing ever grew in Africa, we can assume that foreign colonial powers wouldn't have had such an interest (a continuing interest) in holding controlling monopolies on crops such as sugarcane, coffee, and tea.  Here in Mbeya there is a lot of coffee grown, and absolutely none of it shows up for sale in the local market because it's all being shipped off for processing and then being sold to foreigners.  A bit southeast of here in Njombe, Lipton has a lot of gigantic tea plantations.   Some of Africa is desert, true, but some of it isn't.  Africa: it's not a homogeneous landmass!   

With geography out of the way, what about this "our world is wonderfully fun and perfect, but everything that isn't us (by which we mean Africa) is terrible" theme?  The gasping ignorance and arrogance of such an assertion is flooring.  The difference between the underprivileged of America and the underprivileged of Africa tends to be that privileged Americans assume that underprivileged Americans deserve it for being lazy or defying "traditional values" and should help themselves while Africans can't possibly help themselves and thus deserve help (I guess that's what is going on?).    Note also the unwillingness to acknowledge that anything in Africa could be good or fun.   Or at all educated about holidays like Christmas, nevermind that Africa has been missionaried to death already and Christmas is generally a national holiday in a lot of nations.  Also, it's not like one has to celebrate Christmas, with or without snow, to have a good time with light and no shade (though didn't they say that the sun was burning and bad and snow was good?  How do we have light if it is snowing? I'm confused.) If we really want to feed the world, let's have a sustainable development plan that demonstrates actual knowledge of and respect for the targeted area, ideally without the schadenfreude of explicitly thanking God it's them instead of us.