大象传媒

大象传媒 World Service
Last updated:聽16 september, 2010 - 16:19 GMT

'Princess of Africa': Yvonne Chaka Chaka

African musical superstar Yvonne Chaka Chaka is known to many as the 'Princess of Africa'.

Nelson Mandela even refers to her as one of his daughters.

Born in Dobsonville in Soweto during apartheid Yvonne was raised by her mother who was a domestic worker.

She first shot to fame with a song called I Am in Love With a DJ, and with another dance floor hit about the pleasures of drinking beer.

She has since recorded 20 albums, but she has also found time to work as one of UNICEF's Goodwill Ambassadors, and as a United Nations Millennium Development Goal Envoy campaigning to prevent the spread of malaria and HIV.

Yvonne has spent the last 18 months travelling around Africa to investigate improvements in healthcare and the rights of women and children.

The result is a documentary, The Motherland Tour - A Journey of African Women, which is being screened in London ahead of a global gathering of world leaders in New York next week.

They are meeting to discuss the progress of the Millennium Development Goals, which aim to drastically reduce poverty, disease and hunger by 2015.

When Yvonne met Lucy Ash in the Outlook studio she explained that it was one of her band members dying of malaria which inspired her to get involved with this campaign. She also spoke about her close relationship with Nelson Mandela and shared her impersonation of him.