Alicia Keys Travel To Africa Contest For Keep A Child Alive Charity

Alicia Keys has come up with a contest that will give five people the chance to visit Africa with her when she travels there for her charity, Keep a Child Alive.

The singer hopes the winners will have the same profound transformation that she had during her initial trip to the Mother Land, a journey she says “totally changed my life.”

“Going to Africa was unbelievable for me,” the 28-year-old said. “I was probably like 19 or something. I was asked to come to Africa to perform, and so you think, `I’m just the girl from Harlem, I wrote a couple of songs on 137th Street, and then suddenly you want me to come to Africa? And people will know me? And people will know the songs?’ It was a mind-blowing experience for me.”

“I was able to see the great separation between have and have not,” Keys said. “I was able to see the incredible spirit of people. I was able to learn firsthand about the AIDS pandemic of Africa.”

Keys was to announce the contest last night during her concert at the Nokia Theatre in New York’s Time Square for World AIDS Day. Fans will be able to enter the contest online at the foundation’s Web site, or by sending a text. The fee for the text is $5, but it will be donated to Keep a Child Alive.

Keys said the winners, who will travel throughout Africa for five days sometime next year, will visit the people and places that were most influential to her.

“Some will probably not want to come back, some will totally want to stay so that they can be a part of just all this beauty that we’re spreading and light that we’re spreading. And some will come back and say, `I’ll never turn my back,’ which is what happened to me,” said Keys, who has traveled throughout South Africa (Johannesburg, Soweto and Durban) and Uganda.