Alicia Keys - Keys Launches Africa Competition For Fans

R&B star ALICIA KEYS is giving fans the opportunity to join her on a charity trip to Africa - so she can show them how inspiring the continent is.

The Fallin' hitmaker is a prominent campaigner against the spread of AIDS in Africa and she is raising awareness about the cause by launching a competition via her charity Keep a Child Alive.

Fans are invited to enter the contest for the chance to be one of Keys' five travel buddies when she returns to the continent next year (10).

And the 28-year-old native New Yorker is excited for others to experience the overwhelming feeling of visiting Africa for the first time.

She says, "(My first trip) totally changed my life. Going to Africa was unbelievable for me. I was probably like 19 or something...

"I was able to see the great separation between have and have not. I was able to see the incredible spirit of people. I was able to learn firsthand about the AIDS pandemic of Africa."

The multiple Grammy winner accepts not everyone will feel the same way about Africa as she does, but she hopes some of the competition winners will be so moved by the experience, they'll be inspired to be more philanthropic: "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."

Keys announced the competition on Tuesday (01Dec09) to coincide with World AIDS Day.