How the foreign aid industry demeans Africa

The Norwegian students’ group which  last year came out with the brilliant ‘Africa for Norway’ spoof video has again released a hilarious film lampooning the aid industry for the stereotypes they perpetuate.

The video makes a serious point. That the aid industry uses pictures of starving babies to trigger donations, even if it means spinning a misleading and patronising view of Africa. All this is Western self-indulgence if the aid doesn’t actually help Africa (as African authors like Dambisa Moyo have demonstrated). There are many African countries with a wide array of problems – chiefly, bad governance. These videos raise a potent question: what’s the point of all these charity appeals? To actually help Africa, or make Westerners feel better about themselves?

As they put it:-

The pictures we usually see in fundraisers are of poor African children. Hunger and poverty is ugly, and it calls for action.