Burkina Faso made the decision this year to restrict the use of images showcasing vulnerable children, men and women for the purpose of collecting funds. This comes after decades of using African images to appeal to global pity, putting the continent as a forever recipient and a continent that the world has the duty to save.
Late evenings on TV, there are various channels in the Western world that show advertisements (should they even be called that) with children shown in dire conditions: dirty clothes, sad faces, often with tears, to appeal to individual donors. A background voice, often that of a woman, lathered in pity, will explain how this child is not able to have three meals a day and cannot afford to go to school. But with X amount (usually a low amount), one can make a difference in that child’s life. The voice will then insist on how low that amount is and how it is enough to change a person’s life.
A massive campaign in the 1990s around hunger in the Horn of Africa made its way to many screens, showcasing the effects of war on communities, especially women and children.
Other types of ads can be found at airports: giant transparent boxes collecting money in all types of currencies. On the box, a picture of children shown in “poverty” is used to tug at travelers’ hearts.
And one of the ultimate favorites is the Western celebrity taking pictures in an area devoid of “development” and with as many smiling children as possible. That is loved by social media.
These are the practices that contributed to the line often heard in the Western world: “Finish your plate, there are children starving in Africa.”
Children living in poverty and not being able to have three meals a day is a reality in Africa, and it is also a reality on other continents. There are ways for organizations, governments and individuals to support communities to have a better life. However, using ads, showcasing children and exposing their vulnerability, is this indeed the proper method?
There is an important question behind these images: who gets to decide how African communities are presented to the rest of the world? The organization raising the funds, the donor consuming the image, or the person whose vulnerability is being displayed? The image may only last a few seconds on a television screen or social media feed, but repeated over decades, these images contribute to a much larger narrative about who Africans are and what the continent represents.
How do we, as Africans, engage in changing the African narrative and contribute to reducing or restricting the use of children as aid bait to collect funds?
African stories told by Africans carry a different perspective in respecting the dignity of communities. For example, a documentary about a particular community facing a challenge—let’s say access to clean drinking water can tell the story of the challenge without reducing the people to the challenge itself.
The community can be shown as a community that needs support, but also as a community with history, knowledge, aspirations and agency. There is a difference between documenting poverty and making poverty the identity of the people being documented.
Engaging in global conversations on how Africa is not to be reduced to an aid continent, but rather a continent with opportunities that is facing recurring challenges, is another way forward. After the past decades, we have seen how challenges are making their way into any part of the world. This could be a way to contribute to shifting the image of Africa, and perhaps, if other countries followed through, to changing the way poverty and vulnerability are discussed globally.
There is also an uncomfortable reality that needs to be acknowledged: these images can work. They can generate donations. They can motivate people to give money and, in some cases, that money can genuinely help communities. But does effectiveness automatically make communication practice ethical? If an image of a crying child raises more money than an image that presents the same child with dignity and agency, should the more emotionally exploitative image therefore be considered acceptable?
International organizations working in different countries should adopt communication styles that are more respectful of the dignity of the communities they serve. Guidelines could be developed by governments to ensure that organizations are respecting the sovereignty of nations and not showcasing their citizens as pawns to attract funding.
This is not an argument against humanitarian action or against telling stories about poverty. It is an argument for questioning the conditions under which those stories are told. Humanitarian communication should be able to show suffering without turning suffering into a permanent identity.
Does poverty have to be pinned to a certain geography? If we are talking about global poverty and nations working together to solve it, could that be a plausible way to tackle world hunger, rather than putting labels by continent or country?
When poverty is repeatedly attached to one geography, it becomes easy for audiences to see it as something inherent to that place rather than something produced by a combination of historical, political, economic and social circumstances. Poverty then stops being a condition that people experience and starts becoming part of the identity assigned to them.
In this era of social media and fast information, perhaps ensuring that narratives on the continent regarding communities and their surroundings are our responsibility. Images and descriptions that do not respect our human dignity should be challenged.
This does not mean that Africa should only be presented through positive stories either. Replacing images of suffering with endless images of success would simply create another incomplete narrative. Africa has challenges, and those challenges deserve to be documented and discussed. The difference is whether people are presented as passive recipients of pity or as human beings who are capable of speaking about their own realities and participating in the solutions.
The poverty line should not be attached to the African identity.
And perhaps the conversation should no longer be about whether the world should help Africa, but about how the world can engage with African communities as partners while allowing Africans themselves to have a greater say in how their realities are seen, understood and represented.
Deborah M Ndjerareou
We Write Afrika 
Leave a comment