In marketing, imagery imprints a powerful, lasting impression into a person’s mind.
It’s branding.
So do the constant images of a desperate black child from an African country in need of donations brands the entire continent.
Can’t go too far on the web without at least one ad of a starving black child from Africa as the imagery for a cause to donate money for food and water.
Always in need of outside help in the form of food and water. Via foreign-owned foundations no less.
This isn’t to say people shouldn’t help or act like there aren’t crises that should be addressed.
It is to question whether it’s the best approach and response to these problems. The track record after decades of this has been marked by nothing but stagnancy.
Foreign Aid is a bust but the other side to it is also the mass marketed branding of a continent and imagery of NEED. Too little exposure of Africa helping Africa: regular individuals coming up with ingenious solutions to problems. The better way to help is to push more attention and resources behind that.
Media bombards you with a story of dependency even on top of millions of foreign aid.
It’s everywhere: donate. donate. give 1$ please help.
Far more than any coverage of self-sufficiency or small-scale individual Africans solving Africa’s own issues.
The push could be to donate resources for stoking powerhouses of imagination that have far wider reaching, more effective and rippling effects.
Not a message of dependency but a call to join behind their own projects.
They’re already doing in it on less resources, help, or coverage.
John Magiro Wangare built a mini hydroelectric plant and now provides electricity to 250 homes in Kenya by saving money and selling 300 rabbits.
William Kamkwamba, kicked out of school when he couldn't pay $80 in fees, spent his days at the library where he learned about windmills. The then-14-year-old taught himself to build windmills. He scoured through junkyards for items. The windmills generate electricity and pump water in his hometown, north of the capital, Lilongwe. Neighbors regularly trek across the dusty footpaths to his house to charge their cellphones.
French President Emmanuel Macron has praised the skills of 11-year-old Nigerian artist Kareem Waris Olamilekan who drew a stunning portrait of him in just two hours.
Yacouba Sawadogo, a simple farmer from Burkina Faso, solved the desertification crisis in his village with reforestation and soil conservation. He stopped desertification in his village by working together with his family to plant trees which have now grown into a vast forest.
These are the areas and causes that should really be donated to. The specific projects and individuals who are doers and problem solvers, with measurable results of donations.
Imagine if instead of being bombarded with images of starving children needing food water clothing and 1$ a day into perpetuity, people were mass marketed the images of individuals solving problems in their respective villages.