African Studies Practicum

For decades, African diplomats to the western countries, especially to the United States, focused inter-alia on increasing the aid flow to the continent.

However, current dynamics of global war on terror have changed foreign policy objectives and consequently changed the wave of international development and humanitarian aid.

In 2006, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reported that the contribution from the 22 member countries of the Development Assistance Committee (who are the World’s major donors) dropped by 5.1 per cent compared to 2005 contributions.

The United States has been criticized for cutting back on its promised obligations and responsibilities to the United Nations, despite affirmations by President Bush who has tripled humanitarian and development aid to Africa (and has promised to increase it to $ 9 billion by 2010), to build and strengthen the relationship between the United States and Africa.

With the increasing ties of international development and humanitarian aid to strategic interests of donor countries, the bitter reality is that Africa is becoming less strategically important as reflected in amount of dollars it attracts.

As a result U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon chaired an emergency meeting on Friday September 14th to address concerns that Sub-Sahara African countries may not achieve any of the U.N’s Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

The meeting that brought together officials from African Union, African Development Bank, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, European Commission, Islamic Development Bank among other UN agencies was aimed at mobilizing resources to help African countries get back on track so they can achieve balanced development by 2015.

According to a report by Reuters, Africa was the focus of a G-8 summit in 2005 in Gleneagles, Scotland, where the world’s leading industrialized nations pledged to double development aid by 2010 and to free the poorest countries of their debts.

The report adds that “But not even Britain is on track with its aid. Italy had a 30 percent cut and the United States, still the largest contributor, reduced aid by 20 percent”.

As a response to continuous reduction of development aid to Africa, African governments have opted to adopt a slogan of “trade, not aid”. Will this new initiative work?

This is one of many global initiatives by different development agencies and organizations as well as pleas from Hollywood celebrities to increase aid to Africa. So why have all these efforts not changed the perceived donor fatigue in Africa?

The major factor that is being ignored all these efforts, is the role of Africa’s image. Africa is a “product” that has been produced and pre-packaged by the mainstream western media to meet the presumed demand of juicy African stories for the Europeans and North Americans. The Africa that most Europeans and North Americans know is AFRICA MADE IN MEDIA.

Many western journalists take a melancholy view of Africa and its future. Many western journalists have an African story before they get on the ground. They go to Africa to look for photos and footage that match their preconceived narrative so they can fill in the gaps of a story. To them, stories of prosperity, thriving businesses or pictures of affluent Africans and healthy people don’t make a juicy African story.

Most of these media houses have doctors as medical analysts, IT professionals as IT analysts, but don’t have African professors as African analysts? Most journalists that cover Africa are visitors to the continent and their coverage is very myopic and limited to their preconceived Africa. Main-stream western media would rather have their senior correspondents stationed in Iraq compiling stories from a hotel room, than have one stationed in Nairobi. When it’s Africa, they only pop-in-and-out of Africa.

As a result, the term Africa has become pejorative that North American and European investors have shied from investing on the continent despite the enormous resources and cheap labor.

In addition to the media, some international non-profit organizations have exacerbated the already damaged image of Africa.

In the United States, Jewish and Irish organizations raise the most money without flashing pictures of starving children or comprising the dignity of the Jewish or the Irish. Why is it that organizations that work in Africa (such as Save the Children, World Vision, among others) feel the need to dehumanize African children in the name of fundraising?

If a picture of a smiling healthy African child struggling to educate himself as well as take care of the siblings cannot attract funds, then you need to question the motive of those funds.

At the U.N. meeting of donor agencies chaired by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Reuters quoted the African Union Commissioner for Economic Affairs Maxwell Mkwezalamba who said that, “Africa has to take some initiatives of its own,” such as mobilizing domestic resources and those from the diaspora.

Such initiatives need to first address the image problem that Africa faces; otherwise, there will be continued drop in development aid to Africa and increased talk about the need to increase development aid to Africa.

African governments need to realize that it will take more than a simple slogan (Trade, not Aid), and other favorable factors of production such as natural resources and cheap labor to attract any investors.

Emmanuel Opati is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.