Taking control of OUR stories

Because exactly one year later the quarrel between superstar Madonna and Malawi President Joyce Banda is trending on social media as breaking news (read the date on the article, people!), we’ve dug into the archives to bring you this excerpt from Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina’s reply to Madonna published on 12 Apr. 2013 in the UK’s  Guardian newspaper.

An open letter to Madonna from Binyavanga Wainaina

Dear Madonna,
I wish to thank you for being a caring mother to all the children of Malawi, to all the children of Africa. I wish to thank you for all your money too. Africa is deeply invested in your love of us, in the schools you build, and in the central place in the world you have afforded Africa by choosing us!

I would like to ask you a favour. Please forgive President Joyce Banda for all those nasty things somebody said on her behalf about you. If Malawi has been ungrateful and treated you badly, you must know my country Kenya has orphans too. Kenya specialises in making tourists feel very happy and at home, dancing around an African fire, drinking gin and making happy sounds in the middle of herds of animals and on beaches.It’s been well over a century since we met your people, and since then Africa’s relationship with the western world has gone from strength to strength. Today, bad people, like those from China, Brazil and India are coming to Africa to bring colonialism back by buying our minerals and crops at good market prices and giving us cheapish loans for infrastructure.

But some of us Africans are deeply committed to the values Europe and the west brings to us: like democracy, human rights and lots and lots of cold hard cash for human rights workers and civil society and anything, really, that does things like Sustainability, Empowerment and most of all, Capacity Building – which, as you know is very, very important for Africa’s future especially as it is tax free and comes with per diems and conference allowances. Imagine what your money would do in Kenya! We have cannier auditors than the Malawians… Read more

His response brings to mind the satirical Let’s Save Africa — Gone Wrong and the Radi-Aid videos (see the bottom of this post) produced by the Norwegian Students and Academics International Assistance Fund (SAIH) last year.  Both critique the simplistic images of Africa presented by some aid agencies, and both of course are part of a larger “poverty porn” debate that was sparked by Binyavanga’s renowned 2005 essay, How to Write About Africa.

For NGOs struggling to raise funds, donor aid is serious business. However the satirists say the mockery is not intended to disparage well-meaning aid workers, but to encourage a more nuanced discussion on development assistance.

“People clearly want to laugh at and discuss Western stereotypes about Africa. Satire on aid is a blooming genre in African development circles,” SAIH’s Sindre Olav Edland-Gryt wrote last month on the Al Jazeera America website. “The aid world is a complicated ‘circus,’ some of it good, some of it bad, but critique and satire are necessary to make it better,” he says.

Opinions on the SAIH videos and Binyavanga’s letter to Madonna have been varied, with some commentators responding with blanket condemnations of expat aid-workers; others taking offence at “big-headed” Africans who appear to be saying to Western donors: “No thanks, we’re fine”; and others calling for an end to donor assistance.

So, what do we take from all this? Are all representations of poverty in Africa incorrect? No. Are they incomplete? Definitely. Is satire helping? Hard to say. Africa remains the top destination for celebrity ego-trips but a number of NGOs are taking a more thoughtful approach to their communications (check out the creative  “Stop the Pity, Unlock the Potential” campaign by Mama Hope. I’m posting the Nyamonge women’s “You don’t know netball?!” video below).

One thing is clear, however: it’s high time more Africans took control of their own stories.