I agree with David Lammy: Africa doesn't need any more white saviours

I agree with David Lammy. I never expected this to be a premise of an article authored by me, but here it is.

The MP has stirred up a debate and faced a backlash after saying that celebrities who do charity work in Africa are “white saviours” who perpetuate harmful myths and outdated stereotypes. “The world does not need any more white saviours,” he tweeted, after Stacey Dooley posted pictures of her trip to Uganda for Comic Relief. I feel sorry for poor Stacey Dooley, but his wider point is correct.

Our perception of Africa must evolve. The Comic Relief approach is archaic and perpetuates the “Band Aid’ image of Africa of helpless victims, children covered in flies, a destitute, barren continent where ‘nothing ever grows’. Africa is moving on, developing and progress will quicken. It’s a bountiful continent of vast potential, and that’s how we should see it.

It’s interesting to question why people take trips to Africa to help perform charity, whether it’s a gap year or a short trip. Is it just that they see poverty and want to help? Many of the same people could have travelled to nearby neighbourhoods to work in food banks or soup kitchens or volunteered for charities at home helping the impoverished and homeless.

A long journey to an African country is more of an adventure though, more exciting, more worthy or praise from one’s social circle. When in search of a unique life experience and personal growth, they don’t go to the impoverished areas of their own backyard. They post images on social media building a school for villagers or posing with kids as the white saviour. Africa thus becomes a blank space for white westerners to project an image of themselves.

This is the Band Aid/Comic Relief syndrome. It’s corrosive because it warps people’s perceptions and even seeps into misguided government policy and poor spending of aid money.

Exposure to too much Comic Relief marketing will leave people surprised to find luxury hotels and thriving businesses in South Africa, major tech hubs in Nigeria and broadband and mobile network coverage in Kenya superior to many areas of the UK. That’s the problem, listen to Band Aid and you will surely pity Africans and give money, but you won’t invest there and you won’t travel there as a tourist.  

Seeing Africa as a charity case also goes hand in hand with failing to remember that Africa is a continent of many countries, many languages, cultures, religions, and stages of development. Economically there are different regional trends: West and East Africa are ahead of the pack, South Africa is undergoing positive economic transition, Sub-Saharan Africa is rebounding, while Central Africa is struggling. It’s a vast and diverse continent. No one identifies a person as being from “Europe”, let’s stop patronising Africa this way.

I’m under no illusions, the continent faces many issues. Across African countries authoritarianism and corruption is rife, and millions of people do indeed live in abject poverty. Gender inequality is the norm and its holding development back, which has to be addressed for economies to realise their true potential. The liberation of women is the true silver bullet for development, that means access to birth control, sanitary products, finance and employment as well as fair treatment.

Still, although humanitarian aid has its place, and charity is still necessary, we need to change the way we look at Africa as a whole. Charity should not be the primary way that western countries interact with African countries. There is vast human resource there, of people wanting to help themselves, and there are economies with great potential. We should look across Africa and see opportunities and people we can work with.

China isn’t fund raising for Africa. Its Belt and Road Initiative is channelling finance and building infrastructure and that will facilitate trade and contribute more to the long-term development of African economies than anything Comic Relief or handovers from western aid budgets will ever do. Yes, there are concerns of unethical practices and exploitation, but it will still deliver major benefits and offers a window into Africa’s future.

The Chinese, backed by an Omani sovereign wealth fund, are looking to build a $30bn mega port and special economic zone along the coast of Tanzania. This will, the Chinese believe, transform poor fishing villages and areas that used to staging posts in the slave trade into the new Shenzen. This project will implemented by the state-run China Merchants Holding International and will create the largest port in Africa. They will dredge lagoons to make way for cargo ships, build roads, and railway, apartment blocks and factories.

These types of projects should be the priority for the Department for International Development, rather than handouts to corrupt governments, funnelling money through charities and NGO’s where too much goes on gap year poverty tourism or wasteful programmes lacking oversight.  

An evolved perception of Africa is even more important for a post-Brexit, “global” Britain. There was a tinge of ‘comic relief’, white saviour tendencies in the Brexiteer fantasy of developing a Commonwealth trade area. African countries have their own ideas, with a vision of creating its own Single Market.

The African Union was founded in 2002 to revive the political momentum for economic integration. It specifically wants to emulate Europe which has the most integrated economies in the world. Africa has the least, with intra-African trade accounting for little over 10% of total trade.

Economic development is held back by severe tariff and non-tariff barriers that increase the cost of trade. The key to unlocking prosperity is economic integration, tariff liberalisation and trade facilitation. This is why the African Continental Free Trade Area was created, with a view to creating a customs union and a common market that would hugely boost intra-African trade as well as trade with the rest of the world.

These lofty ideas are progressing too slowly because of the politics, but also due to implementation challenges due to lacking the institutional capacity and under developed infrastructure and poor regulatory culture leading many African countries to fail to implement and comply with WTO agreements.

Here is where investment can drive long-term economic development. The European Union can see the opportunities here, but the EU is lagging behind China. The UK must grasp the opportunity too, international development funding can be used to develop infrastructure, reduce trade barriers, help countries comply with WTO agreements, and open up opportunities for British business. It’s not about charity, its business and its mutually beneficial. It’s not about being a white saviour, but working with African nations as partners, for our mutual prosperity.  

Comic relief and band aid are the past, let’s look to the future. Less aid workers in Kenya posting poverty porn on Twitter and more British businesses hiring talented Kenyan people, and indeed businesses from across Africa investing in Britain.  When it comes to Africa, it’s not so much about feeding the world, it’s more about building and developing the roads, railways, airports, ports, dredging shipping channels and ICT infrastructure. It’s about opening up markets and investing. It’s about opportunity. Africa is moving on and so must we.