A picture says more than...Merry Christmas, Africa from the German ministry of development

Merry Christmas, Africa!


German minister for development cooperation Dirk Niebel wishes every giraffe and roundhouse happy holidays Christmas in this official newspaper ad from December 2012 (not 1962...).
This really says a lot about the current leadership of the Bonn-based ministry and potentially also about their communications team and their expectations of the German, printed newspaper reading public...
We have already achieved a lot. With your help we can even do more.
Maybe rethinking communications and images/stereotypes of Africa could be one of those achievements in the future...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Links & Contents I Liked 455

Image
Hi all, NRC's Giulio Coppi as well as Dante Licona &  Léa Salwan from IFRC 's social media team joined our Glocal Classroom this week & it was such a powerful reminder of how important it is to invite practitioners to share their knowledge with students; it was also a great reminder of what a fantastic network I have access to & that with all the criticism and sometimes cynicism in the sector there are many, many excellent people doing great digital work! But there is also a more sobering #globaldev week in review from sexual violence in Sudan, trouble at various development banks, a complicated story of a Belgium prince in DRC, charter cities reloaded & reflections on a sector that needs to change + a reading section with open access articles & much more! My quotes of the week Celebrities here can take an easy stand, without crossing domestic partisan political lines. Everyone from Korean megastars BTS to American actors like Matt Damon and Goldie Hawn use
Read more

Links & Contents I Liked 454

Image
Hi all, A solid #globaldev round-up this week tackling Pakistan, climate change & lack of accountability, the forthcoming UNGA, bitcoin failure in El Salvador, Bill Gates bashing, the humanitarian system, ending capacity building, UNDP's 'flagship report' + Swedish elections & the positive thinking industry! My quotes of the week The world’s rich countries (...) have deprived Pakistan of the long-term climatic conditions on which it has built its economy, homes, farms, and infrastructure. If there was a global climate court, Pakistan’s government would have a strong case against the US and other high-income countries for failing to limit climate-changing greenhouse-gas emissions (GHGs). (Pakistan and the Fight for Climate Justice) “Capacity building is the consolation prize money that foundations offer when they are willing to pay for us to get advice, but they aren’t willing to resource us to help our people get free.” The second quote resonated with most of the f
Read more

Links & Contents I Liked 453

Image
Hi all, Just as the #globaldev community started to discuss the new UK government, including a new minister for development, another breaking news story may have appeared in your newsfeeds as well...even your trusted #globaldev link review kicks off with a thoughtful reflection on Queen Elizabeth's passing-but we are also looking at the state of the humanitarian system, UN politics, Eritrea & Nigeria plus long reads on global nomads & how Silicon Valley conquered the post-Cold War consensus. My quotes of the week Death is not the solution to injustice, nor does it heal the wounds caused by life for those who remain in the wake of a leader who refused to stand boldly against injustice. Collective change and each person benefitting from racial and economic castes surrendering that privilege is the answer. I warmly embrace the opportunity for change, and each of us seeing our part (not a monarch’s) in loving one another. (Xavier Ramey on the death of Queen Elizabeth II.) We d
Read more

Links & Contents I Liked 452

Image
Hi all, First full teaching week, welcoming 150+ students to our courses with our team, happy days :). #Globaldev also happened this week, featuring the US, Ukraine, Equatorial Guinea & Brazil, plus Ponzi schemes, UN movers + shakers, important charities, journalism-humanitarianism & the poetics of birth, loss and limbos. My quotes of the week the conflation of traditional protection programming aimed at addressing external threats with the internal risks posed by organisations and their staff; the fusion of abuses against beneficiaries with abuses against staff resulting in a detraction in focus from those most vulnerable and lacking in recourse; the pursuit of criminal justice solutions for behaviours that either do not reach the criminal threshold or do not have a realistic prospect of criminal conviction; and the blind transference of approaches used in stable Western democracies for tackling child abuse and sexual violence into war-torn contexts without any semblance of th
Read more

Dear white middle class British women: Please don't send used bras (or anything, really) to Africa

Image
I am supposed to be on my summer blogging break , but the world of bad development does not seem to take a vacation... The first time I came across the #SWEDOW (Stuff We Don't Want) debate about what to do with unwanted stuff and whether to send it to 'Africa' was in 2010; in fact, I wrote about a shoe donation project on the blog in 2012. Fast forward to July 2019 and a local British Women's Institute Facebook page with about 500 page likes is posting a picture of two innocent-looking parcels that has been shared very widely. The vast majority of the 500+ comments under the post are positive and I am sure that both charities will receive quite a few parcels in the next few days. It seems almost futile and pointing out bad examples of charity and development is not always the best way to communicate, but I anonymize the post as much as possible to avoid simply shaming a particular Women's Institute chapter. 'Rapey men here are the same as rapey men t
Read more