Aidnography

It all started with a Tweet... German public broadcaster from Bavaria aired a comedian who impersonated an African dictator (including blackface/white gloves) to “satirically” address recent cases of corruption within Christian Democratic Party CDU...it’s painfully offensive & financed through TV license fee https://t.co/Bd5Klf9rpr — Tobias Denskus (@aidnography) April 2, 2021 On the surface this is just another incident of “satire” gone wrong: Helmut Schleich, a German comedian with a monthly show on Bavarian public broadcaster BR (part of the ARD network of publicly funded broadcaster in Germany) recently showed up in blackface. As his alter ego Maxwell Strauss he portrayed the illegitimate son of Franz Josef Strauss who had turned into an African dictator of the fictitious “People's Republic of Mbongalo ” . So far, so Chinese state television bad. Playing with a lot of stereotypes associated with “Africa”, including corruption and strange diseases, the punchline centers ...

Hi all, For many of us these will be a few quieter Easter holiday days. Before I'm logging off & take a proper break (so no newsletter next Tuesday or link review on Friday!) I'm as happy as every week with my new discoveries of great writing, critical reflections on #globaldev & plenty of open access books + articles that should keep us reading & thinking for a while ;)! Enjoy! My quotes of the week As more and more African podcasts flourish, creators are not only using them as an avenue to tell stories, provoke discussions, and complicate narratives, but they are also choosing their audience; more often than not, listeners from the West are intentionally not at the forefront. (Podcasters Are Reclaiming Storytelling in Africa) I recently listened to a podcast from an international NGO about this — again, it was all about offering mentorship, speaking up a little less in meetings, hiring a Black or brown woman on your team, and offering speaking slots to women of ...

Hi all, I wish I had more energy & the right mindset to celebrate my 400th #globaldev link review properly, but for the time being I am just grateful for all the great, critical, sometimes uplifting & inspiring content that my project encourages me to engage with every week-so a big THANK YOU to all the readers, writers, sharers & lurkers that will probably keep me motivated for a while! Enjoy! My quotes of the week If you look at American workplaces at the moment I wouldn’t blame you for thinking that antiracism was quite easy. The speed at which diversity training programs mushroomed in the aftermath of the anti-police uprisings of the past summer, along with specialist gurus leading them, could easily lead you to think that antiracism was a set of politics best practiced in the bowels of HR departments. No Black bodies left dying on streets, no police stations to burn, just a stack of Robin D’Angelo books and late afternoon management-led sensitivity training sessions. ...

Hi all, Another week, another great range of news, essay, podcasts, open access books & more! This week applications for autumn courses in Sweden opened so do share the link to our only blended learning part-time MA in Communication for Development (now in its 21st year & still free for EU citizens & Swedish residents!) Enjoy! My quotes of the week (D)onors expect women refugee-led organisations to compete for the same grants male-led organisations apply for and report on them on the same schedule. This is not feasible. Men have women taking care of their children, cooking their meals, and cleaning their houses while they are working. Women are doing both. (How the aid sector marginalises women refugees )  Ironically, Chinese expansion in Africa, so frequently depicted by journalists as rapid, exciting, and even violent, was experienced by those on its front lines as dull, repetitive, and monotonous—experiences similar to those anthropologists have observed a...

Hi all, I don't really have much to say today-so I let these great #globaldev readings speak for themselves :) Enjoy! My quotes of the week We found that warmth and competence are the most effective traits for generating donations and petition signatures. Frontline workers and volunteers were the only messengers that the British public rated above average in terms of both warmth and competence. Activists, businesspeople and aid recipients were rated the least warm and least competent. (Who speaks for aid? Spokespeople, race and the problem with terms like 'aid recipient') As foggy and muddy as some of their thoughts and ideas may be, the youth of DHK are informed by their quotidian reality. It is an ideology rooted in a Sankarist ideology that is daring and even risky at times. But this discourse still represents the clearer demarcation line between civil discourse and what is perceived as growing radical or fundamental discourse in Burkina Faso. Unlike the growing non-stat...