Charitable Advertisements On TV: Drawing Sympathy For Money or Demeaning Africa?

Have you realised how some ‘African begging charitable’ adverts run on TV (I can’t say about other countries, but Europe)? It is always very sick looking kids with flies hovering around them with an equally depressed looking mother who appears to have lost all hope in the world, with the ‘announcer’ saying how ‘Kofi’ will go to bed hungry if £2 is not given OR how people are drinking filthy water etc. .

Quite unfortunately, as if by design, these adverts starts running when you’re eating or just about to eat – whether to draw enough sympathy or to quickly make you lose your appetite if you’re the very empathetic type. I really had not ‘bothered’ much about these adverts until my sister-in-law (non-Ghanaian, non-African, non-white) went down to Ghana as a volunteer to work/assist a charity organisation which exclusively supports children.  Among other things, she asked me a very mind-boggling question:

Why respective African governments allow some ‘charitable’ advertisements to run on TV in Europe which does not portray what is happening in real life? Because, according to her, what she often saw on TV is what she had in her mind’s eye before she embarked on her journey but alas, her expectation of working with ‘hungry, dying’ children in a poverty-stricken country did not materialise.

Until I moved to the UK, I never knew about any charity soliciting funds the way I always witness on TV now. I knew about the Red Cross and UNICEF (then) as the only ‘foreign’ charity operating in Ghana. We cannot deny the fact that there are families in need in Africa, but the way television has inundated us with images of hungry and suffering children puts a question mark on anything African. These are the pictures that best describe what the rest of world thinks of Africa.

Africa is being portrayed as a hungry, helpless, desolate place; looking up to the mercy of developed countries for its daily bread just to make money, and it is very unfair. Yes, there is the occasional beggar on the street and some homeless people, but not as bad as it’s being projected to the world by whomever. Africa is doing well for itself in all areas apart from the never shifting corruption, greed, selfishness and power hungry politicians. There are poor people everywhere, but their ‘charitable’ advert is very neat and dignified but Africa’s is so magnified.

Some years back, during elections, a reporter from BBC was standing at James Town (no offence to Gas, I’m one) stating he is reporting from the capital of Ghana, from James Town? What happened to the plush areas?  Our poverty has been magnified by the very well-to-do countries that it has even over-shadowed our progress.

Personally, I applaud the efforts of charitable organisations constantly working to ease the suffering of the less privileged African mothers and children BUT there are better ways to portray Africa to the world. Africa is not helpless.  Africa is a giant, which has just failed to take giant strides, due to sheer mismanagement of resources and greed among its people.

OK, it’s still begging, but there is always something called ‘dignity’. It’s not a matter of a ‘beggar has no choice’, we have a choice but……So just to re-echo the question she asked me “why should Africans allow Africa to be portrayed in a demeaning way?”