We, at the Critical Investigations into Humanitarianism in Africa (CIHA) Blog, stand in solidarity with the signatories of the letter addressed to Jeff Fager, Executive Producer of CBS 60 Minutes, regarding the misrepresentation of the African continent. We believe that these types of representations are problematic and harmful as they perpetuate a limited role for Africans.
Our mandate at the CIHA Blog has been, from the beginning, to investigate critically humanitarian interventions in Africa with a view of fostering more egalitarian approaches that fully take into consideration the agency of Africans, paying special attention when possible to religious issues, debates, and voices. We have published numerous posts that challenge unequal relations. In our ‘Track Changes’ series, we publicize these issues of representation and assumption by linking to online content that we find problematic and we ask how portrayals and representations need to be reconsidered. We invite and encourage readers to submit articles to the CIHA Blog in order to do the same.Below are some examples of articles we have posted demonstrating concern over the misrepresentation of the African continent:
Track Changes: Asking Questions about Gendered Representations of Culture, Religion and Violence
Track Changes: Context and Boko Haram
Re-framing Representations of Aid
In the News: Troubling Questions of Representation
In the News: On Foreign Investment and Representation
The “Emergency Imaginary,” Somalia, and Representations of Africa
The Humanitarian Misunderstanding: Fragmented States and the Privatization of Imperialism
“When the Night Comes” film critique and discussion
We (especially Cilas Kemedjio) have in the past referred to the writings of African thinkers and intellectuals such as Ngugi Wa Thiong’o. The concerns raised in the open letter to “60 Minutes” have been at the center of the critical African discourse. Such is the case of Congolese intellectual Emmanuel Dongala, who draws attention to the unethical balance between animal rights and human rights that are symptomatic of the silencing of Africans that the writers of the following open letter to “60 minutes” rightly denounce. Johnny Mad Dog (a novel by Dongala subsequently adapted as a film), depicts a humanitarian intervention in which the poodle of a white owner is rescued while a young Congolese woman is run over by the rescue squad, and another young woman flees, only to find ecologists in the forest using their helicopter to save gorillas but refusing transport to save the woman. We draw attention to these scenes to demonstrate their lamentable recurrence in media portrayals in the west. Like the young woman and the Belgian reporter in the novel, we lament a world that fails to recognize and value all of humanity and, like our colleagues who signed the letter to CBS 60 Minutes, we lament the continued portrayal of Africans as voiceless victims.