I've been feverishly blogging the case of an individual African-born TV repairman. Hurricane Joe Benson was handed a sweet looking widescreen CRT with a wire cut and a tracking device installed, and accused of purposefully losing money. That's what happens when you ship unrepairable goods, you lose money. We are so concerned for him, we put him in prison.
But as a new documentary will point out, the problem may be when rich people create useless lists of concerns in order to "save" the poor people from themselves.
In FRAMED, a filmmaker and college professor take on the question of how the EU and USA depict African "problems" to an extent that they become a parody of the continent. From
Washington Post:
For director Cassandra Herrman and co-producer Kathryn Mathers these two cases aren't unique, but are part of a broader issue with how Western Europe and America treat Africa. It ranges from the (roundly criticized) portrayal of South Africans in the latest Adam Sandler film, "Blended," to the well-intentioned but flawed charity projects in sub-Saharan Africa that thousands of American college students work upon every year. The pair's new documentary, "Framed," is an attempt to answer why Westerners are so obsessed with "saving" Africa, and why this obsession so often goes awry.
Have well-intentioned environmentalists have fallen into the same rut as 1900s Christian missionaries? They are emphasizing the weaknesses of African solid waste disposal systems, without showing the "good news" about reuse, repair and sustainable development.
Good news doesn't raise pity dollars, so there is no financial incentiver to portray it in a fundraiser. What does get portrayed seems so sad that someone has to pay for it, and this summer the UK has put a television repairman in jail.
FRAMED (which is still collecting investors on Kickstarter) poses a broader question than the set up of Benson for "e-waste" crime. Framed poses a question endemic in all kinds of charity, and all kinds of cause championing. #Kony, #BokoHaram "campaigns", where people in wealthy nations earn a living "championing" an image of weakness, it becomes a melange of conflicting self interests.
Many people, in fact, are writing about the "carpetbagger" approach of green missions in Africa. The
RustyRadiator Awards, Peter Buffett's essay on the "
Charitable Industrial Complex", Adam Minter's
Junkyard Planet, and my own contributions (
Disney E-Waste Poster Child Union) all make essentially the same point. I should have quoted Adam Smith in
Useless Lists of Jobs Beneath Wealthy People.
"Every man is, no doubt, by nature, first and principally recommended to his own care; and as he is fitter to take care of himself than of any other person, it is fit and right that it should be so." - Adam Smith
