“Why Bob Geldof is Wrong about Africa”
posted by Cecelia Lynch
Both Mills and Geldof perpetuate stereotypes about “needs” in Africa: while Geldof embodies do-good paternalism, Mills perpetuates modernization-through-foreign-investment as “the” solution, ignoring the degree to which not only domestic governments but also their foreign private and governmental partners are responsible for “bad governance” in Africa and elsewhere. Both stereotypes are problematic and represent the overly-simplistic poles of the “great aid debate” that represent Africa and Africans only as subjects to be acted upon rather than as agents in creating their histories and deciding their futures.
I think the number of stereotypes about Africa and African people is equal to the population of Africa. There are stereotypes about almost every country, there are stereotypes about almost all tribes and there are stereotypes about what we want and need too.