The empathy industry
Having just finished a video on the drought in East Africa, I was drawn to this article by Anver Versi:
Once again Africa’s starving will stalk television sets across the world as the drought in northern Kenya and the Horn bites in earnest. Once again charitable organisations will issue heartrending appeals for funds and once again the mute beseeching in the bewildered eyes of children will persuade the compassionate among us to put our hands in our pockets.
And once again Africans in the continent and the Diaspora will burn with shame and indignation. Shame because Africans will yet again be seen as charity cases, people unable even to feed ourselves, our poverty on public display. Indignation because we will not be able to do anything about the emergency unless others come to our rescue.
It's hard not to be a little cynical. In two decades food production in Ethiopia has actually fallen. In the equation the variables are not equally powerful. The biggies - bad government, damaging climate change, protected european and US markets, dumping of excess grain by the US through USAID "donation."
I just wonder if the generous hearts of people who respond to a humanitarian appeal are even in the same order of magnitude.