Our Winner for Best Insulting Picture

27 Jan

At the Exploiting Africa Academy Awards is…

Machine Gun Preacher.

The strange contrast between evil violent African males with the saintly violent white male, who frequently boasts “I am saving African children,” was apparently a clincher for our voting audience.

If you want to read more, the most (very) detailed blog post is by Brett Keller (shorter version in Foriegn Policy.) Keller concludes that the real Machine Gun Preacher is either a dangerous liar or a dangerous lunatic, or most likely both.  Tales from the Hood is less favorable. Keller also wrote a follow-up piece, based in part on some disturbing new material about alleged neglect at the orphanage the MGP founded.

Fortunately for the cause of discouraging Insulting and Exploitative Pictures about Africa, MGP only earned $1.1. million box office worldwide back on its production budget of $30 million. It was also widely panned by the conventional movie critics.

PS In the Aid Watch spirit of representing dissenting opinions: Chris Blattman presents the case that MGP may still have been useful to call attention to the horrific situation of the victims of the Lord’s Resistance Army.

Exploiting Africa Academy Awards

26 Jan

Following the Academy Award nominations earlier this week, we introduce the Exploiting Africa Academy Award (EAAA) nominations to recognize films who do the best against stiff competition to portray the most insulting and exploitative images of Africans, usually being heroically saved by some white people.

We include links to the trailers.

Machine Gun Preacher. This one is so exemplary that it inspired the EAAA in the first place. A commercial film based on a violent ex-con turned violent Christian who goes to central Africa to shoot bad guys and rescue any children still alive after the cross-fire. Principal white saviors : based on “true(?)” story of ex-biker-gang-member Sam Childers, supported in the movie by a beautiful model playing his ex-biker-gang-member-wife.

The Reckoning. About how the International Criminal Court protects African females and children against male African killers. Principal White Savior: Luis Moreno-Ocampo.

Darfur. About how Western correspondents protect African females and children against male African killers. Principal White Saviors: macho journalists supported by one attractive female journalist.

The Vice Guide to Liberia. OK it’s actually a web-based TV series from the Vice media empire, but it’s so horrifically exploitative (baby cannibalism, enough said), we had to include it. Principal White Savior: the Vice correspondent , although it’s very unclear how he’s saving anyone but himself.

An older classic:

Blood Diamond.  Educated the movie-going audience about the acronym TIA to be used whenever anything horrible happens in the movie — “This Is Africa”. Principal white saviors: mercenary and smuggler Leonardo di Caprio supported by gorgeous journalist Jennifer Connelly.

Please vote for your favorite after a few minutes scanning the trailers – we will announce the winner after enough votes come in.

Credits: we went outside of DRI/Aid Watch to consult the real experts: Kate and Amanda from Wronging Rights. DRI/Aid Watch contributors include William Easterly, Laura Freschi, Vivek Nemana, and David Rice.

The World Bank Clock

24 Jan

UPDATE V January 24, 2012: 123 days later, the CAO is on the case 

Yesterday we heard from Oxfam that the World Bank has finally announced an independent investigation into complaints from two communities in Uganda who lost their land in forced evictions to make way for forestry plantations.

The Compliance Advisor/Ombudsman (CAO) reports directly to the President of the World Bank and examines cases brought by people affected by World Bank private sector lending projects, usually dealing with social and environmental problems.

This announcement comes 123 days after the Bank promised to investigate. Forgive us for being a tiny bit underwhelmed that it took so long to start an investigation that will now take another six months.  The CAO’s mandate is to make the Bank more accountable by responding “quickly and effectively” to complaints from affected communities. Allowing 123 days of obfuscation and confusion to pass instead was a disaster for such accountability.

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , ,

UPDATE: Laura Freschi and Alanna Shaikh’s Gates Foundation Article Tops Alliance Magazine’s Most Read List

19 Jan

Congratulations to  our associate director Laura Freschi and Alanna Shaikh, an international health consultant,  who topped the list of Alliance Magazine’s most read articles of 2011. Their piece – Gates – a benevolent dictator for public health? – was published in the special ‘Living with the Gates Foundation’ edition in September. 

Gates – a benevolent dictator for public health? Laura Freschi and Alanna Shaikh

The public health landscape today looks unquestionably different from how it did in the late 1990s when the Gates Foundation strode on to the field. To its credit, the foundation has brought about a resurgence of interest in global health issues at a time when the cause was running low on energy and funds. Before Gates, global health funding covered little more than HIV and emerging infectious diseases – a bare shadow of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Health for All[1] vision of the 1970s. But Gates’ support for global health also raises questions: is it pushing us too much towards simple technological responses to multifaceted problems? With its influence so far-reaching, who will be willing and able to offer objective feedback? Click here to read

The Gates Foundation edition, which was guest-edited by Philanthropy Action’s Timothy Ogden, examined the foundation’s impact on both philanthropy and the fields it contributes to. Watch footage from a panel discussion on ‘Living with the Gates Foundation’ at the Hudson Institute.

See the other most-read articles below, including this one on culture and philanthropy by Tim Ogden:

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , ,

No Aid for Repressive Tyrants

9 Jan

We … call on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and America’s Western allies to publicly repudiate Ethiopia’s efforts to use terrorism laws to silence political dissent. We also urge the U.S. to ensure that our more than $600 million in aid to Ethiopia is not used to foster repression.

This is the call to action from a letter published in the New York Review of Books this month.

We at DRI are inspired by the courage of Eskinder Nega, an Ethiopian journalist, newspaper publisher, and dissident arrested on September 14th after writing a blog post demanding freedom of expression and an end to torture in Ethiopian prisons. Despite previous arrests, both Eskinder and his wife, Serkalem Fasil, have chosen to remain in Ethiopia and continue their work.

While we don’t want to meddle in other countries’ politics, we do want to speak out against aid that supports rights-violating regimes, in solidarity with Ethiopian citizens who are simply asking to exercise their own civil liberties.

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , ,

← Older Entries