For some weeks now, the campaign “RADI-AID: Africa for Norway” and the accompanying video have been widely distributed in Germany and internationally. Countless media from all women countries report about it and on facebook RADI-AID has meanwhile more than 10.000 hits and about 2.500 “likes”. A few days ago, the moderator at an event with postcolonial theorist Achille Mbembe on “African Protest Culture and Revolutionary Empowerments” at the House of World Cultures also made positive reference to this. We received emails from all possible corners with the reference to the website “Africa for Norway” or with the link to the video on Youtube. Somehow everyone thinks the action is cool. We were also partly pleased a Kullerkeks, but somehow there was also a certain malaise. Then we took a closer look at the lyrics of the song and found out who is behind RADI-AID and what the purpose of the whole thing is supposed to be. The following is what came out of it, so it’s always good to trust your gut. But read for yourself …

The video was made by the Norwegian Students’ and Academics’ International Assistance Fund (SAIH), in cooperation with ‘Operation Day’s Work’ and with financial support from the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation and the Norwegian Children and Youth Council. The music is by South African singer, pianist, composer and conductor Wathiq Hoosain, who studied in Norway, and the lyrics were contributed by the Norwegian band Bretton Woods. BBC does talk about ” a group of South African students – together with a Norwegian aid organization” being behind the action. However, this seems to be misinformation, because this group of South African students does not appear anywhere else and it is always said that SAIH is responsible for the whole thing. For example, SAIH President Erik Schreiner Evans is also usually interviewed as one of the creators of the video or campaign (e.g.: here). This is where the first problem arises, which the user “alibomaje” sums up well in his commentary on the interview on Spiegel-Online: “Tutoring remains: Double irony. Norwegian organization helps Africans correct their image in the world…..“. Erik Schreiner Evans speaks in the interview for his “friends in Africa” and reports their reaction to the video: “They love it! Most there know that there are regions that really need help, but at the same time they are annoyed by the one-dimensional image that the West has of their continent. Many feel that the West’s approach to Africa is paternalistic.”

But what do the people of RADI-AID actually want to achieve? Her goal, she said, was to inspire people to “understand the complex issues in Africa and recognize the many positive developments in African countries.”

There are four demands on the website:

Fundraising should not be based on exploiting stereotypes.

Most of us just get tired if all we see is sad pictures of what is happening in the world, instead of real changes.

2. we want better information about what is going on in the world, in schools, in TV and media.

We want to see more nuances. We want to know about positive developments in Africa and developing countries, not only about crises, poverty and AIDS. We need more attention on how western countries have a negative impact on developing countries.

3rd Media: Show respect.
Media should become more ethical in their reporting. Would you print a photo of a starving white baby without permission? The same rules must apply when journalists are covering the rest of the world as it does when they are in their home country.

Aid must be based on real needs, not “good” intentions.

Aid is just one part of a bigger picture; we must have cooperation and investments, and change other structures that hold back development in poorer countries.

We definitely find some of these points important as well. They are detailed, for example, in the “Checklists for Avoiding Racism in Development Public Relations” published by the Berlin Development Policy Council in cooperation with initiatives critical of racism, and are also called for by organizations such as Der Braune Mob or the Initiative Schwarze Deutsche. However, RADI-AID never once utters the word racism (let alone colonialism) and speaks only of stereotypes. This myopia then also leads them to not fundamentally question the colonial worldview in which there are “developed” and “developing” countries. Its connection with colonialism and racism is ignored (see here). “Development aid” is basically seen as positive, but should be accompanied by “cooperation and investments”. This perspective is also evident in the lyrics of the song “Africa For Norway.”

Now the tables have turned
Now it’s Africa for Norway
We’ve had our problems too
We’ve had our problems too
With poverty, corruption, with H.I.V. and crime
Norway gave a helping hand
They taught us what to do
And now it’s payback time

So the story begins with Norway’s aid to poor countries in the global South. No mention is made of the fact that colonialism existed before this and that the resulting power relations between the global North and South continue to shape the lives of people worldwide – and make something like “development aid” possible in the first place. To have history begin with a second is a (neo-)colonial strategy that turns the world upside down. Mourid Barghouti wrote, “Start your story with a ‘second’ and the arrows of Native Americans become the actual criminals and the guns of whites become victims. It’s enough for your story to start with a ‘second’ to make the rage of blacks against whites seem barbaric.” For us, such de-namings are not innocent omissions or casual forgetting. Not naming racism and colonialism and thus de-historicizing power relations is an integral part of the colonially connoted development discourse and racist relations in general. RADI-AID also continues to propagate the notion of the one true path of development that is fundamental to the (neo-)colonial exercise of power. The interview on Spiegel-Online points out the positive side of Africa by mentioning that “Seven of the ten fastest growing economies are located [sich in Afrika].” Here, the Western path of development and Western capitalist notions of “development” are not questioned – on the contrary, they are confirmed. RADI-AID finds development policy good but not sufficient, relying on the “free market” (see the demand for “cooperation and investments”). The fact that Africa’s inclusion in the colonial modernity project of Europe and the Global North has been a pure disaster so far (from enslavement to colonization, from debt to structural adjustment, from monocultures to land grabbing) is hidden. Norwegian corporations are at the forefront of buying up land in African countries in the most neocolonial manner. Norway is also the third largest arms exporter in Europe after France and Germany, and thus not uninvolved in the devastation caused by wars worldwide.

The fact that RADI-AID does not name that the usual coverage of Africa in Europe is based on a history of racism and colonialism and their persistence also seems to have the consequence that RADI-AID itself is not particularly sensitive to racism. Nowhere is it reflected that Norwegians speak for “Africa” and think they know what would really help “the people in Africa”. This then perhaps leads to the fact that they had “Bretton Woods” (nine white Norwegian men!) write the lyrics. Some of their other songs are sub-par and overflow with sexism and racism (e.g. Dowry and Developmentand “Femininity”).

The fact that Norway, like all European countries, has a racism problem should have become common knowledge at the latest since Anders Breivik. However, everyday societal racism was not acknowledged or addressed even in the handling of this case. Recommended is the article “Black in Norway” by Felice Blake.

If RADI-AID already uses the stylistic device of inversion, then they could have at least done it more consistently. Then it could have been “Kenya for Europe” or individual national celebrities could have stood godfather/ godmother for Norwegian children (i.e. Kenyan Sunday Live presenter Julie Gichuru instead of Ulrich Wickert). However, we do not think that reversals are easy to accomplish. Often, they merely provide food for thought and cause an “aha” effect. There is no historically developed, violent archive of knowledge about Norway in African societies. And the whole thing is not embedded in economic relations of exploitation.

But can we really just nag and criticize all the time? How looooong!!!

First of all, no, not boring at all, and in the case of Africa for Norway we also take a critical look at something we are basically sympathetic to: In our opinion, it depends on the speaker’s position and especially on who the audience is: Running a film, song, poem, etc. through the stylistic element of inversion may – in the case of racism – be empowering for a Black audience/audience of color or people in the Global South. For a (white) European audience, on the other hand, all the racisms and colonial images that are already present can be confirmed through the back door. After all, the amusement arises precisely from the moment of what seems absurd to this audience. And secondly: No, because we also know satirical or ironic or parodic actions that we find great.

Here are just a few examples

• South African satire site Hayibo.com reports on a group of Cape Town musicians who, 28 years after Bob Geldof and the Band Aid song “Do they know it’s Christmas,” have come up with the song “Yes we do“. They hope that after this answer, more important questions will now be turned to, such as, “Do they know about climate change in America?” Proceeds from the song would be used to teach discipline, literacy and contraception in British schools. Composer and singer Boomtown Gundane now hoped “that his involvement with the song would turn him into an expert on British politics and economics in the same way ‘Do they know it’s Christmas’ had turned Geldof and Bono into the world’s leading experts on Africa.”
• Juice Rap News’ “Yes, we Kony” criticizes the “Kony 2012” campaign, holds a mirror up to the U.S. and criticizes racism and neo-colonialism
• Also, the feature film “Africa Paradis” (2012) (which we have not yet seen ourselves) seems to agree with the assessment of Mériam Azizi after neatly playing with inversion: “To use irony, to evoke an unsuppressible laughter in order to better feel the magnitude of the tragedy – this is what the film wants to achieve with the help of this inversion of circumstances […] Parody allows, on the one hand, the implicit stigmatization of a threatening situation and, on the other hand […] a therapeutic, healing process.”
• In her book “Germany Black and White” Noah Sow writes in the introduction about “My own origin”. She uses language usually reserved for reports about the global South (“tribes,” “ethnic subgroups,” “natives”), even when writing about Germany, and thus makes readers aware of their racist socialization.
• The parody is also well done in Binyavanga Wainaina’s text “Is this how they write about Africa! A guide“
• And this one speaks for itself: