Representations of Water in Africa

This week’s blog post is somewhat different to my others which were well thought through and planned. This blog post stems from a growing frustration with the representations of ‘Africa’ within discourses of Water in Africa. This year I have taken a module called ‘International Development and Public Policy’ where we’ve looked in depth at representations of development and how they can be harmful for the very people they aim to help. This has provided me with a far more critical lens when engaging in development discourses.

Frequently I’ve been looking at news sites or NGO’s which represent water in Africa in such a negative manner – as a continent of poverty and despair. I’ve found water charities to be particularly guilty of using these representations of ‘poverty porn’ in order to gain sympathy and donations. This blog post aims to look at some of the main criticisms that I’ve generated including ‘poverty-porn’ in water and development, the ‘white saviour complex’, viewing Africa as a country and the changing representations of poverty and water access. Using post-colonial and post-development critiques is useful in this context to enlighten underlying power dynamics within ‘development.

Poverty Porn

Poverty porn is regarded as images used by charities to fundraise for projects in the developing world; these representations often frame ‘Africans’ as helpless, pitiful, starving and in need of western interventions. Jorgen Lissner explains the problems with these portrayals

‘The starving child image is seen as unethical, because it comes dangerously close to being pornographic…it exhibits the human body and soul in all its nakedness, without any respect for the person involved.’ (Lissner, 1981)

I agree with Lissner’s argument and feel that many subjects wouldn’t agree with their representations as helpless and the lack of respect provided to them, in fact I’m sure many subjects may not even have an awareness of how their representation would be used. However many NGO’s have defended the use of such imagery as they are highlighting the difficult truths that are apparent in the world. Yet the means don’t justify the ends of raising money in the case of poverty porn and as Schaffer highlights, ‘it leads to donations, but not activism’ (Schaffer, 2016). These charities construct a continent of pity and despair in order to guilt-trip westerners into donating; this neither provides an accurate representation of Africa, or elucidates to the causes of poverty or lack of water access, it merely provides a quick-fix for us to relieve our guilt.

A photo from Aqua-Aid's blog 'A continent of thirsty children'
Source - http://aquaidwatercoolers.co.uk/a-continent-of-thirsty-children

This notion is exemplified by Aqua-Aid, a water NGO, who utilise this kind of poverty-porn imagery in one of their blogs explaining about ‘a continent of thirsty children’ (AquaAid, 2012). Furthermore this blog promotes a single story of Africa; a whole ‘continent of thirsty children’ grossly misrepresents Africa and creates an imagination of a dry, barren, pitiful continent. Having spent time in Ghana, I have seen many children grow up with not only access to safe water, but swimming pools – certainly not ‘thirsty’. Chimanda Adichie suggests that providing a ‘single story’ of Africa robs people of dignity and makes recognition of African’s as equals difficult (Adichie, 2009). Whilst NGO’s such as Aqua-Aid mean well, their misrepresentations can foster our view of Africa through a lense of difference; the west has, but Africa has not.

White Saviour Complex

A further frustration of mine stemming from water-provision NGO’s is their perpetuation of the White Saviour Complex. This is the idea that it is us, in the west, that will ‘save Africa from poverty’ and that without us they are helpless. This notion greets us everyday in TV and online adverts which suggest that our donations, or purchases of ‘wells for Africa’ will cure the continent’s worries.

This idea is exemplified by Water.org;

‘Give to Water.org, and help turn a life of poverty into a life of possibility for millions of families.’ (Water.Org, 2016).

Here they suggest that by simply donating a few pounds we can transform a families lives, ignoring any sort of agency or role that that family would have in improving their lives.

Water is Life's photo highlighting the 'White Saviour Complex'
Source - http://waterislife.com/donate

This photo from waterislife.com (Water is Life, 2016) highlights the white saviour complex perfectly; a white male handing out ‘waterislife filters’ to a community of women in Africa, he even has ‘Saves’ tattooed on his arm which begs belief. The outstretched arms of many women to collect the filter highlights their desperate need; representing the community as if they’ve all been sat there just waiting for this NGO to provide help.

These images and ideas reinforce binaries of ‘active’ western saviours vs. passive African recipients and fosters a neo-colonial idea of western superiority (Sachs, 2010). Furthermore I feel that the White Saviour Complex is lazy in its understanding of poverty and presumptions that a simple donation will provide water or solve poverty. It ignores structural injustices within the world – what about years of colonialism that created underdevelopment within Africa (Escobar, 1995)? What about the privatisation of water supplies which are now owned by western corporations such as SAUR in Ivory Coast, Guinea and Senegal to name a few; we should be questioning these relationships rather than just blindly donating a few pounds. Water charities can encourage a white saviour complex view by providing us with quick fixes that make us feel good, but I feel that we need to consider the underlying problems of water access much further.

Movement towards empowering representations

However, a rising literature of critique is helping to transform the charity industry, it’s becoming increasingly unacceptable to frame subjects in the manner of ‘poverty porn’. 

Looking at multiple water charity websites I’ve found a unexpected lack of poverty porn and have been pleasantly surprised to see this. Most photos portray subjects looking happy to be receiving water or highlight how access to water has improved lives; this is exemplified by the AidforAfrica picture.

Aid For Africa's positive representation of subjects
Source - http://www.aidforafrica.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/charity-water-photo1.jpg

WaterAid’s ‘Big Pipe Project’ further provides a good example of representing poverty in water projects (WaterAid, 2015). The local community has documented the project describing challenges and successes and been given the freedom to curate the blog with their own photographs. This demonstrates how it is the community involved in the water project that has transformed their lives, rather than solely WaterAid or western donors

Conclusions

Whilst this blog has been critical of charities and NGO’s, I do believe that much of the work they do makes a huge difference and don’t want to undermine this. However I feel that it must be ensured that poverty porn isn’t used to encourage donations. Representations are incredibly important and change the way the west, many of whom haven’t visited Africa, think about the continent. You can’t portray a whole continent as people sat around drinking dirty water waiting for a western NGO to save them; this is inaccurate, unfair and dangerous.  Furthermore the creation of a single story and quick fix to Africa’s water problems undermines efforts to understand the root causes of poverty or lack of water access. NGO’s and charities have certainly improved in their representations and I certainly hope that this is maintained, and constantly improved on.

List of References

Adichie, C.N. (2009) The danger of a single story. Available at: http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story (Accessed: 23 December 2016).

AquaAid (2012) A continent of thirsty children. Available at: http://aquaidwatercoolers.co.uk/a-continent-of-thirsty-children (Accessed: 23 December 2016).

Escobar, A. (1995) Encountering development: The making and unmaking of the third world. Princeton, NJ, United States: Princeton University Press.

Lissner, J. (1981) Merchants of misery. Available at: https://newint.org/features/1981/06/01/merchants-of-misery/ (Accessed: 23 December 2016).

Sachs, W. (2010) The development dictionary a guide to knowledge as power. 2nd edn. London: Zed Books.

Schaffer, J. (2016) Poverty Porn - Do the means justify the ends? Available at: https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2016/06/10/poverty-porn-do-the-means-justify-the-ends/ (Accessed: 23 December 2016).

Water is Life (2016) Water is Life. Available at: http://waterislife.com/donate (Accessed: 23 December 2016).

Water. Org (2016) Water.Org Safe water & sanitation Charity. Available at: http://www.water.org (Accessed: 23 December 2016).

WaterAid (2015) Big Pipe Project. Available at: http://www.bigpipeproject.wateraid.org (Accessed: 23 December 2016).