Save Darfur has become such a rallying cry to end the genocide in Western Sudan that it has even spawned its own advocacy organization: Save Darfur.  Yet, in the overarching debate of Western intervention in “developing” countries’ affairs, particularly in African countries, the impact of language is often ignored or dismissed.  However, the language we use to describe the West’s normative and positive policies is incredibly important.

Iweala writes:

Every time a Hollywood director shoots a film about Africa that features a Western protagonist, I shake my head -- because Africans, real people though we may be, are used as props in the West's fantasy of itself. And not only do such depictions tend to ignore the West's prominent role in creating many of the unfortunate situations on the continent, they also ignore the incredible work Africans have done and continue to do to fix those problems.

Why do the media frequently refer to African countries as having been "granted independence from their colonial masters," as opposed to having fought and shed blood for their freedom? Why do Angelina Jolie and Bono receive overwhelming attention for their work in Africa while Nwankwo Kanu or Dikembe Mutombo, Africans both, are hardly ever mentioned? How is it that a former mid-level U.S. diplomat receives more attention for his cowboy antics in Sudan than do the numerous African Union countries that have sent food and troops and spent countless hours trying to negotiate a settlement among all parties in that crisis?

I’ll admit, I looked up Kanu and Mutombo for more information on them, and you should check out what they’ve done as well. 

Iweala also criticizes the I Am African ad campaign, which infantilizes and homogenizes an incredibly diverse group of people.

The entire “development industry,” brilliantly satirized by Ross Coggins in this 1976 poem, needs to be critically re-evaluated and re-examined.  From Arundhati Roy’s excellent essay on the Narmada Dam project to James Ferguson’s brilliant book “The Anti-Politics Machine,” voices of truth have attempted to speak out on the inherent problems with “development.”  It all comes back to language though, and examining how we (as in “the West”) describe others, how our campaigns of good intentions can have negative effects is just as important as the campaign itself.  Without such important discussions and critical self-evaluation of our discourse, we merely prove the point that the Ivan Illich’s of the world have routinely made for decades.