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In November came the news that the Global Fund to fight Aids, TB and Malaria was in a financial crisis, because of declining donor commitments and failure by donors to honor existing commitments. The Fund’s board cancelled Round 11 of its funding applications, which was supposed to provide money for 2011 to 2013.
Horrified by the skin-lightening creams you see advertised in the cityscapes of Africa?
Wait till you see the adverts people walk past daily in India or Sri Lanka. This huge billboard (above) sits somewhere on the 10-kilometre distance from Kelaniya (my family’s ancestral home) to Colombo (the city). The script below the ever-whitening out images of the model says: “For white/light skin, apply daily”.
South Asians have Africans beat on this front.
The Guardian has a piece on India’s growing economic influence on the continent. It opens with Manmohan Singh receiving a red-carpet welcome as he led a delegation to the India-Africa summit in Addis Ababa, which 15 African leaders reportedly attending.
“The India-Africa partnership rests on three pillars of capacity building and skill transfer, trade and infrastructure development,” said Singh at the start of the six-day trip to Ethiopia and Tanzania. “Africa is emerging as a new growth pole of the world, while India is on a path of sustained and rapid economic development.” The trade meeting is to be attended by 15 African leaders. On its fringes was an India show comprising business seminars, cultural projects and a trade exhibition.
It may be high-revivalist times for former non-aligned nations, but building political and economic ties, and positioning itself as different from China-all while attempting to distance itself from the criticism about human rights abuses and corruption-isn’t going to be easy for India. (For starters, in the photograph above taken at the summit, Singh poses with some unsavory “leaders,” including King Mswati III of Swaziland and Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea.)
The comments below the article are also indicative of the general congratulatory mood, as well as the ignorance, fear, and silliness that arise when when trade agreements (which are about money and securing assets, not high-minded patriotism) are made. Africa – and Africans’ part in the deal – is lost in the back-slapping and vitriol.–Neelika Jayawardane
Relevant (longish) excerpt from Anita Desai’s review of Joseph Lelyveld’s new biography, Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India in The New York Review of Books:
Wired.com, which usually knows better, has a photo gallery on its site that “takes you on a tour” of “the last uncontacted people.” What drove them to publish the images are “the release … last week of a tribe in southwest Brazil.” And because publishing images of people who didn’t necessarily permit their bodies and images to be used is for our collective good. The writer notes that most of these “uncontacted tribes” (he slips between “tribes” and “people” a lot) live in the Amazon, but also India and Peru, and “are often described as living fossils of Stone Age life, flash-frozen in time.” The post contains this disclaimer: “… Such descriptions are unfair: We don’t really know how people lived in the Stone Age, and there’s no reason to think that uncontacted cultures have not continued to evolve in their own unique ways.” It also contains “an Editor’s Note” accompanying a photo of “the tribe in southwest Brazil”: the machete in the photograph was likely obtained through trade with Indians who have made contact.” I also got my bread knife from some people who made contact with the local Walmart – who made contact with some people making knives in China.
Specific nuances and cultural references aside, this analysis by Indian writer Arundhati Roy of middle class ‘victim’ politics may apply to certain urban elites in many African countries, including some of their diasporas in the West:
You know, I keep saying this, the most successful secession movement … is the secession of the middle and upper classes to outer space. They have their own universe, their own andolan, their own Jessica Lal, their own media, their own controversies, and they’re disconnected from everything else.
This is an ad to promote the wares of Willow TV–the California-based portal for live Internet streaming of big cricket matches-ahead of India’s tour of South Africa, a tour that kicks off today. I’ll let the stereotypes of South Africa (Afrikaner farmers, coloured klopse and Zulu fighters) and the idea of cricket as a white sport (at the crease and on the oval at least it is the preserve of white men and boys), impugn itself. Or maybe the client or the creatives behind the commercial were just trying to be honest. (BTW, I am going to hedge a bet: this commercial was conceptualized and made by a South African production company. I hope I am wrong.)
H/T: Omar Karim
It is still okay to create the most objectionable stereotypes about certain Africans and for it to be considered fine.
An Indian soft drink company, Parle Agro, is marketing a new soft drink, called LMN, with a series of 5 TV commercial series titled “Lost Bushmen” set “… in the [Bushmen's] natural habitat of the Kalahari Dessert.” Serious.
Here’s another one:
