The Dutch ‘Stop Aids Now!’ campaigns have a long tradition of appealing to potential donors in Holland’s streets. November and December are the months the posters and TV ads pop up (around World Aids Day on December 1, coinciding with the arrival of Saint Nicholas and his Black Petes, and the ensuing spending spree) — staple NGO tactics this time of year. With governments slashing their international aid budgets, the street is where NGOs will need to scrape their money together. So you tell the Dutch that African kids “Mary and Neema don’t know how to prevent AIDS, but you do.” Or you show them (as in the video above) that while Dutch Alex wants a video game and Esther and Kim want a skippy ball, Themba wants to know “whether kissing will make you HIV positive,” and that “Ayanna wants a long and healthy life.” A reader suggested it was a rather patronizing and regressive campaign. She’s being too kind.

Further Reading

Slow death by food

Illegal gold mining is poisoning Ghana’s soil and rivers, seeping into its crops and seafood, and turning the national food system into a long-term public health crisis.

A sick health system

The suspension of three doctors following the death of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s son has renewed scrutiny of a health-care system plagued by impunity, underfunding, and a mass exodus of medical professionals.

Afrobeats after Fela

Wizkid’s dispute with Seun Kuti and the release of his latest EP with Asake highlight the widening gap between Afrobeats’ commercial triumph and Fela Kuti’s political inheritance

Progress is exhausting

Pedro Pinho’s latest film follows a Portuguese engineer in Guinea-Bissau, exposing how empire survives through bureaucracy, intimacy, and the language of “development.”

The rubble of empire

Built by Italian Fascists in 1928, Mogadishu Cathedral was meant to symbolize “peaceful conquest.” Today its ruins force Somalis to confront the uneasy afterlife of colonial power and religious authority.

Atayese

Honored in Yorubaland as “one who repairs the world,” Jesse Jackson’s life bridged civil rights, pan-Africanism, empire, and contradiction—leaving behind a legacy as expansive as it was imperfect.