Sam S. recently held a Current Events meeting where we discussed stereotypes and some current events from Africa. I think my favorite part of the event was watching a satire video that judges the “starving African” charity commercials. The video focused on a young actor who would dress up in order to be seen as poor and starving in these commercials. African kids are extremely similar to American kids, and kids from all around the world. They wear the same clothes and play the same games. They go to school and get normal jobs. They are just regular people. While it is true that some parts of Africa are disadvantaged and still need a lot of improving, a lot of it is just poverty tourism. We need to stop seeing people from Africa as so poor they are unable to help themselves. It is a “give a man a fish” situation. Yes, it’s fantastic that people try to help by donating money to feed the starving children, but as the videos Sam showed illustrated, it’s better if we help them build infrastructure and help them help themselves.

After this discussion, we did go slightly off topic, and the discussion was equally as interesting. Sam started to talk about the popular magazine “The Economist”. It’s interesting that while the magazine has separate topics for the USA, the rest of the Americas, Asia, China, Europe, and Britain, Africa is lumped together with the Middle East. The Middle East and Africa, while they are geographically next to each other, don’t have a lot in common. Why does Britain get a separate category when an actual continent almost 75x its size does not? So much is currently happening in Africa, with the Nigerian elections, hyperinflation in Zimbabwe, and tons of eco-friendly innovation. Africa, a country famous for being impoverished, gets a higher percentage of its energy from green sources than the United States. They are innovating, not for the present, but for the future. Before this event, I don’t think I realized how strong Africa really is. It isn’t a continent to take pity on. It’s a collection of diverse countries with a rich heritage. Africa still needs help, there are still areas that are impoverished and war-torn. However, it’s more important to give them the help the actually want and ask for then treating them as a way to get Instagram likes.