The wounded hippo
In a US confronting its own anti-black racism, sentimental imaginings of Africa do little but uphold the white savior industrial complex.
8 Articles by:
Kathryn Mathers
Kathryn Mathers, a socio-cultural anthropologist, is producer of the film "When I say Africa ..."
How not to photograph Nigerian women
On The New York Times’ tone-deaf photo-essays of a group of Nigerian women who managed to escape Boko Haram.
‘Doing good’ in an age of parody
Why does being in on the joke not slow down the desire to save Africans?
Why we made a film about images that cast Africans only as victims
Americans need recognize if they want to do good in Africa they need to partner with Africans or work in the US on policies that impact negatively Africans.
Mining the Body
What can the photographs of American anthropologist Danny Hoffman tell us about Sierra Leone and Liberian mineworkers or about mining in West Africa?
Oprah and Kristof: What don’t they have in common?
Oprah, like Kristof, turns a personal desire to help sufferers of abuse into a more than acceptable African development program.
Soccer Soap Opera
Who are the Kenyans who needed a soap opera as an impetus to change their attitudes about political violence and why did they need it?
The Smiling Faces of Young Africans
When ‘culture’ looks like poverty and poverty ‘looks like culture’ any questions about the structural and geopolitical causes of poverty are easily muted.