I am Ethiopian. I was born and grew up in Ethiopia. I moved to the Netherlands recently; and now I am working at the 1%CLUB. I have had a number of opportunities to visit countries in the western world. It seems unthinkable for me to introduce myself to people I meet without mentioning my homeland ‘Ethiopia’ proudly. Oh, yeah! We Ethiopians are known for being proud; the fact that we are the only African nation who has never been colonized makes us to be proud together with many supporting reasons which most people in the world are not even aware of. But where ever I go, once people know where I am from I always get questions like ‘Do you guys have enough to eat? Once when I was in a friend’s house for dinner her six-year-old boy was asking me if I ever eat such food items in Ethiopia pointing his finger to each and everything on the table. After all, who will blame this innocent child? Isn’t it the stereotyped image Ethiopia has in the world?
“A stereotype is something preconceived or oversimplified that is constantly repeated without change. Stereotypes involve icons, which are figures that represent events or issues. Icons have a sacred history but the attention they attract as objects of our gaze can produce a range of affects depending on time and place. The photographic deployment of particular icons (children) via an established aesthetic to represent famine is a clear example of stereotypes at work.” (from Imaging Famine Blog)
It has been difficult for me as an Ethiopian to give a proper picture of the reality on the ground as many people have a thick background reinforced with terrible images of war, famine and overall poverty for Ethiopia ever since the high profile Ethiopian famine of the mid-1980s. Many who even born after 1984 do still associate Ethiopia with the 1984 famine, not even with the less adverse ones we have had after they came into this world. I am not here to deny the fact that we are the 2nd (the latest) or the 3rd poorest nation in the world. In fact, it is a plain truth that more than 50% of the population live below the poverty line and many Ethiopians are starving due to crop failures from drought as well as due to corruption, human rights violations, mismanagement, and the lack of good governance, severe structural weakness, poor economic performance, and many more reasons.
It is not fair to blame neither the audiences nor the fundraisers which uses the media especially in need of immediate action. The point is as a result of the imprinted lasting stereotypes in the western society, so much is at stake for Ethiopia to introduce its endowment of abundant and diversified natural resources. Ethiopia has several agro-ecological zones and sub-zones each with their own physical and biological potential, raw materials and mineral reserves, a relative cheaper and abundant human capital and many other factors that can make the country to create investments opportunities in a wide range of areas. For example, Ethiopia is often ironically referred to as the “water tower” of Eastern Africa because of the many (14 majors) rivers that pour off the high tableland. But due to few irrigation or other systems to manage water supply in place, the country’s economy is mainly dependent on low productivity rainfed agriculture. Therefore, the focus should be more on securing food in a sustainable way through the potential resources in the country than requesting an ‘urgent call to action’ to help millions of people at risk of acute hunger.
Development organizations need to consider the long term bad effects of stereotyped images. Those images hide people not to see the possibilities which they can contribute through their knowledge and skills. The 1%CLUB Platform encourages positive images in its project pages for avoiding such threats. This could be an inspiration for other similar organizations.
References:
1. Blogspot.com
Related posts:
