When I say the word “Africa” what do you picture? Chances are you see in your mind the image of a young, dark child, shirtless and with a swollen belly, with big eyes looking up at you in need. In some cases, you might even see flies crawling on the child’s face. This is an image that is used time and again to portray Africa in appeals made by nonprofit organizations.

See, for example (to the right) the image from World Vision’s website, advertising their “AIDS Experience” walk-through display. The photo and text suggest that Africa and child survival may be incompatible.

A photo (right) from Bono’s DATA (Debt AIDS Trade Africa) website also puts a child just above the words “the World’s Poorest People.”

A photo that I find particularly troubling is a Pulitzer Prize winning one of a child, reduced by starvation to an immobile heap. The child’s demise is the waiting vulture’s hope (right and below).

There is no dishonesty in these photos. Poverty is common in every African country. And many, if not most poor people, are children. This is a simple demographic fact. Because the average life expectancy is low and birth rates are high, in most African countries the elderly are few while young children are many.

The problem is not so much in any single photo; it is the cumulative effect of many photos – the relentless association of African children and poverty. In the minds of many people, the two have come to mean virtually the same thing. And the impoverished African child has come to symbolize all of Africa.

When a Western charity makes an appeal for funds with the photo of a seemingly helpless African child, the Western donor is cast in the role of the strong, generous, and righteous person helping the lowly and needy. Strength, generosity, and righteousness are all good things, but I fear that an unrighteous pattern has developed. The West and Africa have become type-cast into strong and weak, resourceful and helpless, giver and receiver, parent and child.

To cast whole continents and cultures in such starkly contrasting and fixed roles is an untruth and an injustice. There is strength in Africa, and there is resourcefulness, generosity, and righteousness. Africa Rising exists to make those strengths known, to extend their reach, and to help Westerners move beyond stereotypes of Africa to relationships with Africans. The photo and text on our website’s home page (right) aims to send that message. And though images of children will appear among the photos on our site, we will try to show them as strong; and other photos will portray a resourceful and generous Africa.