from Behind the image: Poverty and 'development pornography' by Rotimi Sankore

One dares not even go back to the consequences of 400 years of slavery that directly or indirectly killed and took away over a hundred million Africans and in the process disrupted all social and political development for four centuries, or subsequent colonial repression that in some places lasted over a 100 years. Most of Africa has been independent for only between 10 and 46 years and for most of that period many countries were ruled by left and right wing or simply mad dictators supported by cold war enemies jostling for strategic influence.

With all the slavery, colonialism, mass murder, repression, looting, corruption, trade imbalances, and outrageous interests on dubious loans that have gone on for 500 years it is no wonder the continent is bruised and battered. No continent subjected to the same conditions would have fared better.

No pictures can explain this. What development 'pornography' shows is the result, not the cause of five centuries of aggressive exploitation of a continent. The relatively smoother development in parts of Asia exists because no industrial scale slavery and destruction of society was imposed there for four centuries. Unlike in Africa, the foundation of most Asian civilisation and culture remained largely intact. Colonialism suspended the natural trajectory of development in Asia that then continued once its yoke was lifted. Were it not for the immortality of the pyramids and scattered records of past African civilisations, the entire continent might have well been declared a historical wasteland.

Without clear explanations of why poverty persists in the developing world, the western public will tire of giving and sooner or later there will be a backlash; some argue that such fatigue has already begun to set in. For now negative stereotypes may already have been so ingrained that the level of ignorant prejudice that facilitated the transatlantic slave trade, the holocaust against European Jews, Apartheid and genocides from the Balkans and Cambodia to Rwanda may have already taken root.