Who Gives to Whom? Reframing Africa in the Humanitarian Imaginary

Cilas Kemedjio, Cecelia Lynch

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9783031465529
• eBook ISBN: 9783031465536
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: African Politics

In this innovative volume, experts from international relations, anthropology, sociology, global public health, postcolonial African literature, and gender studies, take up Ng?g? wa Thiong'o's challenge to see how Africa gives to the west instead of the reverse. Humanitarian assumptions are challenged by unpacking critical legacies from colonial and missionary genealogies to today's global networks of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Who Gives to Whom: Reframing Africa in the Humanitarian Imaginary is a decolonial gesture that builds on Ng?g?'s work as well as that of pan-Africanist and intersectional feminist scholars. Contributions range from assessing the impact of historical legacies of colonialism on gender, religious/secular attempts at "saving" Africans to (South) African unrealized project to reconfigure foreign policy frameworks shaped by apartheid. Case studies of "silver bullet" solutions focus on the incorporation of women in peacebuilding, microfinance, and e-waste disposal, to argue that humanitarian interventions continue to mask ongoing forms of despoiling African well-being while shortchanging intersectional African forms of agency.

"Chapter 1." is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Reading Humanitarianism Critically
• 2. The Humanitarian Misunderstanding in the Postcolonial Humanitarian African Imagination
• 3. Extractive Salvation: Zoe’s Ark and the Ethic of Humanitarianism in Africa
• 4. Historical Roots of South African Ambivalence Toward “Africa”
• 5. Joseph Kony, Invisible Children, and Military Humanitarianism in the Northern Uganda Conflict
• 6. Engendering Care Revisited: Decolonizing Global Health and Dismantling Gender Stereotypes in HIV Care in Africa
• 7. How West African Women “Save” the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda
• 8. ‘Trust No One’: The Logics of Microfinance, Depending on Whom You Ask
• 9. Toxic Scavenging in the Digital Divide
• 10. COVID-19 and the African Disaster That Wasn’t
• 11. Taking, Giving, Repairing, and Reversing
• 12. The Last Word: Funtumfunafu, Denkyemfunafu: The Individual, the Community Reciprocity, and Grace
• Correction to: Reading Humanitarianism Critically
• Back Matter