What if Africa does need some saving? Cont’d.

A Texan with a Saviour Complex -- Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

I want to elaborate on yesterday’s discussion of whether Africa needs to be saved. For anybody interested in the subject, I highly recommend the discussion going on over at Texas in Africa. It’s a solid critique of an aid industry that can be self-serving, self-perpetuating, inefficient, bureaucratic, patronizing, cynical, and sometimes even harmful. My only worry is that in concentrating on the bad we risk dismissing a lot of the good.

I last lived in Africa in 2005, when George Bush’s PEPFAR aids program was just rolling out. At the time of my departure, I had met very few Africans who were able to afford anti retroviral AIDS medication, and those few I had met were on them thanks to the generosity of a foreign friend or employer. So I was stunned when I visited Uganda a year later and met ordinary people whose lives had basically been saved by Bush’s program. An army sgt., a woman selling bread by the side of a country road—these were people who never could have never afforded the drugs. And yet, suddenly, almost over night, their lives had been saved.  

Now there is quite a bit to criticize in the PEPFAR program, but there’s no doubt it’s literally done a world of good for a lot of people. And there’s also no question that its creation is the result of an impulse to “save Africa.” Admittedly, I’m a bit deep in this subject because I’ve got a long piece coming out that looks at the way the epidemic has been transformed by the rollout of medication. But especially today, as the PEPFAR program seems to be losing momentum, it’s worth remembering that “the savior complex” can sometimes be harnessed to make real positive changes in people’s lives.