Representation and imagery in ‘Save us Bill Gates’

The representation of people from African countries and the rest of the global south is something we take very seriously at Global Justice Now. We are very aware of the history of development NGOs and agencies reinforcing a variety of damaging stereotypes of people across the global south. From ‘hungry children’, to ‘grateful aid recipients’, these images play into neo-colonial and ‘orientalist’ norms that detract from the agency and sophistication of communities, and reinforce the idea that issues of poverty and lack of access to resources in the global south is a ‘natural’ condition rather than one that has arisen in no small part because of issues of systemic injustice. Our discussions around visual representation are live and ongoing – and we don’t pretend to always ‘get it right.’

In the spoof game we developed ‘Save Us Bill Gates,’ we wanted to satirise both the concept of the ‘White Saviour Complex’ as embodied by the billionaire philanthrocapitalist Bill Gates, and the representation of people in African countries by development agencies as a stereotyped ‘other’. This was a conscious decision, based on discussions around race and clichéd representations of Africa while the game was being developed. We are conscious that satire can be a tricky thing to get right – especially in the context of power relations of Global Justice Now being a UK-based organisation making a visual representation of people in Africa. We felt that the element of satire in this context was justified in that we were satirizing the small-minded preconceptions of the development community rather than the people in African countries themselves.  In addition we felt that using animals traditionally associated with ideas of Africa was a safer way of doing this than altering the representation of people themselves.

Again, the issue of representation is a live and ongoing discussion and we welcome feedback on all the work we put out from all kinds of perspective.

Nick Dearden,
Director of Global Justice Now