ABSTRACT
It might not be entirely fair to charge the development of as well-intentioned an event as Bob Geldof’s Band Aid,1 which was staged to raise both international awareness of, and funds for, Ethiopia’s drought victims. But there is also no doubt that since then, the image of the African woman has been set in the minds of the world. She is breeding too many children she cannot take care of, and whom she should not expect other people to pick up the tab for. She is hungry, and so are her children. In fact, she has become an idiom of the photojournalism of the world. In Western visual media especially the African woman is old beyond her years; she is half-naked; her drooped and withered breasts are well-exposed; there are flies buzzing around the faces of her children, and she has got a permanent begging bowl in her hand.2
