WHO IS IN IT
WHY WE MADE THIS FILM
By Cassandra Herrman and Kathryn Mathers
There is a scene in our film WHEN I SAY AFRICA where Boniface Mwangi, a young Kenyan photojournalist-turned-activist, visits Duke University in North Carolina in the American South. He meets with students who talk about what they learned volunteering abroad, and others who challenge their classmates about why they went in the first place.
Mwangi and the African students studying at Duke present a critical question to their peers: do Americans benefit more from these trips than those they claim to serve? Mwangi is more blunt, pointing out that while Americans are busy “saving the world,” they neglect issues closer to home.
“If you want to come and help me, first ask me what I want… Then we can work together,” says Mwangi.
In Western pop culture, Africa is still portrayed as a place of hopelessness and helplessness, with no agency in shaping its future. As filmmakers, writers, and teachers we have come face to face repeatedly with the damage caused by these representations, which has spurred us to create this film. In When I Say Africa, African storytellers and changemakers expose the power dynamics behind the narratives that Africa is a continent in need, exploring how the status quo often works in favor of Westerners. The protagonists in the film, our collaborators, have been working to dismantle harmful representations of the continent and engage with the public – through writing, activism, and school talks.
At the heart of this project is the power of images. The representations of Africa in popular culture reflect and help perpetuate inequalities rooted in colonial histories and extractive economies. Yet Africans are politically, socially, and culturally engaged, actively contributing to their societies through art, writing, music, political action, and social media. In the film, academic Zine Magubane sums up the motives and rewards of the humanitarian impulse driven by images: “Unfortunately, it’s not establishing a relationship between two people as humans, but rather as a savior and a victim.”
We explore how this relationship improves when Westerners confront their role in perpetuating stereotypes about Africa and acknowledge the costs of these misrepresentations. This process fosters more meaningful engagement between Westerners and Africans.
We want the film to resonate with young people who have a genuine passion for change but haven’t yet considered the critical questions we’re raising. Featured in the film is Pippa Biddle, a young white American writer who gained attention for her blog piece, “The Problem With Little White Girls (And Boys): Why I Stopped Being a Voluntourist.” In the film, she reflects on her own experiences as a volunteer, questioning the impact of these trips and their motivations.
By showing how Africans, like Boniface Mwangi, engage with their own political spaces, as well as how they represent their countries to Americans, we hope Western viewers can learn new ways to engage in activism—both in Africa and at home—moving beyond critique
One of the key figures in the film is writer Binyavanga Wainaina, famous for his Granta essay “How to Write About Africa,” which critiques Western journalism’s portrayal of Africa. Growing up in Kenya and witnessing the Ethiopian famine of 1984, Wainaina who, passed in 2019, reflects on how events like Live Aid and Band-Aid shaped Western perceptions of Africa.
“The song didn’t stop at saying ‘Ethiopia,’ it said ‘Africa.’ We were sitting there, watching people arrive and say, ‘We are coming to save you.’ It never really occurred to me until that point: this is how they see us.”