I am African

The "I am African" campaign that we touched upon briefly in class on Wednesday fascinates me. Upon googling it, I found out that the campaign is part of Keep A Child Alive. While this is certainly a great cause, I have some problems with the campaign itself. First as Song already mentioned, the people in the ad are wearing "tribal" war paint which exoticizes Africa and the idea of "Africanness". The beaded jewelry that many of the celebrities in the ads are wearing is also meant to create this sense of "Africanness" when in reality, beaded jewelry comes from all over the world, much like the bright woven cloth that Mercer refers to in the article we read for Wednesday. Like the Benetton ads that Mercer cites, this ad is meant to create a sense of diversity and togetherness when all it does is stifle any real dialogue about the issues that Africans face. This ad is playing on diversity and a sense of interconnectedness in order to draw attention to their cause. The ad seems seems to me to detract from the cause since it doesn't really open up dialogue. Since I had no idea what the ad was for, I focused on the celebrities rather than the cause. Diversity and Africa in this instance seem to be marketing ploys.