Product Red: The Marketing of African Misery (Viewpoint Essay)

[We wanted to describe] the continent of Africa as an opportunity, as an adventure, not a burden. Our habit--and we have to kick it--is to reduce this mesmerizing, entrepreneurial, dynamic continent of 53 diverse countries to a hopeless deathbed of war, disease, and corruption. (i) (emphasis added) The Product Red campaign rests on a quartet of mistaken assumptions. The first is that the consumption of commodities in the Western world has no particular relationship to Africa's problems and therefore increasing such consumption is a neutral exercise, free from side effects. The second mistaken assumption is that AIDS rages through Africa at pandemic strength due mainly to a lack of funds for medicines. Next, the campaign assumes that it is permissible to continue to cast the African continent in the role of passive recipient of First World largesse. Finally, Red broadcasts the idea that social change is easy.