By Choice Ufouma Okoro*
In 1992, in my early twenties, I was accepted at a voluntary intern level to work as a journalist with For A Change Magazine in London. My office was at Number 12 Palace Street. Like many young interns, I was encouraged to observe, learn, and eventually write.
After three months in London, I published my first op-ed.
I titled it “Not My Picture of Africa.”
I wrote it because I was shocked.
Africa was not simply being represented, it was being sold. And that selling itself was an economy
As a young African living in Europe for the first time, I encountered a version of Africa that felt unfamiliar, flattened, and relentlessly curated. Across London, in train stations, on billboards, in fundraising posters, Africa was being marketed almost exclusively as a destination of despair.
Hunger. Emaciated bodies. Flies. Tears.
It did not feel incidental. It felt systematic.
I realised then, instinctively, that Africa was not simply being represented, it was being sold. And that the selling itself was an economy.
On flights, passengers were encouraged to drop their spare change “for the children of Africa.” Piggy banks bore the faces of Black African children. Christmas, especially, became a season when emotional guilt was stretched to its limit, always in Africa’s name.
Even then, as a young intern, I understood something unsettling:
this was not just about generosity.
It was about identity formation through narrative.
What disturbed me most was not the appeal to kindness, but the total absence of complexity: no history, no politics, no economics, no agency
Why Modern Crises Don’t End They Settle In
We tend to speak of crises as interruptions: sudden shocks that demand urgent response before life returns to normal. Yet many of today’s humanitarian emergencies do not resolve. They persist, stabilize, and quietly reorganize themselves around systems designed to manage them.
This is not because suffering has been misunderstood, nor because effort has been absent. It is because crisis response has evolved into a form of governance — shaped as much by incentives, funding structures, and institutional routines as by needs on the ground.
Over time, emergencies become institutionalized. Funding cycles reward continuity over closure. Reporting frameworks prioritize activity over consequence. Presence substitutes for progress. What begins as response becomes routine, and the language of urgency coexists comfortably with permanence.
This transformation is rarely deliberate. It is structural.
Crisis is no longer an interruption: it has become a form of governance, shaped by incentives, funding structures, and institutional routines
Humanitarian systems are expected to act quickly, remain neutral, demonstrate impact, and absorb risk — all while operating within political constraints they are discouraged from naming. As crises endure, accountability mechanisms turn inward. Systems assess their own performance, explain their own shortcomings, and define success on terms they are best equipped to meet.
In this environment, failure is not ignored; it is reframed. It becomes complexity. It becomes access. It becomes context. And with each reframing, the possibility of asking harder questions quietly recedes.
One of the most persistent challenges in crisis response is not a lack of innovation, but the absence of meaningful external accountability. When institutions are simultaneously implementers, evaluators, and arbiters of legitimacy, the space for honest reckoning narrows. Trust erodes not because people doubt intentions, but because they sense that outcomes are no longer the primary measure of success.
Communities are consulted, yet decision-making remains distant.
*Choice Ufouma Okoro is an analyst and public writer focused on the political economy of crisis and humanitarian governance. With over fifteen years of experience across crisis and policy contexts, she examines how power, funding, and accountability shape international response systems.
