Burkina Faso has just made a big move by banning NGOs and humanitarian agencies operating in the country from taking or publishing degrading images of aid recipients.
No more photographs of children with distended bellies staring hollow-eyed into a camera lens. No more videos designed to extract donations via shock and pity at the recipients' state of despair. The decree requires informed consent, and protects image rights and privacy.
For as long as international development has existed as an industry, "poverty porn" has been one of its most reliable fundraising tools — and one of its most corrosive. It tells a single story: that people in the Global South, and disabled people in particular, are defined by lack. Not by capability, contribution, leadership, or agency, but by what they don't have and what someone else must give them. That single story shapes how donors see the people they're meant to be serving, and — just as damagingly — how those communities start to see themselves.
Whilst drawing attention to the issues that drive inequality and oppression, and highlighting opportunities for change, is important, it is not necessary to strip a person of their dignity and rights in the process. And the long-term damage of consistently projecting a single story of poverty about a nation is real, measurable, and expensive.
Research by Africa No Filter and Africa Practice found that negative, poverty-and-crisis-led media narratives inflate the continent's borrowing costs by an estimated $4.2 billion a year, by creating an exaggerated perception of risk. The same distorted narrative depresses foreign direct investment and tourism revenue. The imagery the sector uses to raise donations for African countries is part of what makes Africa more expensive to invest in and less attractive to visit.
At Disability Africa, we've long argued that this is precisely backwards. The Social Model of Disability tells us that people are disabled by barriers — physical, institutional, attitudinal — not by their bodies or minds. Poverty porn is one of those attitudinal barriers, manufactured and distributed at scale. It builds sympathy at the cost of dignity, and it entrenches the idea that African communities are passive recipients of Western generosity rather than equal partners with their own expertise, priorities, and solutions.
That's why we work exclusively through long-term partnerships with local organisations across Africa, led by the people closest to the issues. Sustainable change doesn't come from images that shrink people down. It comes from investment in local leadership, delivering real services and unpicking the negative narratives that have been entrenched in communities by the humanitarian aid sector for over half a century. This work can be unglamorous, causes no sensation and rarely goes viral, but is far more likely to shift outcomes.
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