The Ineffective White Savior (and how to actually make an impact)

I first came to Ghana with a white savior mentality. I was going to make a difference. I was going to help the Ghanaian people. I was going to improve public health with my three-month research project. I was a student at the University of Michigan, and I would bring my brain power to help Africans improve their work. I was naïve.

The research project was purely an academic exercise. I was essentially helpless in the lab without Ghanaian scientists holding my hand. We generated good data, but had no end goal in mind, as it was conjured up by our professor and had no buy-in from the Ghanaian scientists. Once we left, the project was over forever. We had spent thousands of dollars on flights, housing, and stipends for ourselves. Local people already knew the medicinal uses of the plant that we were studying. Our small experiments changed nothing.

During my first trip to Ghana in 2010

I’ve met a lot of “white saviors” in Ghana who remind me of myself during my first trip here. Usually, they are young people in their early twenties from Europe and the USA on volunteer and university trips coming to Africa to preach the social justice gospel, hoping to make a difference in the lives of African people. White saviors volunteer in orphanages, schools, and hospitals. From what I’ve seen, the impact of these trips is usually negligible and a large waste of resources. They often fill roles Ghanaians would be better suited to fill at a fraction of the cost. These trips are generally self-serving. They make for great social media posts, blogs, and stories on applications to grad school.

My first trip to Ghana fit this description almost perfectly, which was extremely humbling and made me reconsider my approach for my subsequent visits to Ghana.

The white savior mentality is incredibly destructive. It assumes that you as a white person have the means and knowledge to actually solve the problems in a country you are just getting to know. It’s entitlement. It’s a sense of superiority that stems from nothing more than the place in which you were born and the color of your skin. It hinders true collaboration that could actually make a difference. It leads to money being wasted on unnecessary things. 

I was certainly guilty of this until I realized how ineffective this mentality is.

There is a great anecdote about a group of European farmers who came to Africa. They saw the way the locals were irrigating their crops and told them it was all wrong because they were wasting dirt building mounds around each plant. The Europeans changed the irrigation style of the farm to that of their own back home. Then as they stood back admiring their work, the heavy tropical rains came, uprooted the plants, and washed the farm away.  White saviors often come to Africa and press their ideology upon local people without seeking input from those they’re hoping to help.

That’s not to say I haven’t seen cases where white saviors have had some impact. A volunteer friend of mine used $5,000 to build a well leading to a cleaner and cheaper water supply for the orphanage she was working at. A Ghanaian friend told me the story of a peace corps volunteer who fundraised and bought a generator that brought electricity to his small village. These acts of charity make a quick, direct impact and are generally the best-case scenarios of the white savior. I’m a big fan of bringing capital into the Ghanaian system. The downside of these donations, however, is that they are not sustainable nor do they address any systemic issues. For this reason I’ve completely changed my strategy from one of charity to one of entrepreneurship.

White saviors may have genuinely good intentions; however, intention and impact are two very different things.

Ironically, the Lebanese, Chinese, and Indian businessmen, who come here without the “hearts full of grace” the white saviors do, make a large impact towards moving Ghanaian society forward. The Chinese have paved many roads in Ghana and conducted large-scale construction projects. The Lebanese started some of the first department stores selling important consumer goods that improve quality of life. Indians sell generic pharmaceuticals which are the backbone of Ghanaian healthcare. These businesses are sustainable. They employ Ghanaian people, often with middle class incomes that allow them to build a dignified life. They add value to the system. In the healthcare sector in which I work, by far those with the largest impact are Ghanaian entrepreneurs who invest in building new hospitals, medical education programs, and diagnostic centers. These people have their own financial self interest in mind, and yet make the greatest difference.

What the white saviors do can be best described as voluntourism. It’s essentially poverty porn. They come, observe the negative things, post about them on social media, and leave. I had this brief but powerful exchange with a friend recently…

Friend: “[White people] want to see that we sleep on trees”

Me: “and then they get disappointed when they don’t see those trees”

Friend: “of course, because they want to take pictures of that”

It reminded me of the time a fellow U of M student took a picture with two random Ghanaian kids she didn’t know, made it her profile picture, and got heartfelt response from family and friends online. African children are not accessories to be used in pictures. Many white saviors use such a trip to shed their white guilt and put themselves on moral high ground. Writer Teju Cole, who coined the term “White Savior Industrial Complex”, wrote, “It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.”

Stacey Dooley’s was criticized for an Instagram post with a child in Africa with the words ‘obsessed’.

I’ve always said the biggest difference that the white volunteers make in Ghana is not through their work, but through the money they spend here in the local economy. Mostly, their excess income fuels the tourism industry, which has grown exponentially over the past decade or so yet done little for the average Ghanaian. 

Academics are often the worst kind of white saviors. I’ve seen them bring huge grant money to Ghana, most of which is wasted. Or even worse, they come to simply study, measure, and quantify problems that local people are already well aware of. They throw conferences that waste thousands of dollars in a few days where they stay at luxury hotels and grant per diems to upper class Ghanaian administrators. In order to generate ideas to make meaningful change, you need Ghanaians to be able to give you honest feedback on your grant ideas. But Ghanaians are not going to tell you that your grant has the wrong approach when they are personally benefiting from your current vision. They paid a Ghanaian $10,000 to emcee a conference I attended in Accra. The money was most likely a large percentage of his yearly salary. This man had no incentive to criticize the vision of the conference when that kind of money was being thrown his way. A few Ghanaians I became close with at the conference admitted to me that they believed the vision of the conference was all wrong. And yet they sat quietly in the audience, listening to the white saviors share their academic gospel, applauding each and every backwards idea.

I don’t really blame the white savior. We are socialized to think this way. It’s something that needs to be unlearned. It would be great if we could turn the genuinely good intentions of the white savior into meaningful impact. Unfortunately, the machinery of white saviorism has been churning along for so long, a paradigm shift is unlikely. However, I hope anyone reading this hoping to volunteer or work abroad can learn from my own mistakes and observations in order to adopt a better strategy.

How to avoid white savior mentality and make a real impact:

• Above all else, collaborate with local people closely and leverage their knowledge of their own country
• Think about what unique skills you have to offer, seek projects where you can put these skills to use, and transfer these skills to local people
• Look for projects that lead to sustainable economic empowerment
• Try to inspire a local young person to continue your work
• Stay for a long period of time, to build connections with local people as well as to learn the culture and society you are hoping to impact

Ghanaians know what they need to do to improve their country. They are more equipped to solve the problems of their country than any 20-year-old volunteer. In order to enact meaningful change, the would-be white savior has to remain quiet at the brainstorming session and let the people in their own country come up with the solutions. You then bring resources and perhaps technical knowledge to help bring those solutions to life.

I remember when I was writing my Fulbright grant, I proposed analyzing data collected from paper patient records to do my research. The director of the clinic challenged this idea, “that’s great, but what we really need is an electronic medical record system.” He was right of course, an EMR was a much better way to research the effectiveness of the clinic. At the same time the EMR helped improve patient care. When I finished this first implementation, my colleagues said “we can do this for other hospitals.” Now we’re in four hospitals and have helped manage patient records for over 100,000 patients. None of this was my idea, but I listened to those with the local knowledge and used my technical skill-sets to carry out their vision. We owe our success to our ability to collaborate.

Like the white savior, I have come to Ghana with the best intentions: Trying to make a positive difference. But my approach has completely changed since my first trip here. Instead of charity, donations, and volunteerism I choose entrepreneurship to try to make systemic, sustainable change. No society has ever been built on a foundation of charity and volunteering. Changing a system is not sexy. It takes a long time.  I know I will spend my whole life trying to have a positive impact on Ghana. It’s crucial to my success that I set aside the ideology of the white savior, and continue my transition towards a strategy of collaboration and empowerment.

Beyond Accra: The mountainous, temperate sanctuary of Mampong

The stereotype is that Africa is hot, but Mampong’s high elevation makes the weather cool. There’s no greater feeling than waking up before dawn and feeling the cold morning dew. You literally feel like you are inside a cloud. The droplets that form on your skin are not sweat, but the condensation of the cool morning humidity. At night you definitely want to wear pants and something long sleeved. The environment is known for its biodiversity, filled with a variety of trees and birds. It’s a tropical paradise in many ways.

The Roadside in Mampong

Mampong is in a part of Ghana called Akuapem. Colloquially, people refer to this place as “the mountains”. It’s actually more of a plateau or ridge, and there are a series of towns along the main road that traverses the ridge. Along the 45 minute journey from Accra to Akuapem, there is a 3 mile winding road up the side of the mountain, which provides breathtaking views of Accra.

Akuapem was the first place that Christian missionaries ever settled in Ghana. The first 4 people to reside outside of the slave castles along the coastline in Ghana were from Basel, Switzerland - oddly where I lived last summer. They first settled in Accra, where three of them died of Malaria. The fourth caught malaria too. The local people realized, “This dude is gonna die too, we gotta do something” (direct quote). So they took him to the “mountains” to a town called Larteh, where they knew they would find experts in medicinal plants. They cured him, and he started the Presbyterian church in 1828 which even today is often referred to simply as Basel. Akuapem Twi is it’s own dialect, and this was the first Ghanaian language to be written in order to translate the bible.

Basel Missionaries in Ghana, 1926

The Swiss ambassador, Dr Peter Schweizer, wrote a book about these missionaries. He wrote that the missionaries thought of travelling to Africa, "in response to the call to elevate the uneducated and heathens from their state of ignorance" but were surprised to see well-developed structures with intricate cultural tissues. I myself came with an updated version of this twisted perception of Africa fed to me by American news - everyone is poor, infectious diseases are everywhere, there is no clean water, etc. I did my best to come with an open mind and found most of my preconceived notions to be false.

I don’t think I would have fallen in love with Ghana had I lived anywhere else. It’s not just the cool weather; Mampong was the perfect cultural immersion. I was the only white person in the town.  The local Akuapem people exposed me the traditional culture of Ghana: the food, traditions, beleifs, values, and language. They are really the ones who taught me Twi and gave me a chance to practice daily. If I had to buy some tomatoes, I would speak Twi. If I needed directions, I would speak Twi. Everytime I heard a new word, I would try to write it down. I would not have had such an experience in Accra, the modern cosmopolitan capital city where most ex-pats spend their time and where English is commonplace.

Speaking Twi is so important to me, because I truly beleive language is the window into any culture. Learning this languge defintely helped me integrate into the community more quickly. It built trust between Ghanaians and myself. Many obroni come here with a false sense of superiority. Learning the language sends a message of respect.

At first, I was a mini-celebrity in Mampong. People heard there was a white guy who spoke Twi, and strangers would come and want to talk with me. For those people, usually the older generations who don’t speak English, it was their first time having a conversation with a white person. I live for these moments, seeing the shock on people’s faces when I rattle off a sentence in Twi. They get especially excited when I drop a proverb or two. There are a lot of proverbs, there is even a proverb that says “The wise is spoken to in proverbs, not in plain language”. To say I’m sad in Twi you say “me kra su” which literally translates to “my soul is crying”. There is no word for goodbye, instead people often say “wo ne Nyame nko” which means “Go with God”. These little details in the language reflect intricacies of the culture I would have never understood had I never made an effort to learn.

The kids are always interacting with me. “It’s a rare treat for kids to see the Obroni”, a friend told me once. The word Obroni, is derived from “buro” which means “from beyond the horizon” and “ni” which means person, but is often colloquially translated into “white person”. When most kids see me, they yell or chant “Obroni” or “Obrooni maakye” (good morning). I usually just wave or say “how are you” in Twi. A lot of foreigners get upset with kids shouting at them all the time, but I don’t mind, I know they’re just surprised and curious. The only time I was ever bothered was when a little girl said “wo dwene t3 s3 oguan” (your nose looks like a sheep). I’m not going to lie, that girl got to me.

Now that I’ve been here so many times, people aren’t shocked anymore about my presence. When I arrived in Mampong for this trip, the first few days were spent catching up with most of the people in town, giving life updates such as continually disappointing various Ghanaian moms that I’m not yet married. I owe my connection to Ghana to the seredipity of landing in this place.