'The world doesn't need any more white saviours'

As part of a charity documentary on Malaria and neonatal clinics in Uganda, TV reporter and Strictly Come Dancing winner Stacey Dooley has been taking selfies with impoverished locals and their babies.

Celebrity 'white saviour' Stacey Dooley.

There's been some criticism of her (well-publicised) efforts.

Black Labour MP David Lammy has slammed Dooley for promoting 'tired and unhelpful stereotypes' and encouraging a 'white saviour' mentality:

The Tottenham MP accused Miss Dooley of showing a 'distorted image of Africa' and perpetuating a 'colonial era' mentality that suggests white people are the solution to poverty in deprived parts of the world.

Mr Lammy, 46, acknowledged Miss Dooley's 'good motives' but bemoaned the British celebrity trope of travelling to Africa to film charity appeals.

He's right.

Because for all the Live Aids and Comic Reliefs and celebrity charity appeals over past decades, most of Africa remains trapped in a cycle of poverty, chronic mismanagement, unsustainable population growth and humiliating dependency on the West.

After Live Aid in 1985 raised over $125 million for famine relief in Ethiopia, investigative journalists found that much of the money meant for starving children was used by Ethiopian dictator Mengistu to buy Russian weapons.

Ethiopia today is still heavily and growingly dependant on foreign aid.

We believe it's time to end Western charitable aid to Africa and focus instead on sharing expertise in business, peacekeeping, science, technology and agriculture so that African countries - if they choose to do so - can modernise and thrive independently.

This will benefit the West, not least because modernisation could dramatically slow population growth and stem the outflow of African migrants.

Africa doesn't need any more virtue signalling celebrity saviours.

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