In August, a video went viral showing an American missionary screaming racial slurs and throwing punches at hotel workers in the lobby of the Grand Imperial Hotel in Kampala, Uganda. The violence exposed an ugly side of the way ongoing racism and colonialism continue to infuse global development. But, perhaps less talked about and more subtle are the microaggressions affecting non-white aid workers every day.
In this podcast, we hear from a diverse group of people with deep experience in the aid and development sector about their encounters with racism and inequality. We seek to understand why racist and colonial structures persist in the sector. And we learn how they can be fought both individually and at an institutional level.
Lydia Namubiru is a journalist, writer and researcher in Uganda. She worked in the development aid sector for about three years.
“The white people were bosses, and the black people reported to them. And even when you had a Ugandan who was at…
