With the release of Band Aid 30, many commentators have criticised the campaign for perpetuating negative stereotypes and the ‘white saviour’ narrative.

A Washington Post article yesterday entitled ‘They know it’s Christmas’ describes the re-worked lyrics of the song as “demeaning”, pointing out that Africans are well aware of the religious holiday because many of them are Christian.

This fact has not been lost on people living and working in the region. In November 2012, a group of South African students and an aid agency in Norway turned the tables by producing a fictional Christmas appeal video that portrays Norway as a bitterly cold country full of freezing people in need.

Rather than ‘feed the world’, the faux campaign encouraged Africans to ‘heat the world’ by donating radiators, hence the name Radi-Aid.

The organisation says it had certain goals with the video which now has over 2 million views on YouTube. Among the aims of the campaign was that fundraising "should not be based on exploiting stereotypes" and that the media should have more respect in portraying suffering children.

While Band Aid 30 is well on the way to raising millions of euro for the Ebola crisis in Africa, a re-release of Radi-Aid might do a more effective job in transforming the world's perception of the region and its future development.