Your chance to win 100 trillion dollars at Vrije Universiteit

Once a year at VU, some bright-eyed researchers gather for a faculty competition where the winner receives, wait for it, a giant novelty cheque worth 100 trillion dollars. Yes. 100 trillion dollars! And VU rolls this out with pride: the theatrics, the applause, the oversized cheque that requires two people to hold it up (not because it’s heavy, but because the number of zeroes is a health hazard). Because nothing says “academic excellence” quite like being handed a piece of cardboard announcing your 100 trillion Zimbabwean dollar prize and your newfound status as a Zimbabwean mega-trillionnaire… equivalent to roughly one euro. 

If VU truly had that kind of money lying around, surely every coffee machine on campus would dispense free cappuccinos and emotional support! But alas, the only thing they’re dispensing is hyperinflation humour. Good laugh, VU. Really. But as you chuckle, one question sticks in my mind:

Funny for whom?

Imagine if that cheque were written 100 trillion drachma, I don’t think Greek students at VU, or the Dutch Greek relations behind them, would appreciate watching their country’s economic collapse, reduced to a novelty gag. So why is it somehow acceptable when the target is Zimbabwe?

This isn’t even a VU original. The internationally famous Ig Nobel Prizes, Harvard’s slapstick scientific awards, have been handing out Zimbabwean hyperinflation banknotes for years, waving them around like party confetti. But still, the joke is always the same: “Look how worthless this African currency is.” Ha. Ha. 

Zimbabwe’s collapse wasn’t satire; it was survival. Let’s step out of the comedy club for a second. Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation in 2008 reached 231,000,000%. Prices doubled every 24.7 hours. Families carried backpacks of cash to buy basic groceries, and by the time they reached the counter, the price had already changed. A loaf of bread shot from Z$2 million to Z$35 million in seven days. Teachers earned the equivalent of $1 USD per month. Zimbabwe’s economy was literally killing people as hospitals ran out of medicine, food shortages spread, and life expectancy for women collapsed to 34 years, leaving thousands to die from preventable illnesses, starvation, and the total breakdown of public services. By 2008, 94% of Zimbabweans were living below the poverty line. Parents buried their children because they couldn’t afford antibiotics. Over 3 million people fled, carrying their lives in plastic bags and the passports that would hopefully get them somewhere, anywhere, with food and electricity. Real funny, right?

So when Western institutions parade these notes as comedic props, they’re not mocking a currency. They’re mocking a catastrophe. A catastrophe they themselves helped cause. Zimbabwe’s economic collapse was rooted in colonial-era structural inequality, where land, wealth, and productive capacity were concentrated in the hands of a white minority, leaving the post-independence economy fragile and deeply uneven. The IMF structural adjustment programmes of the 1990s further weakened the country by slashing social spending, cutting wages, and destabilising key industries. When the government attempted to correct colonial land dispossession through chaotic and poorly managed land reforms, agricultural output plummeted, triggering widespread shortages. Combined with international sanctions, corruption, and political mismanagement, these structural weaknesses spiraled into one of the worst economic collapses in modern history. Thank you, West, for being both the fuel and the fire. Burning a country down to a novelty for your giggles.

Meanwhile, Europe handles its own crises… very differently

Take Greece. During the debt crisis in 2009, unemployment hit 27%, youth unemployment hit 60%, GDP shrank by 25%, and 34 trillion drachma was worth 1 USD. Nobody dared hand out novelty cheques in “worthless drachma” at academic events.

Why? Because Greece is in Europe. Because suffering in Europe is a tragedy. And suffering in Africa? A punchline. Zimbabwe becomes the continent-sized “haha” moment.

Greece becomes a somber EU press conference. The hierarchy is clear:

Greece gets sympathy

Zimbabwe gets satire

Europe gets empathy

Africa gets novelty cheques

Zimbabwe becomes a joke while Greece is treated with solemnity because the Netherlands has deeper political, cultural, and economic ties to Greece. Its suffering feels “close,” while Zimbabwe remains distant and therefore easier to trivialise. But this isn’t really about relationships, it's about power. Western countries extend empathy upwards and sideways, never downwards.. These hierarchies let powerful states decide whose pain is treated as tragedy and whose is turned into satire, reinforcing Eurocentric ideas of whose sovereignty and suffering deserve respect. And when an institution that claims to care about global wellbeing participates in this dynamic, it stops educating and starts perpetuating the exact imperialist patterns it claims to critique.

VU boasts about its global awareness, sustainability, decoloniality, ethics, and inclusivity. Entire courses dissect the moral weight of global inequality. And yet, in a building somewhere on this campus, a Zimbabwean economic tragedy is reduced to a reusable cardboard prop. If VU cannot fix the colonial economic structures that shaped Zimbabwe’s downfall, fine. If VU cannot transform global financial injustice, fine. But surely, the bare minimum is not to turn someone else’s suffering into satire.

A final thought

Next time you host this competition, look at that giant cheque and ask yourself:

Are you laughing at global inequality, or reproducing it?

Are you critiquing economic injustice, or contributing to it?

Because research done without global awareness, empathy, or historical literacy…

Well, let’s just say it’s worth the 100 trillion Zimbabwean dollars they boast about.