Africans don't want your stinky T-shirts and other mythbusters.
Let’s play a little game of word association. I’ll say a word and you tell me the first
thing that comes to mind. Ready?
Africa.
Did you think any of these words?
If so, you’re probably not alone.
In fact, if western news media is to be believed, there’s not much else going on on the continent
except death, destruction and disease. This is hardly surprising. It’s simply how the
news works: if it bleeds it leads, and arguably Africa is no different from anywhere else
The problem is not that the news is full of negative stories about Africa but that our
narrative has only marginally improved since John Locke wrote about encountering "beasts
with no houses" in 1561. And the stereotypes are everywhere.
Take Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie who has talked about being criticised by a
professor for creating characters that were not “authentically African.”
And it seems literature’s single story of Africa comes bound with a single book cover.
As Columbia PhD student Simon Stevens discovered, if you write a story that has anything to
do with the continent, no matter where it’s set and no matter what it’s about, your
book cover will get the “acacia tree treatment”.
The fashion industry also loves an African stereotype. For Louis Vuitton Africa is all
lion cubs, giraffes, and, wait for it… acacia trees at sunset.
As the adage goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, so creative directors have it figured
out: if Native Americans run with wolves, then us Africans love legging it after leopards.
Just look at Naomi go.
There are countless other examples: the African in Hollywood films is the warlord, the slave,
the child soldier, the object of sexual desire or the extra playing a foreign dignitary. How
do I know he’s African? Why, his dashiki of course. Just don’t look for us in sci-fi
– there are no Africans in the future.
And the aid industry is notoriously bad at perpetuating the stereotype of a chaotic continent,
where unspeakable things happen.
I guess if your heart is in the right place, you don’t have to care much about development
with dignity. After all, the BandAid boys do ask a pertinent question:
Do they know it's Christmas time at all?
Yes, they do.
Still, the narrative is slowly changing and one reason that’s happening is the internet.
Yeah, you heard right: Africans enjoy Facebook stalking their school friends just as much
as anyone. But more importantly they are using the web to reach the world with their own
stories – or at least go online to call out lazy, damaging stereotypes.
I want to get a million shirts donated to the people of Africa. They all need shirts.
With falling data costs and increasingly cheap smartphones (thanks China) expect Africans
to be joining the global conversation online. Mobile phone subscription is predicted to
rise from 635m to 930m by the end of 2019
African digital publishers might not be taking over the world yet but when Kanye West signed
Nigerian singer D’Banj to his record label in 2011, it was clear that Afrobeat definitely had.
Is your coupe decale better than hers?
Sometimes what you hear about Africa will be negative, other times it’ll be positive.
But what do you expect from a land that spans 30.2 million square kilometres; is home to
more than a billion people from some 2000 distinct ethnic groups who speak just as many
just as many languages.
Listen, Africa doesn’t need saving. All she needs is for people to hear this and simply
be open to whatever comes next.