Consider for a moment the two attached pictures; which one best represents Africa?
My gut reaction was to chose the UNICEF advertisement with the despondent-looking children. But taking that stance infantilizes Africa. The second picture is one of Nairobi, Kenya, which although it may not be Chicago or New York is a functioning “modern” city that is also a part of Africa. I began to question what made me view Africa as a continent of starving orphans and not a place with a wide variety of people and problems? I came to the conclusion that American media coverage makes Africa appear helpless, childlike, and unable to solve its own problems.
To test this theory, I went to the New York Times and browsed through the articles of their Africa section. To my surprise, only one of the articles listed was about progress in Africa, and the rest were about either political unrest, violence, and natural disaster (I invited you to follow the link and see for yourself, that hardly any of the articles pertain to progress). To further support for my hypothesis, when I clicked on a link to read about Ugandan government officials stepping down amidst scandal, the following advertisement appeared at the top of the screen...
“Children are dying in East Africa”, and cue photo of a despondent child.
Now I don’t mean to dismiss the tragedies and suffering in Africa, but I would like to make clear that there are modern cities and capable adults in Africa. Until I was about twelve years old, I believed Africa was essentially The Lion King or The Jungle Book and I believe that kind of ignorance is dangerous. There has been a recent back lash against foreign aid in Africa and I would have to agree with it. The people of Africa are perfectly capable of solving their own problems, they only need capital and international support to do so.
Since most of our exposure to Africa is through ad campaigns such as UNICEF, Heifer, or the Red Cross, which want to illicit guilt through their photos, we are left with a distorted sense of Africa. For one we categorize the whole continent as one, like I have done throughout this post, even though there are innumerable tribes, languages, customs, and cultures throughout the continent. We also tend to cast Africa in victim narratives because of our media perception. We look to give handouts instead of advice, and want to intervene instead of assist. Our media perception causes us to act a certain way in regards to Africa; so if we alter the media image or Africa, maybe we can shift people’s thinking as well?
I am curious to see how Africa appears to other people, feel free to comment!
