Writing a new story about Africa

TED GLOBAL 2007, MONDAY, JUNE 4,DAY 1: The first day's speakers--Euvin Naidoo, Andrew Mwenda, Carol Pineau, Andrew Dosunmu, Zeray Alemseged, and Newton Aduaka--took the story of Africa, the tired story of dependence, desperation, and despair, and tore it to shreds. They took the West's gaze, and killed it, stomped on it, mocked it, burned its effigy (Joseph Conrad to be precise) so that we could start an entirely new conversation using an entirely different vocabulary.  We killed famine, death, hopelessness, hunger, tragedy, poverty and started using words like potential, opportunity, wealth, entrepreneurship, ingenuity, art, imagination, creativity, success, investment, growth, choice.

These are words the media use liberally when writing about emerging nations like India, China or Brazil, but not to describe some of the fastest-growing economies in the world when they happen to be in Africa.

Now imagine spending four days where you only use the good words to talk about Africa: words of forward motion, words of change.  I'm not talking about bringing Tony Robbins on stage and dreaming of a better future.  I'm talking about hearing from the mouths of people who are out there living it, building it, succeeding (and quite possibly getting very rich) in Africa.

It's been thrilling.

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Andrew Dosunmu took my brain and rotated it exactly 90 degrees. 

I'd developed a very different perception of Africans than I had been exposed to in the New York Times (violent, sick, or dying) or National Geographic (exotic, naked, and dancing) from spending time in West Africa and making good friends. 

But I never considered the power of dispelling stereotypes by daring to portray the mundane.  Africans cheering for the home team, Africans falling in love, Africans dreaming about the future, Africans making money, Africans just trying to lose weight.

And it made me begin wondering why it is that the international media denies Africans (and I'm plagiarizing Chris Abani here)  the right to exist in all of their complexity. 

Only six of 53 African countries are in civil war.  Yes thousands of Africans are dying of malaria and HIV/AIDS.  Yes children are taking from their homes and forced to endure and themselves perpetrate horrors that would turn any grown man or woman mad. 

But millions more are just living their lives.  These lives may not be easy, but they are filled with all the mundane conflicts, aspirations, disappointments and joys that people all around the world experience. 

But telling that story instead, can it sell magazines?  Can it satisfy the Western need for shocking, escapist pain porn?

Up Next: Africa needs capital, not aid

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I'm a bit slow, but if you want the session by session coverage, Ethan Zuckerman, multi-tasker extraordinaire has detailed recaps of all the speakers.

Comments

Honestly, I never post on blogs out of habit. But given that as an anthropologist I commonly hear these same arguments, I must say that these speakers did not do too much to dispel the "Dark Continent" myth. A big part of the problem is the concept of speaking of "Africa" in any relevant sense outside of geography. "Africans falling in love" does nothing to make our image more complex. Some countries deserve our attention in a set of terms more similar to those used with India and China. Others require that we think in terms of humanitarian crisis. The continent is a mosaic of different societies and situations, not some agglomeration of homogenous "Africans".

[Jennifer Brea]

Thank you for making an exception.

I agree that it is a problem, this collapsing Africa into a single geographic space, but I think the "Dark Continent" myth and the tendency of media to give short shrift to Africa's ethnic and geographic complexity are two distinct issues.

On complexity: I don't think it was either possible or desirable to parse the differences between various countries and subnational groups given the goals and constraints of this conference. Maybe I just take for granted the fact that "The continent is a mosaic of different societies and situations, not some agglomeration of homogenous 'Africans'."

On the Dark Continent: "Africans falling in love" may not deepen or nuance our understanding of that mosaic you speak of, but it complicates our image in another way. It makes it harder to think of Africans as objects, victims, or scenery, as less than human. It also made me consider in a way I hadn't before why international media do not portray Africa in its normal, ordinary moments.

How do you think the speakers should have presented "The Africa You Don't Know?" Maybe there should have been a presentation on geographic, cultural, and ecological diversity.

I think it was interesting Chris Abani's point that most Africans are just as ignorant about the continent as non-Africans are. Most people know the place they came from, but have no direct experience or knowledge about other peoples or countries.

(By the way, I hope you will reconsider your policy about not commenting on blogs. I plan in the next few days to write a lot more about TED. I am curious to learn your opinions on the African fractals talk given your background as an anthropologist.)