Brand Africa – what a disaster

duckrabbit has had a flurry of visitors following our recent post about MSF’s photoblog.

It seems to have touched a nerve.

Unless you go and live in a part of Africa its impossible to explain how fundamentally flawed the understanding of Africa is in the majority of peoples minds. Its actually quite mind blowing how different much of Africa is to a Westerners expectations, which is perhaps why so few visit.

Its easy to blame one group or another but the root of the issue lies in one psychological fact and one common misunderstanding.

The fact is that negative images often stick in peoples minds. They’re what we remember.

The misunderstanding is that Africa is just a country, that everyone is the same and therefore what happens in one small part is representative of everywhere.

We (in the developing world) tend to homogenize Africa as a single entity, Sarah Palin style. Most people don’t even know that Egypt is an African Country, or that the Islam is the majority religion in Africa.

But here’s a thought.

One of the biggest disasters faced by Africa, is not war, famine, hunger, corruption or AIDS but our branding of the continant as distilled to us mainly through news but also through NGO’s. Actually most NGO’s do focus on positive images of Africa but they don’t stick. Why? Because the images that come with the greatest force, with required urgency are the ones that are meant to illustrate where action or money is needed to respond to a humanitrairn situation.

A year ago today I was sat outside a small community radio station in Elodret, Kenya.

Eldoret is the town in which a mob locked a group from another ethnic group into a church and burnt them to death (one of many terrible events that took place in the town during post election violence). One of the journalists asked me why represntations of Africa are always negative? She was angry and upset and I wasn’t about to lie to her. My response was that they weren’t always negative but whilst people kept killing each other this was what would be reported (especially in countries visited by tourists), and this is what would stick in peoples minds.

Its true what sticks is the horror. For me it was the radio presenter who I trained who told me she was taking calls through the night from people who were begging to be rescued. They were being burned alive in their homes.

If you only see someone’s faults its inevitable you’ll think they’re a waste of space. Let me tell you Africa is full of the most magical, spiritual, breathtakingly beautiful space and people. There’s some terrifying stuff going on there too. It is as god given as it is god forsaken.

Please do take two minutes to hear out Kenyan businesswoman Jane Arunga, whose comments here will be an education to some:

June Arunga on Western Attitudes Towards Business in Africa from DRI on Vimeo.

YOUR SAY:

ADAM WESTBROOK

Great post. I worked in Ghana for 5 months when I was 18, and what I saw there doesn’t correlate with the western-held view of “Africa”. Like you say, the fact we all call it Africa, is bad enough, lumping a massive continent with hundreds of societies, thousands of languages etc into one word.

I wrote about it on a (now defunct) blog during Live 8
http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/adamwestbrook/entry/one_thought_on/

ICECREAM LOVER

Very interesting topic. This is especially close to my heart as it touches on me personally- being an indigenous Kenyan photographer. I come from a country where many great photographers (even though not acknowledged) hail from. My passion for photography was inspired by Mohamed Amin, mainly because he stood for something and even disability incurred in the line of duty did not stop him. Promising photojournalists like Boniface Mwangi are taking to fashion photography because we do not make the same in commissions as our peers from the west for the same job. It breaks my heart because that is the way that most great photojournalists I know have gone. Agencies spends thousands of dollars to fly in one photographer to do the job when they can cut costs on air travel & accomodation to have a good local photographer do it.

I am not against foreigners doing the jobs where local professionals lack but surely in a country like Kenya that has over 40% unemployment rate! (and doing better than most African countries) If you are going to be any help, start with giving that job to the local photographer who often than not understands the issue better. Or where none exists, training is the best option.

I totally agree with Adam, the continent’s name is Africa, but we are from many different nationalities. We rarely hear people referring to “Europeans” but Brititsh, Italian, Polish…