Africa: Forgotten or Misrepresented?

Africa: Forgotten or Misrepresented?

If ever a place labored under a set of stereotypes, it is Africa. The image of Africa in the American mind, is worse than incomplete, it is inaccurate. Whether they perceive it as a land of barbarous political extremes or as a stunning setting for tracking wildlife, Americans have long tended to reduce the vast continent to a list of clichés.

The coverage of Africa and its people by the Western media is seen by Africans as biased and strife-driven. Africa makes the headlines often when there are pictures of starving children, civil wars, and military coups and United States military actions on the continent. This geographically, politically and culturally vast continent remains among the least well understood of the world’s regions. Andrew Hart, author of teaching the media, asserts that “News coverage of Africa has often been of poor quality, inclining towards stereotypes and misinformation.

Although home to 800 million people, Africa simply does not receive the amount of media attention that other regions of the world do. This is not a new phenomenon as various researchers have documented the decline and continuing lack of media coverage of Africa over the last 40 years.

The media portray a distorted picture. Crises in Darfur, the Congo, Biafra and Ethiopia, amongst others capture headlines. Many stories surge to the headlines and disappear quickly, leaving Americans with little understanding of the continent or the politics that drive it. Americans are left to believe that Africa is a confusing place with instability in government, society, and even country names. Most Americans have never visited Africa and will never visit Africa, yet there is an image of Africa in the American mind.

In the immediate post-colonial period, Africa was still covered in a considered and serious fashion. Even middle market papers in America and Europe had several African specialists and had correspondents based in Africa who filed on a regular basis and offered informed comments on African affairs. Dr. Franks of the Westminster Council on Culture and Communication says “Now, it appears that Africa was interesting as long as it was perceived as an end of Empire Narrative.”

Since the end of Colonization, Africa no longer commands the same level of coverage in the West. The end of the European colonialism in Africa coincided with the division of the world into two power blocs of opposite ideological persuasion, plungering the world into a bitter Cold War in which the respective leaders of the blocs, the United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in an intense rivalry. Africa inevitably became a fertile ground for these two powers’ intervention in the race to fill the perceived vacuum left by the colonial powers.

During the Cold War years (1950-1989), the United States sent $1.5 billion in arms and training to Africa thus setting the stage for the current round of conflicts. Africa inevitably became the battleground for opposing capitalist and communist ideologies, a battle fought to the death in Africa.

Appalling atrocities committed by the South African proxy troops in Angola and Mozambique, and the opportunistic propping up by both superpower blocs of repressive governments all over Africa whose policies resulted in famine, war, and pestilence. Africa as a victim of international power relations is then blamed for the result.

When the Western news media outlets report the horrific consequences of these wars, they often portray Africans as victims and helpless people waiting to die, but they never mention the cause of the resulting deaths. From 1991 to 1995, the United States increased the amount of weapons and other military assistance to fifty of the total fifty-four African countries.
The United States funded wars have been responsible for the deaths of millions of Africans and subsequent displacement. There was still fighting and wars but they were no longer explicable through either a colonial or a cold war paradigm and were often dismissed as ‘tribal’ or ‘ethnic’ conflict – neither of which were comprehensible or worthy of much interest.

The Western media simply misses many of the important aspects of the wars that were fought and the wars that are continued to be fought, they missed many of the most important aspects of the famine caused by this war; one of which was the destabilizing impact of the struggle for dominance being waged in the region by the United States and the Soviet Union.
Studies indicate that about 80 percent of the international news that flow through the newsrooms across the globe come from the four major news agencies – Reuters, Agence France Presse, United Press International and the Associated Press – and international cable news networks – CNN and BBC. Of this, about 20 percent is devoted to developing countries, which account for almost three-quarters of world population.

The tsunami that ravaged Indian Ocean coastal regions on December 26, 2004 garnered more English language media coverage in the first two months after it struck than other “forgotten” crises in the world – six of them in Africa – have received in two years.
A very popular image that the Western media projects on Africa is that of abject poverty and widespread diseases. Many Americans have images of Africa that are anachronistic, partial, and often inaccurate. According to former Secretary of State George Schultz, “the perception of Africa that most of us grew up with – unknown lands somehow exotic and divorced from the rest of the world – has unfortunately persisted in some quarters despite the last [45] years of Africa’s independence and increasing presence in the world stage. It is a misconception that ignores compelling realities.

The American audiences see it all the time, and with increasing frequency of late: full-color photographs of mostly poor, starving African men, women and children, staring hollow-eyed from newsstands. These visuals are usually accompanied by woeful, hopeless, doomsday articles about famine, death and debt. The writers of these articles who in no shape or form look African, or at the very least are not black, predict the imminent tragedy if the rest of the ‘developed’ world doesn’t step in soon and save uncivilized, savage Africa from itself.

The typical Western foreign correspondent in Africa is one who arrives in one of the major cities like Lagos, Nairobi, Accra or Addis Ababa already certain that there is nothing fundamental, let alone of educative value which he could possibly find in the ‘dark continent’. But since he must send home some copy in order to justify the investment in him, he concludes that his readers in New York as well as in Switzerland, can at least be titillated with bits of gossip and quaint exotic happenings.

A garbage dump in Newark is more aesthetically pleasing than the same in the big city of Lagos, Nigeria. Violent crime in Kenya is more hideous than the same in New York or Chicago. The Son of Sam is a heroic figure in comparison with a desperate thief in Lagos.

While an African discusses his country today as part of the changing world, the American keeps talking of Africa of 20 years ago. American foreign correspondents, at least those who work in Africa, know nothing about empathy and humility. For American readers or viewers to be interested, news out of Africa must be negative. It must conform to traditional stereotypes in its spotlight on grotesque and sensational events. It must show misery, corruption, mismanagement, starvation, primitive surroundings and, as in the case of Somalia, chaos and outright anarchy.

Why do the media choose to portray such an image of despair and complete hopelessness? Several reasons have been suggested as to why the Western media continues to portray a skewed and biased image of Africa. Foreign correspondents in African capitals and their superiors in the media gate-keeping chain seem to already have certain perceptions ingrained in them. From newsgathering in Africa to publication and broadcast thousands of miles away, stories about Africa are looked at with these negative lenses. Even more unfortunately, reporters with a broader vision run the risk of having their stories disbelieved and unused, so the reporters learn to toe the line.

This dynamic explains why the life of Africa’s varied and diverse countries is missing. According to Ruth Mayer, author and professor of American Studies at the University of Hanover, Germany, “We hear about famines and coups, but not the rejuvenations of its cities and the cultural vitality of its village life…about oppression and massacres, but not of education, economic self help and political development… about poaching and habitat destruction, but not ongoing active efforts at conservation, reforestation and environmental awareness”
The Western media automatically assumes that Americans are not interested in meaningful developmental stories about Africa because they are mundane and commercially unattractive. Unless a celebrity or a royal visits, regular news is not reported. A journalist who tries to sell anything positive about Africa cannot sell his story. Subjects other than war and disaster cannot be sold internationally.

The media is a business, and advertising drives the business. Even though American media pretends to present news as an objective and unbiased account of events in society, in reality news is a commodity and like other commodities, it is open to the impositions of commercial imperatives. Thus, profit maximization influences the determination of events as newsworthy by American media and also determines how they allocate their resources all over the world. The primary goal of the media is to make money, the media select and present news stories in ways that make them commercially viable. This is why the American media prefer to emphasize coups and earthquake news. stories and why the Tarzan and jungle image of Africa is so appealing to American media.

The belief that American viewers aren't interested in international stories and the infotainment of news has scarred foreign news reporting. Journalists’ are reluctant to pursue so-called ‘positive stories.’ Such stories do not win awards or get front-page, above-the-fold placement. But what's happening in Africa doesn't need to be cast in any special light. The Ghana Stock Exchange was the fastest-growing exchange in the world in 2003. That's not a ‘positive’ story, that's news, just like reports on the London Stock Exchange. A lot of consumers would have found it newsworthy to learn where they could have made a 144 percent return on their money.

Western beliefs about Africa have constructed an image of Africa as the repository of our greatest fears. The colonial image has become the media image. Image becomes fact. The image of Africa has important ramifications beyond American public opinions and foreign policy. Media set out the categories – primitive/modern – and define the concepts recognizable to readers and viewers. The metaphors used when reporting this news condemn armed resistance of Africans as dysfunctional and primitive.

At the top of the 20th century Africa remains the most misunderstood of the continents, crippled in imagination by images rooted in the minds of imperial Europeans who attempted to shape and invent an Africa useful to their political ambitions.


O.I.U