PART I: The image, the perception, and the wrongly framed challenge

“How the African continent is presented by the media in the West, and how as a consequence the African continent has become perceived by the masses and governments in the West, has framed – wrongly I argue – what the West thinks the African economic challenge is, causing it in wrongly trying to address this wrongly framed challenge, to instead perpetuate it.”

By Hristo HristovCC BY-SA 4.0, Link

For centuries, the African continent has circle jockeyed to and fro in nearly all of the cultural, socio economic and political aspects of its life, the culmination of which was colonialism and then independence and now dependence.

Without delving too much into those machinations, I want to say that as it is, and where we are as a continent, we have moved sufficient historical distance and experimented with sufficient economic and political philosophies to be able, I believe, to evaluate with clarity, the full scope of the age in which we live as Africans, and to forthwith draw the right conclusions, the full extent of which ought to make obvious one fact: we have outgrown as a people and as a continent, the luxury of trading ourselves as the poster continent of everything except self-directed economic and political growth.

What do i mean? The current generation of Africans must work to fruit a new African consciousness, seeded on the belief that the African continent is both the subject and the object of its own destiny. That starts with re-imaging the African continent, in the eyes of the outside world, but also in the mind of its own people. It then leads to reframing its economic and political challenges and how they should be confronted by its own efforts and those of its partners, and ends with it reclaiming and asserting self-control over its own destiny and that of its children.

The requirement, let me jump ahead, to reimage Africa is a result of the current image that the media, especially the western media is selling to its people and the world. That image has influenced and skewed perceptions and accordingly led to the wrong framing of the African economic challenge in the know-how of its western partners and geopolitical allies.

That wrong framing of the African economic challenge, has led to wrong ways and means of addressing it. And as a consequence, despite being the subject of decades of global concern and financial cartels, the African continent and its people is still rooted in the earliest conditions while other continents to whom it by the way fed with human and material resources, flourish.

Let us in this conversation fearlessly reflect on the status of the African continent, and the world view of it currently, unafraid to draw the hard, maybe even divisive, but nonetheless necessary conclusions.

The image of the African continent as presented by the media in the West
However the image of the African continent and its people is constructed in the west, it follows an identical pity ridden script. Its infants, the western media makes sure to emphasize, are malnourished; its children and youth, the majority orphaned by either of civil war (into whose ranks some are conscripted), disease or neglect, are abused and deprived of safe food and clean water. They are deprived of normal family life, and are without access to quality education, basic healthcare and life opportunity.

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Speaking of education and healthcare, its children who must moreover walk miles to gazetted study centers, are not only instructed from under mango, tamarind or eucalyptus trees, but must go the whole day on empty stomachs. Its dilapidated health centers are not only always short of drugs, but are crowded so much that, for the deplorable lack of supplies and consumables, patients must share syringes and needles where providence happens to avail some.

Its mothers are destitute widows who must uncomplainingly bear the brunt of all of its still primitive society ills and backward traditions. The grass thatched homesteads at its countrysides are internally displaced people’s camps where dwell surviving remnants of impoverished communities weathering civil conflict storms or climate vagaries; the ramshackles at the city slums are makeshifts whose overstuffed occupants struggle to remember the last time they had a decent meal or when the next will come.

These and more, is what the media in the West says of the African continent. Bluntly put, the African continent is presented as a place of lack and despair, with people in need. The image is of a hunger and disease ravaged, political and civil conflict ridden continent whose kinsmen are in constant rebellion against each other and against nature.

And so you have all those pictures being aired in the print media, and on television. You have all those documentaries being run, and none of them, I bet you, will leave your eyes without a tear

But is these all true? The answer unfortunately is yes. All of these, and much more, much worse, are part and parcel of the African reality. And the Western media when it portrays this image is telling, nothing but the truth. The problem however, is that it is not telling the whole truth. If anything, it is telling the lesser, even if, in its own right, relevant truth.

How is the media not telling the whole truth? You ask. It will interest, and I am sure surprise you, and many, to know, for instance, that whereas Africa has 54 nations, there is civil conflict of note in only five or seven of them, including Somalia, South Sudan, The Democratic republic of Congo, Central Africa Republic and Nigeria, which means that regarding civil conflict - so widely told of, and rightly so, publicized - the western media is covering only about 5 African nations.

But what image do you get in the West? Is it a specific image of 5 countries in civil conflict or is it a blanket image of a warring continent? To ask the question is to answer it: Africa as a continent and as a people is in perpetual conflict, so it is reported.

And not only is this the enduring sentiment, so widely propagated, and wrongly believed in the west, the other is that Africa is a continent of uneducated people. And you know the bulk of talk about being uneducated only comes out and rightly so, as a cross-reference of proclivity to basic animal instinct, a plausible explanation, psychology will tell you, for conflict in any society, much more one that is in ‘perpetual conflict’.

But again, as before, it will surprise you to know, that a good number of African countries have some of the best literacy indicators in the world, with countries such as Equatorial Guinea, South Africa, Seychelles and of all places, the controversial Zimbabwe, having as high as 90%+ adult literacy rates. But is that the image the media in the west gives? Again to ask the question is to answer it. And many more examples I will not delve into.

The resulting perception and the wrongly framed economic challenge
As a consequence of this ‘continent and people in despair’ image, which despite being true, is the smallest reality of the African continent, the perception of the West, reflected, you can imagine as far as in its assistance policies on Africa, is that of pity, the culmination of which is the symptomatic antidote called ‘charity’ and the exercise of which is championed by a massive transfer of aid to Africa.

By unclelkt PixabayCC0 Creative Commons

What should we do with Africa? Okay, there is war in Southern Sudan, let us mobilize and send there Peace keeping troops; there is civil conflict in the Congo, let us send relief to the displaced, let us talk to neighboring countries to accept the refugees;

The masses have no access to clean water, let us construct boreholes, let us send some food to feed the hungry, to cloth the naked; people are afflicted with disease, let us ship some medicine, construct some health centers to treat them; let us make sure their pregnant mothers receive skilled antenatal care and their infants can at least live past the first year; the bulk of their children don’t study, so let us construct some schools and send some exercise books;

Their governments are struggling with debt; let us cancel some of it – speaking of debt, does that answer the question of why there is debt in the first place? All these, and many others, and there you finally arrive at it – a fundamentally wrongly framed African economic challenge in the Western policy and people psyche – the challenge of Poverty reduction.

Carefully evaluated, this wrong framing is to the African people, or at least to those who afford the luxury to thoughtfully consider the details, a double-edged suicide sword.

In the first lethal edge, we have this wrongly framed challenge being wrongly addressed by the West through aid, albeit - and I want to make sure we don’t lose sight of this – with good intentions, and in the second lethal edge, we have a people now psychologically and accordingly practically stripped off self initiative, with the majority idly waiting for help from the west, working to get support from the west (you know all those posturing charity organizations writing proposals every now and again), studying to leave for opportunities in the West (talk of expatriates) or conniving on the shores of some ocean about how to smuggle themselves to the West.

That said, we should now reframe the African economic challenge, and speak of the largest, but casually reported African reality. However before we do that - and we will in the third part of this conversation - let us first, in the second part, talk about aid to Africa, let us demystify this ‘wrong’ but admittedly ‘well intentioned’ means of addressing the ‘wrongly framed African economic challenge’.

 
PART II: Aid to Africa – demystifying the fallacy
So the West is convinced the African economic challenge is “Poverty-reduction”. And the not so independent thinking African governments, never mind the illegitimacies of some of them, meanwhile concur. In my country Uganda, Poverty-reduction has been the National slogan for the last one decade, can you imagine?

And so it is that the western cartels of good intentions are convinced, and are encouraged by some African governments, that the best way to address that challenge is through aid. Is this true? Is aid to Africa resolving or perpetuating the symptomatic problem of poverty, and worse, the causative economic and political conditions? Is aid fortifying or harming Africa’s health…………..

Lets find out in the continuation of this second part in the next post

Disclaimer: I am not a scientist. I am not an economist and I am not a politician. These are only casual thoughts, which despite pertaining serious issues of the day; nonetheless remain but the casual contributions of an idle mind for the fellowship of an idle blog! You are free to agree or disagree; and free to suggest an edit or to ignore

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