What Africa is not

Louise Linton’s memoir about her student gap year trip doing aid work in Africa recently provoked a large online backlash among many Zambians. The book had aroused a flood of online comments and reviews, which accused the author of being demeaning and inaccurate in her narrative. Many news online media captured the reaction to the memoir of her gap year in “darkest Africa” published earlier this year.

The BBC reported that hashtag #LintonLies had been used more than 14,000 times since an extract was published in the Telegraph newspaper on Monday July 4, 2016. Although the book by the actress had not yet reached the Zambian shelves, an extract from a UK newspaper was enough to cause such a sharp reaction for many who felt the book was a misrepresentation and full of inaccuracies about Africa and Zambia in particular.

Many social media comments accused Linton of promoting harmful stereotypes about Africa. And as the #LintonLies hashtag began to trend, others spotted what they regarded as discrepancies in Linton’s account. The Scottish actress, later on twitter, said she was genuinely dismayed and very sorry to see that she had offended people as this was the very opposite of her intent.

There have been many numerous attempts to describe what Africa is and is not by many tourists, aid volunteers or workers, authors, poets, explorers, philosophers and historians who visit Africa since the birth of the continent. Even the iconic speech “I am an African”, by former South African President Thabo Mbeki cannot completely untie what it means to be an African. What is Africa then? It is clear that Africa’s image has been misrepresented by many over the years. Richard Dowden in his book “Africa; altered states, ordinary miracles” wrote that not only the western journalists are to blame for this. He argues that the aid industry, too, has an interest in maintaining the image of Africa as hopeless victims of endless wars and persistent famines.

However well intentioned their motives may have been, aid agencies have contributed to the distressing image of Africa. They, together with the western media, feed off each other. Dowden writes clearly that the aid agencies provide plane tickets, accommodation, vehicles, and drivers and may be a translator to the aid workers. In return, the journalists give the aid agencies publicity, describing how they are saving Africans and using images of distress and helplessness to raise money for their projects. This makes Africans to be portrayed as victims depending on western charity or aid.

Thus the western media by covering only disasters and wars gives the world the only image of the continent. For example, we too have seen disasters around the world such as the Tsunami or Hurricane Katrina causing havoc and damage in countries of Asia and America respectively, but do we all assume that these continents are permanently under water or disaster? However, we know from other images we see and stories we read that there is a thriving and functioning Asia and a successful America. But the world has no other ideas of Africa or its sense of ordinary people. Persistent images of starving children, fighting soldiers, political, religious, social, racial strife, corruption and political instability have accumulated the larger narratives of the continent to the outside world.

The stories of war in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the crisis in Darfur have become the story of Africa. However, not all Africans are fighting or starving. For instance, millions of Africans have never known hunger, poverty or war and lead ordinary peaceful lives. But to many western news agencies, that is not news. Africa is often spoken of as if it were one small uniform country. Africa has many realities although the other reality is usually untold. Africa is a vast continent of people comprising thousands of ethnic tribes each with their own languages. It is not only an exotic place for tourists to visit or western aid workers to do charity

For instance, anyone who is informed on geopolitics wouldn’t make a generalisation about Asia based on India or Europe based on Belgium. Geographically, Africa only exists as a piece of earth divided by oceans and a mere shape on the world map whose peoples and cultures have much in common with those from other parts of the world. However, Africa remains uniquely distinct from many other parts of the continent. Not even the Savannah vegetation covers the whole continent or the sand of the Namib Desert spreads from Cape to Cairo. Africa’s social systems, beliefs and culture are as diverse as its people and as distinct as its climates and vegetations. People in the northern part of Africa feel different from the people in southern Africa. Even within southern Africa, you can never mistake Zambia for Angola and neither of them can be generalised to be South Africa or Mozambique, for instance.

Thus, to generalise Africa is a misrepresentation of the whole continent. A few years ago, Heinemann African Writers Series published stories, novels and narratives about Africa by Africans such as Chinua Achebe, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Camara Laye and other African writers. Today, the story is much different. Much of Africa’s story is not being written by Africans themselves. Almost all of these publications are now out of print. There are very few Africans writing about Africa today while the rest of the African story has been left to be told by the outsiders. In the end, the story of Louise Linton about Africa, and Zambia in particular, is just one of the many African stories of what Africa has been said to be but is not.

The author is a fourth year student in political science at the University of Zambia

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