We’ve heard it a countless number of times – western media report of an Africa shredded by civil war, corruption, disease and poverty and neglects that “Africa also smiles.” In fact an organization called The Africa Center is launching a campaign called – well, Africa Also Smiles.
The discussions over the western images of Africa arouse strong emotions among many Africans. Yet the Mugabes and Gaddafis are real – political problems and accountability issues are real and poverty is a bigger concern in our continent than it is in most other places. It is not the African image that is the problem. It is the reality. Campaigns such as “Africa Also Smiles” may be alright, and they probably come from a good place, but they are attempts to photoshop an image rather than trying to correct the real picture on the ground. We could campaign in Europe for western countries to see us better, or we could work to make the real picture on the ground look the way we want it to look. I would rather spend more time correcting the problems at home rather than photoshopping our image abroad.
Africa does smile – a lot. But it also weeps a lot and it so happens that the stories of the weeping are what attracts the news, and probably rightly so. To try and play pretend, claiming that the reported problems are exaggerations of western media is childish delusion. Incidentally, it is the dictators who frequently want to go out of their way to fight the image while promoting the reality on the ground. How many times did the Mugabe government claim that “there is no crisis in Zimbabwe” while the country was sinking to a record low?
I prefer to sit with my friends and admit that a lot of things are pretty screwed up in our continent and we need to get to work.
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