The Africa meme...

[Boerseun]

I stay in Africa, and have travelled a bit in the course of my work.
I have yet to see the popular images of Africa destroying itself that is the common perception in the rest of the world of what's going on down here.

Granted, in most cases the new African governments have rushed into resetting the governmental race make-up and lost a lot of expertise and experience, and service-delivery have suffered. This have led to more pot-holes in roads as scheduled maintenance was not done, as an example.

Granted, South Africa has the highest murder rate in the world. What is not said is that tribalism is alive and healthy in Africa, and borders being arbitrarily drawn have included a lot of arch-enemies in the same sovereign territory. The killings we see here have been going on for hundreds of years, and is mostly on tribe against another. Criminal killing (i.e. murder outside of a tribal context - and I am not defending tribal killings, please!) is high, but it is by no stretch of the imagination the whole story.

Granted, criminal activity of all flavours is high.

But that's not the whole story.

What if the perception created in the West of Africa as a lost cause is simply a self-reinforcing meme?

You can say that billions of dollars have been dumped in aid into Africa, and nothing happened. But that's not the whole story, either. Of a billion dollars in aid from the US, for instance, Africa will be lucky if $100 million actually reaches these shores. The other 90% is eaten up inside the US in the form of administration, etc. The common story is that since the second World War, 5 times the Marshall Plan's value have been dumped into Africa, and look - nothing happened. The simple truth is that not even half the value of the Marshall Plan made it here in usable funds. The rest disappeared in the aid-givers' countries for administration.

Okay - a lot of money made it here. But it is pointless to dump a lot of money into Africa and then make it impossible for Africa to export primary (i.e. agricultural) products to your shores by subsidising your agricultural sector to the extend that an average cow in the US is subsidised by $7 per day, and the average African lives on $2 a day. How to break into the export market, in order to start growing your economy, in order to eventually grow into secondary industrialism?

The view of Africa is that of hungry kids with bloated bellies crying as they swipe at the flies sitting on their suppurating sores. This view is enforced by media companies who want to get higher ratings for showing more shocking images than the competition. This view is also enforced by the aid givers in the west, because they make a hell of a lot of money out of it, and file it under the heading 'expenses'. This is a self-reinforcing cycle that frightens off investors, and further delays development in Africa.

I drive a shiny new car built in South Africa, on a big, well-maintained highway under streetlights that are lit by a good power grid. This power grid includes a nuclear reactor that is run on uranium that is enriched at a plant in South Africa, staffed by scientists that have learned their craft here, in South Africa. We do heart transplants. British patients come to our shores as 'medical tourists' because our private healthcare industry is amongst the best in the world. I make a cellular phone call from wherever I want to my mate's cellphone, and he's currently sitting in Zambia on an email migration project. We have one of the fastest-growing middle-classes in the world. Rustenburg, in the North-West province, has been the fastest growing city in the World for the past three years, exceeding anything offered by the East. Amazing, innit? All right-hand drive BMW's in the World are built in South Africa, to consistently exceedingly high standards. SAB, the South African Breweries, is the biggest brewer in the world, and owns a lot of brands world-wide, including Miller's. SAB owns about 40% of the Chinese beer market.
Etc.
Etc.
Etc.

Long story short - Africa rocks. But the reason the world thinks that everything here is corrupt and busted-up, and everybody's famished, is because of this self-reinforcing meme that is the popular image of Africa.
Maybe countries also do this as a subconscious thing of 'thank God we're not like that...'

Imagine if we only concentrated on the bad elements in the US? We would make guys like Jeffrey Dahmer the common image of the average American. We could say that Columbine is what high schools in the States are like. And if there was a good reason for it, we could create our own self-reinforcing meme about the States that is, in effect, totally fallacious, although there would be elements of truth in it. I mean, Dahmer did exist. Columbine did happen. But they are by no stretch of the imagination representative of the situation in the States.

I think this perception, this African meme, is more harmful to Africa than the actual isolated bad cases the meme is based upon.

Any thoughts?

[Racoon]

Wow! South Africa sounds great.

Its a wonder that when people think of Africa, they think of Ethnic cleansing in Rwanda and elsewhere, the Islamic uprising in Somalia, the images of starving Ethiopians, the ganglords of Mozambique, the brutality of the diamond trade, the poaching, general sense of economic poverty, and political instability and corruptness.

Of course almost any reference to Africa has AIDS epidemic in the paragraph...

My uncle Roger did Peace Corp in Somalia, and had some rather nice things to say, and great pictures. (this being before whats going on there now)

Western investors have been reluctant. Which is giving the Chinese a great opportunity. And I agree with your point that a lot of money earmarked for aid and development gets "lost in translation" along the way...further propogating the notion of Africa being a bottomless hole of humanitarian need.

But you make an excellent point Boerseun. Don't forget Freightliner there too in South Africa.
Africa has a lot of great things going for it; beauty, history, tradition, potential, and the Worlds largest Brewer!

damned media bias,
Rac

[orbsycli]

thank you for the perspective.

something I need to see for myself,
because you're right:

All I see about Africa is the madness.

(except yesterday when I watched the travel channel,
TV is straaaaange)

[Mercedes Benzene]

I think the perception of Africa is a very negative one. BUT, a lot of the things that people percieve are true.

The things that do happen there (ethnic cleansings, tribal killings, the whole situation with refugees, AIDS, etc.) are real. They do happen. So, I believe that Africa does have these problems, and that people are justified by percieving these images when they think of Africa.

One point must be made however, Africa is a continent. You cannot compare the US to Africa, due to the fact that Africa is so much larger. There is more land mass, more conflicting governments, more conflicting ideologies, a greater population, etc. So, I think that if you take a whole other continent, such as South America, then you will recieve the same perceptions (or misperceptions) about the continent as a whole.

However, if you take a single country, such as South Africa, I believe you will not find as many (mis)perceptions as you would when you take Africa as a whole.
You cannot look at the whole picture. You have to look at the individual countries that make up the whole.

[hallenrm]

That was some education for me, Boerseun! thanks a lot

[Pyrotex]

Well writ screed, me harty. I'm glad someone sees evidence for progress in that enchanting land.

but if the elephants and rhinos go extinct, buddy, I'm holding YOU personally responsible.

[Chacmool]

Originally Posted by Mercedes Benzene

One point must be made however, Africa is a continent. You cannot compare the US to Africa, due to the fact that Africa is so much larger. There is more land mass, more conflicting governments, more conflicting ideologies, a greater population, etc. So, I think that if you take a whole other continent, such as South America, then you will recieve the same perceptions (or misperceptions) about the continent as a whole.

However, if you take a single country, such as South Africa, I believe you will not find as many (mis)perceptions as you would when you take Africa as a whole.
You cannot look at the whole picture. You have to look at the individual countries that make up the whole.

This is an extremely important point. I don't think it's constructive to try and find one generic solution to all Africa's problems, for all the reasons Mercedes Benzene has stated. However, people have often asked me what things are like in Africa, as if it were a single homogenous entity. What works in South Africa is almost certainly not going to work in Equatorial Guinea or Egypt.

[Boerseun]

Originally Posted by Chacmool

...I don't think it's constructive to try and find one generic solution to all Africa's problems, for all the reasons Mercedes Benzene has stated... What works in South Africa is almost certainly not going to work in Equatorial Guinea or Egypt...

The point of this thread was not to find 'solutions' for Africa's 'problems', rather, the point was to illustrate that the common perception of these 'problems' might be in actual fact a self-replicating meme.

So - any ideas?