By Charles Ochen Okwir

30^th April 2011:

On Friday April 27, BBC Africa Debate came live from the Ugandan capital Kampala.  Over the last few months, the debate has asked whether Congo is a failed state, delved into the possibilities of an African Spring, discussed land-grabbing, and also, with the many ICC indictments slapped on Africans, asked whether Africa is on trial.

This time, the topic for debate will be: Africa’s Global Image: Justified or Prejudiced? And just as well – because whether by design or default, the debate on Africa’s image comes hot on the heels of another one (on the same issue) triggered by the BBC’s decision to broadcast The Today programme with live from Liberia.

Africa in European Eyes

Reacting to The Today programme in a blog article, Richard Dowden – a Director at the Royal African Society, took serious issue with presenter John Humphreys: “You can’t come here with European eyes,” you say. But that is precisely what you and the rest of the British media have been doing all this time”, Dowden charged.

Dowden’s concern is this:  That in spite of the fact that John Humphreys claims to have reported Africa “for more than 45 years”, it is only now, with The Today programme coming from Liberia, is the BBC beginning to report the “deeper realities” of Africa.

“European eyes…have always dictated the global image of Africa. Trying to get a news editor interested in the story behind Africa’s famines and wars was always difficult. It is always easier to show an aid worker saving an African child overlaid by a tragic-voiced reporter.” Dowden adds.

Dowden’s arguments are certainly legitimate.  Any critical and objective observer of African affairs will, almost certainly, also be one who harbours deep frustrations about the shallow and often sensationalist way in which the Western media reports Africa.

Ignorance & Lazy Journalism

As Dowden rightly put it in his article, Western media news values do not seem to include “a mission to explain…why Africa is the way it is.  Editors are only interested in coups, wars, hunger, disease, and Robert Mugabe”.  In the end, what others may consider to be a simple function of ignorance and “lazy journalism” ends up shaping the agenda and image the entire continent – including its billion plus people.

The ignorance factor was most vividly demonstrated in 2011 when openly gay British DJ Scott Mills did a documentary about “The World’s Worst Place to Gay”.  During the documentary, Scott visited one of Uganda’s many slums and interviewed some people who claimed to be gay.  His ignorance then came rushing forth when, after the interview, he asserted as “fact” that his interviewees had been “forced” to live in slums because they were gay.

Even for an inner London DJ, it is hard to believe that Scott had never heard of socio-economic factors that force millions into African slums.  But that did not stop him from presenting the issue with the sort of sensational astonishment that leaves a negative image of Uganda engrained in the minds of millions of global BBC viewers.

As one commentator ably put it, “…this aspect of media reporting is what has long angered the average African national…but it also saddens and amuses us too – when we interact with non-African nationals and realise [that] the depth of their ignorance is fuelled by the some western media programming depicting Africans as either crazed, starving, conniving, fraudulent or irrational…it is mostly always fantasy.”

Imperial Intellectualism

Whilst a music man like DJ Scott may be forgiven, it would require a very good excuse for one to forgive a Professor.  At the bottom of page 92 in “The Black Man’s Burden”, the book’s author Basil Davidson makes reference to what a Regius Professor of History at Oxford University once said – way back in 1963.

“Africa’s history was only a tale of barbarous tribal gyrations”, the Professor declared to his audience. By that time, it’s very unlikely that the good-old Prof had ever set foot on African soil.  But that did not stop him from pushing the imperial narrative which maintained then that Africans have known no effective and meaningful participation in their own politics.

It’s therefore quite clear that from very early on, Africa has been engaged in a struggle to, as Davidson put it, try and “…defy a sceptical, mocking, or contemptuous outside world taught be decades of imperialist ideology that Africans were really, if truth be told, primitive beings incapable of knowing what was best for themselves, let alone anyone else.”

No Smoke without Fire

However, all the Western ignorance, lazy journalism, and toxic imperialist ideology notwithstanding, it is also patently clear that over the years, Africa has been its own worst enemy.  By both commission and omission, Africa has been the number one supplier of the evidence that has sometimes been misinterpreted to construct is negative global image.    

For example, the dark clouds of war that define Africa in the eyes of most foreigners, whether ignorant or not, have not always come from heaven.  They are result of senseless political fires lit by what the great world statesman Nelson Mandela, in reference to Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, once described as a “tragic failure of leadership”.

The Role of Reform

It is therefore incumbent upon Africa to embark on radical socio-economic, but most importantly, democratic reforms that will endear it well in the eyes of the world.  If evidence of that prospect were needed, then Africa itself, with all its contradictions, provides us with the perfect answer.

No PR firm on the planet could have delivered the positive coverage that the Arab Spring delivered for Tunisian and Egyptian pro-reform activists.  In fact, as any PR professional will attest, PR is not about defending the indefensible at all costs.  Sometimes the best PR strategies that big firms that work with rogue regimes recommend to their clients is nothing more than a measured process of reform.

Ghana is also an interesting case study.  For its stability and steady match towards democratic maturity, Ghana has presented Western editors with a serious dilemma.  This, in Richard Dowden’s words, has particularly been the case with editors whose African news values are defined by “coups, wars, hunger, disease, and Robert Mugabe”

In their eyes, Africa cannot be both poor, disease ridden, and also play host to some great success stories.  As a result, Ghana’s success story hardly ever features in Western news bulletins.  Within this Ghanaian news value context, therefore, “no news” at all could in fact be “good news” for Africa’s image.

The African Perspective

In recent times, Aljazeera has been the first among the big media players to appreciate that the African story is best told through Africa eyes.  It has deployed the expertise of African Journalists who, by virtue of their local upbringing, experiences and cultural values, have a far better insight into Africa’s intricate issues than any foreign “expert” can ever have.

That, more than anything else, makes a very strong case for the establishment of a Pan-African media house that could in time, succeed in telling the African story truthfully through African eyes.  END.  Please login to www.ugandacorrespondent.com every Monday to read our top stories and anytime mid-week for our news updates.