From: twfst1@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Tunde W Fanimokun)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african
Subject: Image of Africa outside Africa
Date: 7 Apr 92 03:57:08 GMT
Organization: Univ. of Pittsburgh, Computing & Information Services

I am thoroughly frustrated at the projected image of Africa outside the
continent. There is this stereotype of Africa as containing ONLY mud-huts,
loin cloth clad men and bare breasted women with stark naked malnourished
children. The more forgiving articles show schools with classes held under
the shade of trees, scruffy looking men on bicycles and crude medical care
being given by WHITE volunteers.

While I am not saying none of this is true and not being able to speak for
all countries on the continent, I know that there has been a lot of devel-
opment in Africa. In Nigeria, where I come from, we have at least 21 cities-

-- with thousands of multistory(2-20 floors) buildings made of concrete brick,
   steel, glass and whatever other materials are used in modern architecture;
-- with tar covered concrete streets within and connecting all the states and
   plied by cars, motorbikes and vehicles of all makes from all over the world;
-- with hundreds of very good schools and universities in beautiful, well laid 
   out buildings having students in school uniforms, that is, shirts, trousers,
   skirts, socks, shoes and sometimes blazers and ties;
-- thousands of medical doctors with hundreds of college graduates added every
   year employed at the numerous public and private hospitals in the country;
-- with planned cities, well dressed natives and all other things expected of
   a civilized, educated society;

I am sure Nigeria is not an isolated case. There must be hundreds of cities and
towns all over the continent which can be shown in write-ups and articles. All
countries of the world have economic and social problems and achievements, and
Africa is no exception. Why then is it that only the problem areas of Africa 
are shown as the standard picture of the entire continent. Most of the problems
in urban African cities are similar to those of American cities and yet the
sterotype for them is entirely different.

As an example, I would like to mention  something that I saw at the
Frankfurt Airport during a transfer on my way here. There was a long corridor
of photographs from places around the world. From England they had a photo of
Central London and the Westminister Abbey, from China and India they had photos
of beautiful temples and buildings, from America, the New York skyline  and 
other photos generally depicting structures and buildings unique to the places
shown. However, for Africa they had a photo of sand dunes in the desert - ONLY!

The false stereotyping does not seem to be limited to Africa though. I live in
an International Living Unit and the other residents and I discuss this problem.
The Arab residents complain of images of a region full of Moslem, turbaned,
religious fanatics trying to convert the whole world to Islam, the Hispanics of
an image of a lazy group of people not willing to do any honest work other than
menial labour. I could go on and on. 

My quesiton is, Why do these false ideas exist and what can constructively
be done about them?  Who makes them up?  Why do people tend to leave out the
positive things and only focus on the negative?  Personally, it makes me
sick...

Tunde Fanimokun
Nigerian/African National...and damn proud of it too...