What Do Africans Believe About Themselves? (Adapted from Africa’s Moment by Pete Ondeng)

On March 30, 1998, four days before my thirty-ninth birthday, Time ran an unusually upbeat, forward-looking cover story entitled “Africa Rising.” I remember reading the article with great interest— not so much for its journalistic excellence, but more for the unexpected message of hope that seemed to flow from its pages.
“Hope,” the article stated, “is probably Africa’s rarest commodity.” It went on to say that although this hope may be buried amid the despair that haunts the continent, there now seemed to be more optimism in the air about Africa than there had been in decades.
This story is not about the Africa you think you know. The usual images are painted in darkest colors. At the end of the twentieth century, we are repeatedly reminded, Africa is a nightmarish world where chaos reigns. Nothing works. Poverty and corruption rule. War, famine, and pestilence pay repeated calls. The land, air, water are raped, fouled, polluted. Chronic instability gives way to lifelong dictatorships. Every nation’s hand is out, begging aid from distrustful donors. Endlessly disappointed, 740 million people sink into hopelessness.…[However] …out of sight of our narrow focus on disaster, another Africa is rising, an Africa that works.…4
The article astounded me. Why would Time, a prestigious and internationally respected news magazine, come out with such a strong message of hope for Africa when the rest of the world was reeling from the shock of destabilized global financial markets? I recall so distinctly that 1998 was a year in which the whole world seemed to be groaning from the effects of one of the greatest economic catastrophes of modern times. Most of eastern Asia, including Japan, was in deep recession. Indonesia’s gross domestic product (GDP) was expected to fall that year by as much as fifteen percent, and by six to seven percent in South Korea and Thailand. And it wasn’t just Asia. Russia’s government had defaulted on its debt, and its economic predicament was worsening almost by the day.
Even some developed economies, such as those of Britain and Canada, were slowing. Wall Street had fallen sharply from its peak with tumbling share prices shrinking the world’s financial wealth by billions of dollars. The sickness had spread far and wide, and as far as my simple eyes could see, Africa was not exempted.
The Time article was beautiful prose, to say the least. Deep down, I wanted to believe it. I wanted to accept that the future of Africa would be different from its past. In the secrecy of my thoughts, I allowed myself the space to dream, to wonder if maybe, just maybe, Africa was destined to always travel in the opposite direction from the rest of the world. Could it be, unlikely as it was, that as the rest of the world spiraled out of control, this could truly be Africa’s turn to rise? Was this the appointed time for our wheels of fortune to begin turning?
Having grown accustomed to endless prophesies of doom about Africa, I found the Time cover story to be surprising but certainly refreshing reading. Encouraging as it was, however, the story provoked in me an intense anxiety about what lay ahead for Africa and its seven hundred million or so people.
The timing of the Time article did not escape my notice: U. S. President Bill Clinton was about to make his much-heralded trip to Africa. During that six-nation tour, President Clinton would speak warmly of African successes. “One hundred years from now,” he said, “your grandchildren and mine will look back and say, this was the beginning of a new African renaissance.”
President Clinton’s remarks were in reference to a fledgling movement that had been born out of the inspiration of Thabo Mbeki, then deputy president of South Africa under Nelson Mandela. Earlier that year, Mbeki had opened a highly publicized African renaissance conference in Johannesburg where he had challenged Africans to seize the moment and take hold of their future. “The new African world which the African renaissance seeks to build is one of democracy, peace and stability, sustainable development and a better life for people, nonracism and non-sexism, equality among the nations, and a just and democratic system of international governance.”5 Mkebi’s speech was as inspiring as it was challenging.
Like many other grand ideas that had come before it, the African renaissance movement would end up being short-lived. For that brief moment, however, it served as a rallying point for idealists like myself who wished to see magic falling down from the sky and transforming Africa into a new reality of prosperity and peace.
A Rude Awakening
If the Time article induced me to search my soul, it was yet another blazing magazine cover story that would motivate me two years later to take action. The date was May 13, 2000. The magazine was none other than the influential Economist.
“The Hopeless Continent!” screamed the headline from the newsstand. I remember the knot I felt in my stomach as I picked up the magazine and walked over to the cashier to pay for it. The Economist was brutal in its assessment of Africa:

Floods in Mozambique; threats of famine in Ethiopia (again); mass murder in Uganda; the implosion of Sierra Leone; and a string of wars across the continent. The new millennium has brought more disaster than hope to Africa. Worse, the few candles of hope are flickering weakly.… The next generation [of Africans] will be more numerous, poorer, less educated, and more desperate.…6

The article sneered at the talk of an African renaissance, referring to it as an illusion. “Does Africa have some inherent character flaw that keeps it backward and incapable of development?” it asked. “The figures—not to mention the recent crop of disasters and wars—now suggest that Africa is losing the battle.” What a damning conclusion.
The article hit me like a bullet between the eyes. It was barely two years since the publication of the Time story, and at first I wondered how a story of hope could be transformed so quickly into one of hopelessness. Unlike the refreshingly positive Time article, the Economist story was what I had come to expect from the international media. Exposure to this perpetual negativity may explain why the Time article took me by surprise.
Like so many other Africans, I had over the years become drenched with the feeling of hopelessness that emanates from being told again and again that ours is a continent that doesn’t work, and probably never will. It is a hopelessness that pervades the average African’s mind— especially those born into the slavery of poverty—and creates a state of mental poverty devoid of vision, hope, and in many cases, even the energy to survive.
As far back as I can remember, Western journalists, and even our very own writers, have written and spoken about the continent of Africa as a lost cause. The tales of woe have become repetitive and increasingly negative. The message that has become all too familiar, especially to those of us who read and desire to be well-informed, is that if ever there was a hope for Africa, it is no longer there. In short, Africa is a fad that has passed.

The Media vs. Africa
The Economist article disturbed me deeply, partly because I knew only too well the power that the Western media had over my own attitude and my perceptions of Africa. It is a power that can manipulate reality and effectively create its own distorted history.
The endless stream of Africa-bashing stories coming from outside usually goes unchallenged by our own thinkers and writers, not because of the sophistication of the arguments that the stories present, but because of the enormous power wielded by the media organizations that market them.
Having lived abroad where I hungered for news from home, I am painfully aware of how little media attention African countries receive in the West except in times of crisis. Even then, the tendency is to accentuate and reinforce the negative images of the continent. Consequently, people from the West are rarely exposed to images of normal, healthy African civilization. The majority of people outside the continent have come to accept hunger, disease, conflict, and death in Africa as quite normal for that part of the world.
During my recent four-year stint in the Netherlands, I could not help but notice the sharp contrast in the manner in which the same media reported the ghastly things that the Serbs were perpetrating against the Kosovars. The debate that was played out in the Western media was about whether or not those ghastly things were normal for that part of the world.
The world looked on in horror and disbelief at the atrocities that were being committed by the Serbs, and questions were raised everywhere as to how this kind of barbarism could actually be happening in Europe. They could not fathom that the Serbs, as Europeans, would be capable of such uncivilized behavior. Something, or someone, out of the ordinary had to be responsible for the horror, and that something or someone had to be removed in order for civilization to return. The rest is history. An American-led NATO force stepped in and dealt decisively with the Milosevic government that was deemed to be behind the atrocities.
Which brings us back to Africa and its sad story. How often do we ever hear non-Africans crying in disbelief, “How can such barbarism be happening in Africa!”? The sad truth is that as long the world continues to hold a paradigm of Africa as a no-good place of violence, murder, slaughter and mayhem, any effort by the world community to rescue Africa from its internal enemies would only be seen as a waste of time.

The Power of a Paradigm
Stephen R. Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, makes a compelling argument about the power of paradigms, and how our paradigms effectively control our lives.
The word paradigm comes from the Greek. It was originally a scientific term and is more commonly used today to mean a model, theory, perception, assumption, or frame of reference. In the more general sense it is the way we “see” the world—not in terms of our visual sense of sight, but in terms of perceiving, understanding, and interpreting.7
In explaining the concept of paradigms, Covey uses an example that I have found helpful in my own effort to explain what I believe is one of Africa’s greatest dilemmas: Suppose you wanted to arrive at a specific location in central Chicago. A street map of the city would be a great help to you in reaching your destination. But suppose you were given the wrong map. Through a printing error, the map labeled Chicago was actually a map of Detroit. Can you imagine the frustration of trying to reach your destination?
There are of course several things that you could choose to do. You might decide to work on your behavior—you could try harder, be more diligent, and even double your speed. But your efforts would only succeed in getting you to the wrong place faster. You might then decide to work on your attitude—you could think more positively, for example. But you would still not get to the right place. You would still be lost.
The fundamental problem in this situation would not be your attitude, but simply that you have the wrong map. If you had the right map of Chicago, then diligence would become important, and if you encountered obstacles along the way, your attitude could make a difference. But the first and most important requirement is that you start out with the right map.
Each of us has many, many maps, or paradigms, in our heads. We interpret everything we experience through these mental maps. We seldom question their accuracy. We are usually even unaware that we have them. We simply assume that the way we see things is the way they really are or the way they should be. The tragedy of this is that so many people spend their lives driving around in circles and never getting where they should be going because they picked up the wrong maps along the way.
So what does all this have to do with Africa? My answer is, “Just about everything!” I am convinced that the perception, or paradigm, through which many non-Africans view Africa is one of the key obstacles to Africa’s development. Unfortunately, this negative perception is not confined to non-Africans.
Too many Africans carry around a burden of negativity about themselves and their continent that severely cripples their ability to progress. Whether from forces of history or from years of repeated bombardment by the highly negative mass media, Africa has adopted a self-image that feeds on itself and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In his fascinating little book entitled Doing Business in Africa, Chudi Ukpabi points out a number of factors that have influenced the submergence of the African’s identity and self-perception. Ukpabi points out, for example, that many Europeans are willing to study the Japanese, Chinese, Indian, and Indonesian languages and ways of life in order to communicate and do business in those societies. Yet the same Europeans generally are unwilling to do the same with regard to African society.
Because of existing power relations, the Africans are the ones pressured into adapting to Western thinking, its language, religion, rules of personal conduct, etc. The African is expected to change his traditional management culture, his organizational and decision-making skills in order to provide a business environment in Africa deemed acceptable by the international community.8 In other words, in order to succeed even in business, the African has to submerge his own identity and cultivate the Western business culture in order to be considered a good business partner. The damage is subconscious, and its impact is farreaching.
Years of mental bombardment have resulted in a debilitating, negative self-image that renders social and economic progress almost impossible. It doesn’t take a genius to come to the conclusion that the battle for Africa’s future will not be won until it is first won in the mind of the African. As much as we find ourselves going through the motions of development, few Africans really believe in their hearts that Africa will ever have the substance to rise out of the mire of poverty and hardship that has only become more pronounced over the years. This, to me, is the real tragedy of Africa.

What Do Africans Believe About Themselves? (Adapted from Africa’s Moment by Pete Ondeng)

What Do Africans Believe About Themselves?

(Adapted from Africa’s Moment by Pete Ondeng)

On March 30, 1998, four days before my thirty-ninth birthday, Time ran an unusually upbeat, forward-looking cover story entitled “Africa Rising.” I remember reading the article with great interest— not so much for its journalistic excellence, but more for the unexpected message of hope that seemed to flow from its pages.

“Hope,” the article stated, “is probably Africa’s rarest commodity.” It went on to say that although this hope may be buried amid the despair that haunts the continent, there now seemed to be more optimism in the air about Africa than there had been in decades.

This story is not about the Africa you think you know. The usual images are painted in darkest colors. At the end of the twentieth century, we are repeatedly reminded, Africa is a nightmarish world where chaos reigns. Nothing works. Poverty and corruption rule. War, famine, and pestilence pay repeated calls. The land, air, water are raped, fouled, polluted. Chronic instability gives way to lifelong dictatorships. Every nation’s hand is out, begging aid from distrustful donors. Endlessly disappointed, 740 million people sink into hopelessness.…[However] …out of sight of our narrow focus on disaster, another Africa is rising, an Africa that works.…4

The article astounded me. Why would Time, a prestigious and internationally respected news magazine, come out with such a strong message of hope for Africa when the rest of the world was reeling from the shock of destabilized global financial markets? I recall so distinctly that 1998 was a year in which the whole world seemed to be groaning from the effects of one of the greatest economic catastrophes of modern times. Most of eastern Asia, including Japan, was in deep recession. Indonesia’s gross domestic product (GDP) was expected to fall that year by as much as fifteen percent, and by six to seven percent in South Korea and Thailand. And it wasn’t just Asia. Russia’s government had defaulted on its debt, and its economic predicament was worsening almost by the day.

Even some developed economies, such as those of Britain and Canada, were slowing. Wall Street had fallen sharply from its peak with tumbling share prices shrinking the world’s financial wealth by billions of dollars. The sickness had spread far and wide, and as far as my simple eyes could see, Africa was not exempted.

The Time article was beautiful prose, to say the least. Deep down, I wanted to believe it. I wanted to accept that the future of Africa would be different from its past. In the secrecy of my thoughts, I allowed myself the space to dream, to wonder if maybe, just maybe, Africa was destined to always travel in the opposite direction from the rest of the world. Could it be, unlikely as it was, that as the rest of the world spiraled out of control, this could truly be Africa’s turn to rise? Was this the appointed time for our wheels of fortune to begin turning?

Having grown accustomed to endless prophesies of doom about Africa, I found the Time cover story to be surprising but certainly refreshing reading. Encouraging as it was, however, the story provoked in me an intense anxiety about what lay ahead for Africa and its seven hundred million or so people.

The timing of the Time article did not escape my notice: U. S. President Bill Clinton was about to make his much-heralded trip to Africa. During that six-nation tour, President Clinton would speak warmly of African successes. “One hundred years from now,” he said, “your grandchildren and mine will look back and say, this was the beginning of a new African renaissance.”

President Clinton’s remarks were in reference to a fledgling movement that had been born out of the inspiration of Thabo Mbeki, then deputy president of South Africa under Nelson Mandela. Earlier that year, Mbeki had opened a highly publicized African renaissance conference in Johannesburg where he had challenged Africans to seize the moment and take hold of their future. “The new African world which the African renaissance seeks to build is one of democracy, peace and stability, sustainable development and a better life for people, nonracism and non-sexism, equality among the nations, and a just and democratic system of international governance.”5 Mkebi’s speech was as inspiring as it was challenging.

Like many other grand ideas that had come before it, the African renaissance movement would end up being short-lived. For that brief moment, however, it served as a rallying point for idealists like myself who wished to see magic falling down from the sky and transforming Africa into a new reality of prosperity and peace.