Africa: the land of poverty, disease, starving children, and lions?

Sitting with my host family around the bowl earlier in my stay here, my Dad curiously asked me what stereotypes American’s have about Senegal. I stopped and thought about it, and couldn’t help feel a sense of shame that most people I know in the States couldn’t even locate Senegal on a map, let alone name its stereotypes. I know I didn’t know anything about Senegal before coming here, except that they spoke French and that it was in Africa. We have plenty of stereotypes for European countries like France and Italy, but for some reason Africa gets generalized and stereotyped as one giant place. The stereotypes it does get, are all negative and sad stories about poverty. But where are all the happy stories? Why don’t we ever hear about those?

A lot of people were surprised when I said I was going to go to an African country to study if it wasn’t a service trip. After all, isn’t that what most people are supposed to do when they go to Africa? Save the poor starving children in orphanages, or try to end poverty? So many people were confused when I said I was coming here to study, learn about the culture, and go to school. Wait, they have schools in Africa? But doesn’t everyone in Africa live in straw huts, drum and dance all day around a fire, have diseases and carry water on their head and live in villages in the jungle with lions? I admit, I was guilty about having at least one or two of those images in mind when I thought of “Africa,” as if “Africa” was one giant place / culture. I too had assumptions about the entire continent based on the minimal things I’d hear in the news or certain stereotypes I had gotten from things like Tarzan and George of the Jungle. Unfortunately, when people think of “Africa” they tend to have an image that includes probably at least one of those things.

But the truth is, Africa is huge, and full of a wide range of cultures and ethnic groups even within each country. If we take all of the negative stories we hear in the news, and make that our only knowledge of the continent, of course we’ll have stereotypes, and we will generalize the entire continent that way. This woman from Nigeria does a Ted Talk about the danger of a single story and how when we focus on only the negative stories, we rob people of their dignity and risk misunderstanding.

Part of the fact that we have these stereotypes is definitely the role of the media, and lack of education on African countries. It is crazy how influential the media is in creating and keeping these stereotypes we have. If you’re reading this, I encourage you to think about what your role is in creating or perpetuating African stereotypes as a consumer of media and as a participant in the education system… Just something to think about!

Below is the link to the Ted Talk!

The Danger of a Single Story