Reimagining Africa | Amina Flynn

When someone mentions Africa to you, in all honesty, what is the first image that comes to mind?  For the few people that I asked, and it was by no means meant to be a conclusive survey, it was images of poor starving little children, of poverty, and war. Yet who can blame them, as our charities and media bombard us with such images. Accompanying the heating up of the aid debate in recent months, there has been the bombardment of ad campaigns by all the usual charities over Christmas accosting us to help all the poor African children, who can’t help themselves. In a novel approach, Oxfam GB, and to an extent Irish Oxfam, have recently launched a hunger campaign where its main focus is to show the beauty of African landscapes in attempt to show Africa’s potential not just problems. This arose after a study of 2000 people in the UK showed that 43% of them thought that conditions in the developing world would never improve, and 80% of them thought that the media portrayed the developing world in a negative light. As someone from the standard sub-Saharan developing country, often used to perpetuate such images of poverty, I was both mildly surprised and intrigued.Since moving to Ireland a few years ago, I have grown to resent the continuous perception of my continent, and more particularly my country, as a hopeless, aid sucking pit and the associated pity that comes along with that. Back home, my friends and I would laugh as we talked about our experiences in the Western World, and the ridiculous questions and perceptions that were associated with our countries; we all lamented their ‘ignorance’ as we put it. I remember my English teacher telling us, somewhat hopelessly, that we shouldn’t try and change their minds. Rather laugh and blow their mind when your response to their question is ‘Yes, I did have a pet lion, don’t you?’ His view was that in a modern world, with internet and growing access to information, if the world still chose to see us as underdeveloped, backwards and all part of the same country (i.e. Africa the country not the continent), then don’t waste your time getting angry.Yet when I did move to the ‘developed world’ I was struck by people’s perception of Africa and did waste my time getting angry.  No joke, I had people asking me if I knew what a cell phone was, if I lived in a real house or if we had wild animals running amuck in our area (really, it did happen).  Although these questions may seem ridiculous, it is an in built perception of many people, as the beauty, growth and development that many countries in the developing world have is never shown, and so we rely on the images that we are shown.Yet at the same time, I recognise that these images, and campaigns informing us of the poverty that exists in the world are necessary, and that the money charities raise helps people who are in desperate need of it. A few months ago, I saw a World Vision ad, showing a little hungry girl (you know the kind of ad) with a serious voice over telling us how this girls name was Amina, and how she had to walk for miles to get clean water. The next day one of my friends noted that if I was that desperate for water, I could have always just asked her for some. Nothing quite highlights the two conflicting worlds that exist in sub-Saharan Africa better than me watching that ad, from my warm cushy sofa, as another person, called Amina, from the developing world. On the one hand, as highlighted by the recent news reports, there are still lots of areas where people are in desperate need of help, and the poverty shown in all those ads over Christmas does exist. Furthermore, we do still need aid, and there are countries with governments perhaps not engaging in the best course of action for their country, but there is a side to Africa that isn’t shown. There has been development in the developing countries (imagine that!)In the last 20 years there has been a marked improvement, in areas of education, healthcare, development of technology and economic growth. The mortality rates of children below five has dropped by 5.3%. Within sub-Saharan Africa, numerous countries have expanded by more than 6% a year for six years of more, as well as an average growth rate of 4.6% across sub-Saharan Africa. All this has resulted in better infrastructure and development, and our towns and cities are continuously growing.Then on the other side, there are all the natural resources and wonders that exist, from Victoria Falls to the Okavango Delta.  Just watch David Attenborough’s Africa show, and you can see the beauty and splendour that exists. However, I stress that it is worth noting that most of shots don’t have people or mud huts in them, playing with the cheetahs, because as many Irish people live in towns and cities, so too do we.The aforementioned Oxfam Campaign is an attempt to try and get people to question what they know about Africa. Both the campaign and I are not pretending poverty doesn’t exist, but rather trying to convince you to see Africa as more than just one hopelessly poor place and rather as the place of beauty and potential that it is.