South Africa

Cape Town

Pretoria City - South Africa

Durban - South Africa



Botswana
Lagos - Nigeria
Over the holiday, I found myself reading about a mob that torched a church in Kenya that was housing hundreds of Kenyans fleeing election violence, killing as many as 50 people after the disputed vote that gave the president a second term. I was unable to focus on the article because of my distraction by the photos that accompanied the piece. It always seems as if a photo of Africa must depict violence, military, dirt roads and poverty.

The Western media portrays Africa as if it’s one country suffering from war, poverty, AIDS, etc. No other continent in the world is portrayed this way yet every single continent has its own problems. The media portrays a distorted picture: crises in Darfur, the Congo, Biafra and Ethiopia, amongst other captured headlines. Many stories surge to the headlines and disappear quickly, leaving Americans with little understanding of the continent. We are left to believe that Africa is a confusing place with instability in government, society, and even country names. Most of us have never visited Africa and will never visit Africa, yet there is an image of Africa in the American mind. Is it possible to focus our eyes and see Africa as a whole or has the media tainted our minds forever?

The Western media automatically assumes that Americans are not interested in meaningful developmental stories about Africa because they are mundane and commercially unattractive. Unless a celebrity or a royal visits, regular news is not reported. We’ve heard several times about Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and Madonna adopting underprivileged African children.

Oprah’s university erection was front page news all around the world. The media is a business, and advertising drives the business. Even though American media pretends to present news as an objective and unbiased account of events in society, in reality news is a commodity and like other commodities, is open to the impositions of commercial powers that be.

The primary goal of the media is to make money; the media select and present news stories in ways that make them commercially viable. This is why the American media prefer to emphasize coups and earthquake stories and why the Tarzan and jungle image of Africa is so appealing to American media. If ever a place labored under a set of stereotypes, it is Africa.

The image of Africa in the American mind, is worse than incomplete, it is inaccurate. Whether they perceive it as a land of barbarous political extremes or as a stunning setting for tracking wildlife, Americans have long tended to reduce the vast continent to a list of clichés.

Africa is a thriving metropolis. It’s extremely hard to believe, due to the fact that all we ever see are movies like “Blood Diamond,” “Tarzan,” “Out of Africa,” “Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls,” “Babel,” “The English Patient,” “Shaka Zulu” and “Hotel Rwanda.”

Although these were all exceptional films, the cinematography fed into the stereotypes that Americans have in place. Los Angeles has many poverty stricken, war zone-feeling areas but out of the thousands of movies made there, only a handful are shot in those areas. Think about it. No one would ever want to go to Los Angeles if all you ever saw was South Central, Compton, Watts or “the Jungle” (where scenes from “Training Day” were shot).

Why the media doesn’t show another side boggles me to this day but as I research, I will continue to put out articles showcasing the wonderment that is Africa.

I am not trivializing the issues and strife that goes on in Africa on a regular basis. I am not asking that the media ignore the hardships and discontinue it’s coverage. I am asking, that as one of the most beautiful and resourceful continents on this planet, it is given it’s fair press and is fully portrayed as the Motherland, as it is known.

Take the time and find out more about Africa. The western and eastern worlds are putting an awful lot of money into Africa right now and it kind of makes you wonder what they know that we don’t. By the time we find out and the media opens the gates for us to see, “they” will have acquired, once again, a land that was ours to have.

Angela Ardis is the author of “Inside a Thug’s Heart,” “My Mind’s Poetry” and the upcoming “The Block.” To contact her, visit www.AngelaArdis.com or send emails to info@AngelaArdis.com