New Internationalist, Sept, 2000 by Ama Ata Aidoo
I grew up knowing that Europeans had dubbed Africa `The Dark Continent’. My emotional response was to wish that the description referred exclusively to the pigmentation of the skin of the majority of its peoples. It did not. I am not a psychologist or a psychoanalyst. However, I do know that it has not been easy living with that burden.
That expression was first used in the Nineteenth Century. Since then its ugly odour has clung to Africa, all things African, Africans and people of African descent everywhere, and has not faded yet. Any time we were confronted with it we felt like we were carrying the proverbial sack-full of salt, to which a steady trickle of water was being added. Was it any wonder that some of us hoped that a new century would usher in new beginnings all round?
Little did we know …
At first it was only a rumour. Then, last March, The Economist had a map of Africa on its cover, with the headline `The Hopeless Continent’. What, one wonders, is the source of such malediction? What compels some editor in London or New York to characterize a whole continent of nearly 700 million people, and all of its 300,175,000 square kilometres as `hopeless’? What have Africans done to deserve such absolute hexing? Many Africans at home and abroad who saw the piece greeted that damning declaration with a characteristically resigned: `But what did we expect? Europeans have always done this sort of thing to Africans. They are just at it again.’
However, those of us who are paranoid or incurable believers in conspiracy theories go further. We suspect that The Economist has got a really dark and sinister aim. Clearly, as our masters’ voice, one of its agendas is to make sure that Africans do not regain any of the self-confidence they may have lost from the `Dark Continent’ label. Otherwise, what do the editors at The Economist know about what is in store for Africans which Africans themselves do not know?
If there really is any argument, then it is about whether Africans are ever going to shake themselves free from the present malaise and build a meaningful life for themselves out of the over-abundance of their physical environment.
Dear Economist: Africa a `hopeless continent’? Hardly.
Bibliography for: “What `hopeless continent’? – The Economist’s perception of Africa”
Ama Ata Aidoo “What `hopeless continent’? – The Economist’s perception of Africa”. New Internationalist. FindArticles.com. 12 Aug, 2010. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JQP/is_327/ai_30300965/
Posted by Heath Muchena
