Its all about Changing Nigeria and Africa

For Africans living in the West and on the continent, nothing is more irksome than the constant dosage of negative news on Africa. The Western media, in the context of this write-up is limited to television and radio broadcasting by European and American stations in locally and externally. Africa is way down the list in terms of news importance for the western media. Most of the time, Africa is ignored but when it does make it into the radio or TV, it is invariably portrayed as disease-stricken, famine-struck, war-torn and corruption-bedeviled continent. Most of the time, the positive sides of the continent are overlooked. Looking critically at the way Africa is being branded in the western media, one will realize that the continent is not getting a fair deal from the western media. Africa is the second largest continent in area and population. Only Asia covers a larger and more population. Africa covers about a fifth of the world’s land area and has about eight of its people. Africa is divided into 53 independent countries and several other political units. The largest is Sudan while the smallest is Seychelles. The most heavily populated African nation, Nigeria, has more than 125million people. However, about two-fifths of all African countries have fewer than 5million people. Africa is a continent of striking contrasts and great natural wonders. The tropical rain forests, with its towering treetops forming a thick green canopy predominate in western and central Africa. The world’s largest desert, Sahara, stretches across northern Africa, and it covers an area almost as large as the entire United States. Africa also has the world’s largest river, the Nile, and some of the largest lakes such as Lake Victoria. Much of the continent is grassland. Elephants, lions, zebras, cheetahs and many other animals live in the grassland located in the eastern and southern Africa. The biodiversity in Africa is rich and is only second to South America. The African people, numbering about 850 million belong to several population groups and have many cultural backgrounds. In the north, for example, most of the people are Arabs. South of the Sahara, where most Africans live, blacks form the greatest majority of the population, and they divided into over 800 ethnic groups, each with its own language, religion, and way of life. The large number of ethnic groups of uneven size has helped make it difficult for many African countries to develop into unified, modern nations. In numerous cases, national boundaries cut across ethnic homelands. As a result, people may feel closer ties to neighbors in another country than to other groups in their own country. Ethnic differences have led to civil wars in several African countries. Africa is endowed with great mineral wealth, including huge deposits of copper, zinc, diamond, gold, and petroleum. This has made the continent really attractive to the Western nations over the years. It also has valuable forests, wild animals, and arable land. In addition, many African rivers and waterfalls could be used to produce hydroelectric power. The continent produces most of the world’s cocoa, cassava, groundnut, beans, and yams. All these combined made the continent a huge source of raw materials. The result for the scramble among Western nations for Africa’s wealth lead was slavery, colonization, and cold war. One of world’s first great civilization- ancient Egypt- arose along the banks of the Nile River more than 5,000 years ago. Later, other powerful and culturally advanced kingdoms and empires developed. Even so, for many years, many non-African’s called Africa the “Dark Continent”. They used this name because they knew little about Africa’s interior geography, and they mistakenly believed that the people of the interior had not developed any important cultures. Such sentiments and erroneous beliefs are what are still be propagated through the Western media up till date. What is more insidious is that whereas the rest of the world is divided into nations, the Western media do lump into one big monolithic sorry mass. Genocide in tiny Rwanda elicits headlines such as “Africa at war with itself”. Similar incidents in Europe are not Europe civil uprisings or wars but genocide in Bosnia, Serbia, and so on. The western media does not bother to mention than out of Africa’s 53 independent nations; only four are engaged in civil war- Sudan, Congo, Burundi, and Cote D’Ivoire. This means that 49 countries do not have civil wars. But the impression in the Western media is that all Africa is at war with itself. The same goes for diseases, especially HIV/AIDS. Hardly does a week goes without some dire prognosis by so-called “expert” detailing how “Africa’s” entire population will be wiped out in 50 years time if the present HIV/AIDS scourge is not curtailed. If all the predictions made about the impact of HIV/AIDS has been correct, most African countries would have been entirely depopulated by now. The same story goes for Ebola, Hepatitis, Tuberculosis, and many other diseases. The Western media always choose not to highlight the other side of the story. HIV/AIDS is lower in most part of Africa than in the west and its practically non-existent in some part of the continent, most especially in some parts of West and North Africa. Some of the other diseases are isolated cases or exist in pockets or small areas, not even effective one-eight of the continent, but highlighted in the Western media as affecting the whole of Africa. To further hurt the Africans, Africa is corrupt, says the Western media. All of Africa is all corrupt at all time. Elections are rigged in Africa; similar incidents in the West are not termed rigging by the media. In the United States, a monumental corruption cases in Enron and WorldCom needs a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. Their executives deserve a Nobel Laureates in money swindling. But these incidents are not well-hyped in the Western media. In contrast, in Africa political and business leaders are corrupt all the time. Watching the business news of BBC, CNN, Sky News, Bloomberg etc. will confirm that Africa is way down the list in terms of news importance for these Western media. Africa does not feature in the capital and financial market. They only feature the American, Asian, European and South America capital and financial markets. Despite the huge success of the major bourses in Africa, with the Ghana stock Exchange being the world number one in 2003, followed closely by Morocco, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Kenya, and the rest, it is hardly reported in the Western media, as we only get to know about Wall Street, FTSE, NASDAQ, S&P, Strait Times etc. Many people in the West do not know whether there are stocks exchanges in Africa, thanks to Western media.

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