Africans teach the optimistic face of their continent in networks

Social networks are giving the African population the ability to show themselves as it is and thus banish the negative stereotypes that exist on it. More and more Africans use the Internet.Late 2000, Africa It had more than four and a half million users.Currently, it exceeds 453 million.This means that the Internet reaches a penetration in the continent of 35.2%.The population is also increasingly active in social networks, with 177 millions of Facebook users throughout the end of 2017.

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Social networks favor the perception of the different faces of Africa. Taking advantage of access to technology, social media bloggers and commentators use Facebook, YouTube and other platforms to refute the old "Afro-Peimist stereotypes" "Summarized in one: Africa is an underdeveloped continent characterized by conflict and poverty.

Thanks to those spaces that allow the current to share their daily experiences, Africans have the opportunity to capture positive situations, those moments of joy, leisure, celebration, love and interaction between people who are creating new speeches about Africa.

These new visions can cause an afropositive turn .

Examples from otherAfrica

Speeches are already emerging with another look at countless aspects of the continent.For example, the Facebook page «Everyday Africa» highlights:

"The photographs taken with the mobile phone were taken all over Africa, in an attempt to form a more complete picture of life on the continent than conventional media allow."

And it shows, among others, several images of children laughing, playing, on the way to school or busy in other chores; of working men, thriving factories, busy food markets and other scenes of their daily lives.

The images are significant because of their symbolic distancing from the stereotyped and pessimistic representation that reflects Africa as a homogeneous block of violence, defenselessness, human rights violations and lack of democracy.

Similarly, the blog "Voices of Africa" aims to:

"...tell the stories that the world does not hear often enough.We believe that the daily stories of the African population that goes on with their lives deserve more attention.From women addicted to Dakar fashion to the golden singles of Somalia; from the extravagant weddings of Tanzania to the nightlife of Nairobi, we want to show the life of Africa through those who live it ".

This lens to look at the continent implicitly rejects stories based on the stranger's gaze and instead offers first-hand accounts.

Africans teach the optimistic face of their continent in networks

The #TheAfricaTheMediaNeverShowsYou Twitter tag (TheAfrica that the media never shows) also focuses on positive stories.Includes testimonials like this:

"I am exploring the streets of Kigali.It is clear why they call it the cleanest city in Africa, even plastics are banned! Africa who does not teach us on television."

Another participant describes Kampala as a city "full of promises and hope."

This diversity of voices that allow social networks contribute to a "postcolonial" discursive struggle that seeks to end the Afro-Pessimistic manual where famines, civil clashes and amassed elections draw the portrait of Africanity.

As a complement to the blogosphere, through YouTube and other video sharing platforms, an increasing number of African-speaking voices are determined to refute what they consider to be a biased media coverage of Africa, for example, Mark Eddo, expert in communication and speaker TEDx, advocates "a new speech", and laments:

"The BBC made a report called" Welcome to Lagos."[...] They went to a beach frequented by prostitutes and drug addicts.They are stories that must be told, but they are told over and over and over again.That is what the viewers of that channel think of my city, but it is not true.That problems exist, but there are also opportunities.The image should to become qualified ».

Similarly, in a talk entitled "The danger of historical history," TEDx speaker Chimamanda Ngozi, an intellectual awarded the prestigious MacArthur scholarship, points out the importance of plurality in the narratives:

"Stories can break the dignity of a people, but they can also restore it."

An endless number of data

To date, the analyzes and criticisms of African representations have often focused on traditional media. The Afro-positive turn in social networks has not yet been thoroughly studied and academics They are still trying to figure out how to analyze in a significant way the large volume of big data generated by them.Patrick Wolfe, executive director of the Big Data Institute at University College London, says:

"The pace at which we are generating data is rapidly exceeding our ability to analyze it."

However, the previous examples are a qualitative sample of the richness and depth of the afropositive content , of the explicit commitment to the representation policy.In addition, the pages and videos cited confirm the great interest that there are for those positive speeches.Ngozi's TEDx talk, for example, has more than three million reproductions.

There is a possibility of achieving an even greater quantitative impact if Afro-positive activists share their content with influential social media profiles, such as BBCAfrica, which has about four million followers on Facebook.

Towards Afro-optimism

Social networks are a fundamental means of creating more plural stories about Africa. But the turn should not be to "whitewash" and idealize Africa, but to try to challenge the simplistic perception of Afro-Pessimism by spreading multiple images and complex on the continent and its inhabitants.

As new technologies become more accessible there, Africans themselves will be empowered, thus weakening the prejudice of the "black continent" while creating and distributing their own views on their world. In In this sense, social networks can be seen as a democratizing space.The voices that were previously silent now have a useful and affordable platform to tell their own story.

Muchazondida Mkono, Research Fellow (Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow), Business School, The University of Queensland. This article was originally published in The Conversation.Read the original.

Africans teach the optimistic face of their continent in networks

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