Africa
Africa
The Hopeless Continent
On the cover of its May 13-19 issue, London’s influential conservative news magazine The Economist declared Africa to be “The Hopeless Continent.”
Citing floods in Mozambique, famine in Ethiopia, mass murder of religious cult members in Uganda, anarchy in Sierra Leone, and a string of wars across the continent, the magazine continued: “The new millennium has brought more disaster than hope to Africa. Worse, the few candles of hope are flickering weakly....Does Africa have some inherent character flaw that keeps it backward and incapable of development?”
The story, which held up Sierra Leone’s brutal civil war as “a symbol for Africa,” hit a nerve and provoked a flood of commentary from Africans and Africa-watchers around the world.
“The latest issue of The Economist magazine has set off a roaring debate,” said Johannesburg’s weekly business magazine Financial Mail (May 26). “Afro-pessimism rules in Europe....The Economist seems to have been spurred into libeling the entire continent by a set of random events.”
In fact, just three years ago, the newspaper pointed out, The Economist wrote in a cover story that “sub-Saharan Africa is in better shape than it has been for a generation.” “Do the editors of The Economist have a character flaw that makes them incapable of consistent judgment?”
“The Economist has fallen into ‘the generalization trap,’” wrote veteran Ghanaian journalist Cameron Duodu. “Although Africa is the second- largest continent...,covering a surface area of 11.5 million square miles, the World Bank and other international agencies tend to see the continent as ‘one region,’ ” Duodu commented in London’s monthly New African. The newsmagazine was inspired by The Economist’s piece to devote its July/August 2000 issue to a discussion by African journalists about media coverage of Africa.
“But Sierra Leone, a country with social divisions dating back to the days of slavery, can be hooked on to Democratic Republic of Congo, some 3,000 kilometers or so away,” Duodo said, “in order to make a point about barbaric social disintegration in ‘Africa’; the racing pen meanwhile making a pit stop in Eritrea/Ethiopia, with an ink-well waiting to be loaded on board in Angola, a mere three or four hours away by jet.”
“The suffocation of 58 people [Chinese immigrants found dead in a truck at Dover in June]...happened in Europe,” wrote Ronald Kayanja in Kampala’s independent weekly Monitor (July 2). “The recent ethnic cleansing...in the former Yugoslavia was in the heart of Europe; so was the terror...in Chechnya....It is, therefore, disgusting for the international media to often paint a dark picture...as if it is only Africans suffering the consequences of colonialism, the cold war, or globalization.”
Sierra Leone, the DRC, Somalia, Angola, Eritrea, and Ethiopia are not the entire Africa, said Kayanja. “Countries like Botswana, Mauritius, Tunisia, Egypt, South Africa, Swaziland, Namibia, Gabon, Lesotho, and Morocco are in Africa and are doing better than India and Pakistan in human welfare....There is great hope for Ghana, Senegal, Mali, Nigeria, Uganda, and Mauritania, with their pragmatic and pro-poor policies. The world should also watch the slow matchers like Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, and Burkina Faso.”
Yet a number of commentators found common ground with The Economist in its excoriation of Africa’s “poor crop of leaders,” who by “personalizing power” have “undermined rather than boosted national institutions” and turned their countries into “shell states,” with the trappings of modernity but a hollow core.
“There were those who believed that The Economist cover story was a racist..., bare-knuckled attack from white liberals,” wrote the Reverend Matthew Hassan Kukah in the independent Comet of Lagos (July 18). “But when I read the story...it became clear to me that, indeed, The Economist had merely confirmed what many of us had been saying for a long time....It is our elites that have brought us to this grief.”
A similar perspective came from Dani W. Nabudere, writing in Kampala’s independent weekly Monitor (May 28): “We agree with most of the analysis and conclusions....I do not agree when they observe that brutality, despotism, and corruption...are...to be found in African societies for reasons buried in their cultures....Colonialism, in short, undermined African self-confidence...except that the article obscures the fact that Africa’s leaders’ lack of self- confidence has served Western interests quite well. We continue to see this lack of self-confidence in the so-called New Breed of African leaders who have simply continued the colonial policies.”
And from David Bullard in Johannesburg’s centrist Business Times (May 21): “Here [on The Economist’s cover] are the very images that send many of our politicians into paroxysms of fury. They...complain about the world media having it in for Africa....So who’s really subverting the African renaissance? Surely not the world’s media.....The real saboteurs are the African leaders,...the ones who are prepared to sacrifice their people’s hopes on their own disgusting, egotistical altars.”
Richard Dowden, The Economist’s Africa correspondent, responded to the furor in a letter to the London monthly African Business, reprinted in the July-August New African. “I am not an Afro-pessimist,” he said, “but journalists in particular have a duty to reflect the reality. Africa is in a bad way. The sensitive issue is why?...Until Africa regains its self-confidence and develops some institutions it actually believes in, it will remain weak and it will fail. This is the African Renaissance. I believe it will happen, though I admit I do not know how or when.”
