The Analysis Of The Article "Representation Of Africa Online: Sourcing Practice & Frames Of Reference" By Olatunji Ogunyemi
Our team had the chance to explore and have a conversation around an interesting article, ”Representation of Africa Online: Sourcing Practice and Frames of References”, written by Olatunji Ogunyemi April 1, 2011. He is a PhD scholar of diaspora Journalism from the school of English and Journalism at the University of Lincoln and adjunct Professor in the Department of Mass communication at Bowen University, Nigeria.
Olatunji explains how the western media portrays Africa as a dark continent full of biases and crisis. Thus this has reinforced a negative perception not only of these countries but as well as the rest of the globe towards Africa. But is Africa all about negativity? In this study, Olatunji expose to the audience another alternative that he considers telling the other part of Africa's story, and that is ''Africa Have Your Say(AHYS)''; a BBC program that had the aim of telling the African story looking at all its angles by building a contact zone that gathers different perspectives through moderated conversations. Though this was a great approach, something that our team acknowledged as well, we identified loopholes in it that we believe can hinder it to fulfil its aim of letting Africans tell their story.
You can tell that we are mentioning the AHYS in the past because the program was closed in 2011 due to financial constraints according to BBC. Despite the closing of the program, this did not stop us from assessing its approaches during its operational period. This allows foreigners to feed their ideology and diminish the ability of Africans. These widespread ideologies don't only create false perceptions about Africa but also nurture a negative mindset in Africans where they end up thinking that they cannot do anything for themselves and put all their hope in the hands of outside aids. As an African proverb that “never bite the hand that feeds you”.
This explains well how we act towards our donors because we are afraid to lose little we are receiving from them. We end up reinforcing the mindset of people outside the continent, who consider Africans as primitive people, with no bit of access to civilisation and who are forever dependent to external help. This is something that our peer member was able to relate during her stay in the UK, where she met a girl from Dubai, who shared with her how she was shocked during her visit in Nigeria. She wasn't expecting to find people putting on clothes or speaking English. She was astonished by their jollof rice since she was expecting them to eat raw meat.
Olatunji presented a BBC platform AHYS ( Africa Have Your Say) that aims at balancing the true color of Africa by providing information that shows another side of Africa apart from diseases, wars, and poverty from people who have the true understanding of the continent’s evolvement and cultures. He gave an example on how information can well be interpreted when it is heard from the owners’ perspectives where, like the story of Darfur women who were able to construct the trauma of rape from the prism of their culture by stating, “Before it was a big problem and the father or brothers of the girl would kill the person responsible. But now rape has become common because of the fighting. Previously, the girls would be cast out of society and no young man would marry them. Now, the society is evolving in term of ideas and they are supporting these women more by letting them live a normal life” (“Sudan Survivors,” 2007).
The way the content is described and the platform's interaction that implies the manipulation of technology with the use of comments on social media just revealed to the team how this approach was not inclusive towards our population that suffers from a scarcity of literacy. The continent is already experiencing challenges from its education status, where 38% of its adults are illiterates, how do you expect the platform to be a useful contact zone, when not everyone is in the position of consuming the content.
The language as well is something we believe was a barrier, and the explanation to this can is the higher contribution made by Ghana and Nigeria, and less or almost none for countries like Rwanda and Burundi. This correlates with colonial heritage where the first two countries were colonised by English speakers what is the primary language used by BBC, while French speakers colonised the last two, what explains their absence of the platform. Even though internet looked like a tool to bring back the respect of Africa culture and bring back the light on the real beauty of our continent, it was clear that when AHYS was still operational, Africa's internet penetration stood at 6.7% compared to 24.6% of average world penetration (Internet World Stats, 2009).
Alongside this internet penetration, there is the affordability of the tools used to engage with this platform such as smartphones or computers that are not quite affordable to the majority on the continent. Looking back at our ancestors on how information passed from generation to generation. Older people would consider the used oral method to give out their knowledge to young ones but now the written way has taken over, but even then, African are not interested in the fewer writings of their fellow African writers.
As African, we don’t trust ourselves, there is something that blinds us and makes us not to value the potential that lies in us. From our younger age, our community taught us that the best is found outside of Africa and we took this without any doubt. We think this one of the facts that make us lose interest in our continent. The beauty of Africans will reflect in the writings of Africans. We agree that slow internet penetration put us on the disadvantage compared to the outside world, but we have something that our forefathers didn’t have, - We know how to write and it might not be enough, but we can access internet. Let us be the change we seek by using our pens and social media platforms to tell the right story about Africa. Takes ways:
- First and foremost we need a re-orientation within our mindset as African.
- There is a need to educate the young generation on how to tell their own stories, leveraging on their consummation of social media.
- We should start invest in our own media.
- We also have to acknowledge that some stories need to be shared not matter how bad they are.
References:
- Unesco.org. (2017). Literacy | United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. [online] Available at: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/dakar/education/literacy/ [Accessed 19 Sep. 2018].
- Journals.sagepub.com. (2011). Representation of Africa Online: Sourcing Practice and Frames of Reference - Olatunji Ogunyemi, 2011. [online] Available at: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0021934710378747 [Accessed 19 Sep. 2018].
