Misrepresenting Africa
West ignores reality, focuses on shock and awe
Tope Oriola
I read with unbridled attention Terry Wuerz’s March 8 article “HIV: The new face of Africa.” Wuerz appears to have inadvertently presented inaccuracies capable of reinforcing the erroneous stereotype held of Africa and Africans by the rest of the world.
Africa is indeed beset by a myriad of problems, mainly bordering on a high propensity to produce largely visionless leaders. This allows problems like HIV/AIDS, power generation, poverty and so on to degenerate into a scourge.
Wuerz points out the fact that developed nations have largely weathered the storm of HIV/AIDS because of “adequate resources and ease of access to health services.” He goes on to state that the disease is affecting young adults in Africa, hence children are becoming orphans and “grandparents are being forced to raise another generation of children,” and that African countries do not have the necessary resources. Consequently, HIV/AIDS is “poised to tear the social fabric of many African nations.”
It is in the nature of Western-based HIV/AIDS “Champions” and “Poverty Warriors” to grossly exaggerate and thus distort the real facts on the ground in third world countries. This is made possible by the methodologically ambiguous statistics that are incessantly churned out by so-called experts in the first world. While I do agree that there is an urgent need for global action against the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa, I believe this issue has been blown beyond proportion to the detriment of other equally debilitating problems.
Contrary to popular opinion, malaria actually kills more people annually in Sub-Saharan Africa than HIV/AIDS, but the latter is more popular because a lot of people are literally making a career out of it. Of course, there are numerous government agencies and non-governmental organizations whose continued existence and relevance depend on the ostensible intractability of HIV/AIDS. A cure has not been found because it is unprofitable to find it. Millions of American dollars are spent on Viagra for a select few, while other people die of hunger.
Farmers in poor countries cannot compete in the global market in view of the unbelievable subsidies western farmers enjoy. At the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Abuja, Nigeria in 2003, the Commonwealth Secretary General, Don McKinnon, stated that the U.S. government, for instance, provides $1 a day in subsidy on every cow to the farmers.
This is not essentially wrong in and of itself. However, the same government asks and pressurizes those inept African leaders, whom they often help to install, to remove every form of subsidy from every facet of life, including agriculture and education. Even McKinnon noted the hypocrisy.
News about Africa is more often than not negative. No advertisement of a war on poverty is complete without an African face. Wars, ethnic conflicts, genocides and so on appear to be what the western media are truly interested in. However, press freedom and freedom of expression should also be exercised when informing the world as to where the financiers of the crises besetting Africa are based.
The Nigerian civil war of 1967-1970, for instance, was fought with “help” coming from the West for both the government and the group seeking secession in the form of arms and ammunition. Western governments were also calling for peace at the same time! Their role in the political instability of African countries is a topic for another day.
When certain groups are in conflict in Africa, the crisis is labelled an ethnic crisis, but when the British government was practically exterminating the Irish in what should have been aptly described as genocide, we were told they were merely putting an end to a rebellion.
Poverty is portrayed in the western media and in the mind’s eye of the Occidental world as an exclusive African problem. However, the number of Chinese people living in poverty is roughly the total population of Nigeria — the largest concentration of Africans on earth! Only the growth of the Chinese economy makes the headlines without any thought for those who are paying the price for “progress.”
Undoubtedly, Africa needs to rise and take its pride of place in global affairs by putting its house in order. The era of “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” ought to be over by now. What we need is to properly harness our superfluous resources — human and material — and put an end to the rather ridiculous idea of expecting help from the West for everything.
The leaders will do well to put the society’s interest before any vaulting ambitions. Africans at home and in the diaspora (like myself) must know that they carry in their hands the hope of generations unborn. Granted, several generations have been wasted, not necessarily health-wise, but in terms of not living out the true meaning of their creed and fulfiling their God-given potentials.
Professor Wole Soyinka, the 1986 Nobel laureate for literature, put the issue succinctly when he declared that the people of his days had a hopeless feeling of belonging to a wasted generation. Soyinka is now 70 years old. His generation has indeed been squandered.
Intellectuals and administratively-and technically-competent people like himself have been reduced to mere spectators while mediocre persons rule. I call on African students to rise to the challenge. Our generation cannot afford to be squandered like those before us.
Tope Oriola is pursuing a master’s degree in sociology.
