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Abdulaziz Dino Gidreta
Thus, in all its historical forms, this world information and communication order has given
the power for the ‘west’, to influentially impose its perspectives, and to construct and tell
the perspectives of ‘rest’. In this regard, despite the claims that African resources have
been the founding grounds for the current economic affluence and influence of the north-
west, the Western media have not given compensating attention to Africa. If any positive
attempts can be mentioned, they are the compassionate documentaries which usually
reduce Africa to the land of beautiful forests and wild animals.
Hence, within such a global communication imbalance, we notice that Africa remained
the most voiceless which has to be expressed by the passive voice “told” by others, than
‘tell’ itself. Regretfully, the telling has mostly concentrated in sniffing and discovering
the selectively miserable aspects and moments of life in Africa. Repeatedly, the media
improperly publicized the ‘bad moments of Africa’, mainly in the name of being critical
about Africa in issues of democracy, corruption and human rights. However, these criti-
cality and engagements have been subject to interests of the European states in certain
African nations and regimes.
African scholars began to challenge that too much of reporting Africa has been condi-
tioned by a view of its people as an eternally miserable smudge of blackness stretching
across the decades. Harry (2015: 81) summarizes non-edifying adjectives used in de-
scribing Africa in the Western media: Dark Continent, hunger, famine, starvation, endemic
violence, conflicts and civil war, political instability, AIDS, coups…etc.
Figure 2: Governing The African Continent Unitedly
