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Abdulaziz Dino Gidreta
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Sensationalism:
There has always been high sensationalism in reporting Africa. The
reporting of African continent has been very much characterized by crisis, coups,
wars, revolts, famines, epidemics, despair, migration, and if possible episodes of can-
nibalism.
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Dramatization:
There have also been common tendencies of describing events, pro-
cesses and relations in terms of dual conflicts between individuals (usually leaders)
and groups.
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Generalization:
The attribution of certain characteristics to the entire Africa.
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Dehumanization:
Dehumanization is elimination of the actors, in favor of entities or
abstract processes or stereotypes.
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Personalization:
On the contrary, there are also trends of excessive individualization
like in cases when national governmental leaders are put in the attention, and the role
of civil society is put in the shade.
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Binary oppositions:
The use of simple binary oppositions to describe complex situ-
ations; for example, primitive vs modern. This is comparable with Hall’s (1997: 265)
reflection on the European portrayal of Saartje Baartman or commonly named as The
Hottentot Venus, African woman displayed in various European museums. Saartje was
represented and observed through a series of polarized conceptions like ‘primitive’,
not ‘civilized’, and compared with wild beasts not to the human culture.
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Synecdoche:
Synecdoche is the use of a figure of speech by which a part is put for
the whole; for example, when populations such as the Maasai are used to represent
the entire African continent.
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Abuse of terms:
There is also high-level abuse of specific terms; for example, the ex-
cessive use of words like “tribal”, “primitive”, “animism”, “savage”, or “jungle”. There
is, for instance, a collective identification as “Africans” for realities referring to a conti-
nent comprising 54 sovereign states.
African Continent in World Maps and Spatial Imagery
Geo-politically, through maps and map-manipulation, there have been attempts of ‘other-
ing’, distasting, contracting, and marginalizing the African continent
.
One of the most sig-
nificant map-political issues is the ‘taken-for-granted’ reception of the world map which
commonly puts Europe at the center of the world. In particular, there are claims that Eu-
ropean explorers deliberately put Europe at the center of the world, while every different
mapping of the world could put every other region at the center. In fact, there are current
attempts of re-mapping the world map, mainly by contending regional powers.
