The Africa you don't know: there is much more to the motherland than negative media highlights

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Nigerian journalist Gbemisola Olujobi likes to tell the story of how on a recent trip from Lagos to Washington, D.C., she passed the time at Dulles Airport engaging in small talk with an airport employee.

"I hear in Africa, people are very poor and hungry, that they don't have anything to eat." he said. "I saw a documentary on Africa a Few days ago on CNN, and there were all these hungry people, dying children, with flies all over their faces.... But you look well fed."

Not knowing exactly how to respond, the British-educated writer let the clueless American know that Africa is not "one huge expanse of waste," but 52 countries in different stages of development, repair, disrepair and despair.

"Famine in Niger does not mean hunger in Nigeria, just as war in Liberia does not mean child soldiers in Lesotho," she told him.

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The short lecture seemingly had no effect. The man asked, "But what is the problem with Africa?" as if he hadn't heard a word Olujobi had said about Africa's vast diversity.

The frustrated African does not blame the American from the airport or countless others who have come to her with similar questions. She's been asked whether Africans keep their cowry shells (once used as currency in parts of Africa) in banks, or how she "picked up such good English." Instead, Olujobi, like many Africans from every part of the continent, points to the Western media.

"No one should blame these people or anyone else who displays such profound ignorance about Africa," says Olujobi. "Rather than educate and enlighten by disseminating fair, balanced and accurate information, all that the Western media seem to be keen on showing the West about Africa is backwardness, disease, hunger, want, deprivation, banditry, brigandage, slaughter fields, child soldiers, gang-raped girls, harassed mothers, wasted children, flies feasting on the living and vultures waiting to devour the near-dead."

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Ongoing problems of war, genocide, famine, political corruption and the HIV/AIDS epidemic that dominate American media coverage of Africa are, in fact, still serious issues challenging many countries in Africa. But the distorted view of the continent that perpetually focuses solely on these problems is perhaps as big an impediment to the progress of many of these nations as the actual problems themselves. For without an accurate understanding of what Africa is really like, it is difficult for most Americans, Black or White, to understand why the continent is so important to the world, and why they should care about what happens to Africans all over the continent.

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What Olujobi might have told that American is that, contrary to what he saw on CNN, there is more to Africa than what is on TV.

First, she could have told him that Africa is not a country. It is the world's second-largest continent and the second most populous, after Asia. Indeed, Africa comprises 20 percent of the Earth's landmass, measuring about 5,000 miles north to south and about 4,600 miles east to west. That's about four times the size of the United States.

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Then, she could have told him that the 890 million people who live in Africa account for nearly 14 percent of the world's population. They belong to thousands of ethnic groups and clans, and speak about 2,000 languages, including +Swahili, Yoruba, Bantu and Arabic.

She also could have told him that, far from being loincloth-clad, spear-chucking natives who reside in mud huts among lions, elephants and hyenas, an increasing number of Black Africans live in modern cities, go to modern schools and work in modern buildings with the same amenities he is used to in the United States. From Johannesburg to Abidjan, Dares Salaam to Dakar, many African cities sport towering skyscrapers, complex infrastructures and a sizzling nightlife. And far from being perpetual recipients of foreign aid, Africans make significant contributions to the world economy, with an estimated combined purchasing power of more than $2.5 trillion, according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

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Most Americans may know that Africa provided the slave labor that developed the New World, enriched the Old World and built early America. But few are aware that today, Africa provides columbite-tantalite, the mineral from which most computer chips are made. Or that Algeria, Egypt, Libya and Nigeria supply 20 percent of the world's petroleum and natural gas. Or that Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa together produce 50 percent of the world's diamonds, while Ghana, South Africa and Zimbabwe together produce nearly half of the world's gold.

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Americans might also be surprised to know that Africa also contributes 70 percent of the world's cocoa supply each year, 34 percent of the coffee and 50 percent of the palm products. The United States imports 30 percent to 60 percent of key African products, such as oil. France gets more than 90 percent of its uranium, cobalt and manganese, 76 percent of its bauxite (aluminum ore), 50 percent of its chromium and 30 percent of its iron ore from Africa. Britain imports 80 percent of its chromium, 65 percent of its lubrication oil, 55 percent of its manganese and 54 percent of its cobalt from Africa. And China, which imports nearly 30 percent of its oil and gas from sub-Saharan Africa, is raising eyebrows around the world as it sets up African facilities and buys African commodities at an astonishing rate to fuel its own economic boom. Indeed, for the many single-commodity economies of African nations, Chinese investment has been a windfall.