How to Think About Africa

When you hear the word “Africa,” what comes to mind? This isn’t one of those rhetorical article openings that our eyes skim over before getting to the meat of the piece. I want you to really think about it. What do you think, see, hear and feel when you read this word: Africa?

It’s likely that you think of a sunset with a children’s book huge, ridiculous yellow sun blazing over fields of red, slicing across an orange sky. That sun is probably rippling with heat waves and there are probably some black silhouettes in the foreground, maybe some animals or grass, definitely a single bare tree.

Feel exposed? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Most Americans think of Africa in this way. In fact, many writers and historians also blanket this image over an entire continent. A trip to Barnes & Noble will yield hundreds of novels and nonfiction texts about Africa with romantic titles and picturesque, sunset-emblazoned covers.

But why do we envision Africa, the second largest continent on Earth, as a singular, barren landscape? Africa is home to almost 1.3 billion people. In South Africa, Cape Town rivals many western countries both technologically and industrially. “Egypt” brings to mind images of ancient pharaohs, pyramids, and sand storms, but it also has the largest market for dates in the world and is home to cities like Cairo, one of the largest metropolitan areas in Africa. So why do we hold on to our visions of a wild, open savannah?

Up to the late 19th century, European maps of Africa were less than accurate. European interactions in Africa were based almost solely on trade and conquest. As a result, the maps detailed the African coast and major economic hubs, but Central Africa remained uncharted and unknown to the Europeans. It was not uncommon for all of Central Africa to be deemed simply as “Unknown Parts,” as pictured in this 1805 map.

The result is that Africa became a “blank space” in the European mind. They could fill that space with any images they wanted, and the “wide open Africa” was born. With little to no push for education on this subject, we still maintain this same mental image in 2023.

The problem with this is that Africa clearly isn’t a blank space. It’s teeming with life and culture. For us to erase these people from not only history but the present silences billions of voices. In order to hear them, we need to unlearn the four “types” of Africa that exist in the Western mind.

Photo Credit: Dr. Matthias Ripp on Flickr

Primitive Africa

Primitive Africa refuses to progress with the rest of the world. This Africa is depicted by photographs that show tiny huts, ancient clothes and over sexualized or brutalized bodies. This Africa is full of racial stereotypes and othering; it works tirelessly to separate Africa and its inhabitants from the forward movement of the rest of the human race. We still see this Africa in the media constantly, from National Geographic to Vogue.

Photo Credit: Disney via The New York Times

Wild Africa

Wild Africa can be best explained through the most popular piece of African-related western media: Disney’s “The Lion King.” The first criterion for Wild Africa is the absence of people. Animated films like “The Lion King,” documentaries and the majority of mainstream African media feature animals instead of people. This erasure of the existence of Africans reinforces the “blank space” phenomenon. Also crucial to Wild Africa is the contraction of an entire continent into a miniature space. The opening scene of “The Lion King” features several back-to-back landscape shots that are seemingly snapped from around The Pridelands, but the real locations that these shots mimic are over 2,000 miles apart (Pride Rock is in Kenya, while a subsequent waterfall shot mimics Zambia). The effect is similar to if a film set in America opened with a shot of a sandy Florida beach and immediately cut to a cornfield in Idaho.

Utopian Africa

Utopian, or “unspoiled” Africa, portrays Africa as a world untouched by human beings. Yes, people might live there, but they are almost imperceptible and leave no trace on Wild Africa. However, areas in Africa like the Serengeti have evidence of some of the oldest human life on planet Earth. Utopian Africa is millions of years of history, vanished. When we do acknowledge those living in Africa, we frame them as innocent and childlike, a step behind the rest of the world. They run and play, or do simple chores, grinning ear to ear and reassuring us that everyone in Africa is happy.

Poor Africa

Poor Africa is starving, skinny and desperate. And who better to save it than a rotating cast of celebrities and nameless white people? Western stars save Africa through yoga ads, music videos, mission trips and everything in between. Luckily, we’ve started to recognize how ridiculous this notion is, and Poor Africa is starting to appear less and less.

The first step to unlearning these four Africas is acknowledging them. Now you know where your biased, internal image of Africa comes from. Now you see how harmful it is to a continent full of human beings. Africa might seem a million miles away, but its 1.3 billion residents, their ancestors, relatives and all the generations yet to come deserve and depend on our commitment to actualizing them.

Strike out,

Writer: Avery Morton

Editor: Daniella Conde

Graphic: Caswell Shamblin

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