In a conversation, one friend dared the others: "which part of Africa is 'Wakanda' found?" One responded, in jest, "It's a country in the East!" The other mate, alarmed by this wild suggestion, argued it was in the South. All this while, I sat back– speechless, waiting at the opportune moment to settle this debate. Besides the chance to clarify that Wakanda is entirely fictional, this conversation opened my mind to cultural realities I had long overlooked.
Cultural diversity and construction have always been fascinating concepts to me. The wealth of knowledge wrapped in varying beliefs and practices is unfathomable. Our diverse curiosities thrive at the nexus of our collective ignorance of each other's cultural practices. These curiosities feed on the hope that we might be able to ask each other the most uncomfortable questions within the parameters of respect, empathy and civility. To passionately explore topics: race and reparations to practices of scientology and slavery.
Our knowledge of each other's countries is shaped by what we read and watch in the global media. There is a stiff imbalance as the projections of our societies by the world's storytellers do not often reflect the wholesome image of our lived realities. This is not the case for Western democracies, however, projected as lands of opportunities and plenty.
African countries are repeatedly painted as dark, poor and undeveloped. While single stories are stereotypical in nature, one would, if given the option, choose the spread of positive ones. Did Africa choose her negative narrative pandemic?
Undoubtedly, she is not short of challenges. One day, it's cyclone Freddy, killing masses in Malawi. Another day it's a 'fraud' election in Nigeria and conflict in Sudan. But Africa has powerful stories too. With an emerging wave of tech-savvy youths behind some of the most disruptive innovations in tech, medicine, and even scooping Grammys, Africa is no longer stuck in the post-colonial construction of primitivity or starvation and AIDs. Africa is becoming. Unfortunately, her continuously evolving potential self is reduced to statistical projections.
While these population estimates may be a beacon of hope for people that have drudged through chronicles of domination and pestilence, the algorithm is controlled by political you-know-whos. They control the global narratives, turn on the switch and flash to the front page whatever serves their best interests.
It is not just the media projecting this agenda; it is partly rooted in our African systems. In geography classes, I studied more about Canada, New York and the Netherlands than I ever did about Congo, Nigeria or Africa. We were often assembled in class to learn about their economic activities, political systems, and opinions, among other foreign aesthetics. I drew maps of New York, labeled Bronx, Manhattan and all the others. I crammed the three cornerstones of the British government and had to imagine why the ancient Victorian society thought of Tess as impure. If the modern world were one where any of these mattered, the elite African would be the new face of modern colonialism.
The essence of learning all this, I have been told, was to learn from their activities, to translate them into our context and improve our well-being accordingly. But did it help? If anything, it robbed us of our understanding of how much we have within.
Benchmarking successful economies is not inherently wrong, but continuously reminding a 13-year-old that their country and continent can only develop if they replicate what others have done is deliberate mental slavery.
When we talk to our peers who live in the so-called developed economies, they know nothing about us. They don't even care whether Wakanda is an island in Lake Victoria or a metaphor invented for Black empowerment in storytelling. While we draw maps of their homes, they are being taught to look within, taught that they have the power to lead and control the world. As a result, their esteem and confidence inevitably position their dreams, inventions, and research as mainstream knowledge. With our low esteem and many years of brainwashing, we can only talk more about them and how incredible their economies are and passionately lament about how antiquated our Africa, our motherland, is.
When I asked a group of peers from Africa to complement their countries and Africa at large, they only talked about nature, which they also added was 'host to excessive industrial exploitation,' before briefly highlighting Rwanda and the international sensation that Nigerian Afrobeats has become.
Where does this leave the wealth in culture– the plethora of proverbs, customs and traditions? Perhaps if Africa, like Wakanda, leveraged her vibranium; rather than making a recipe of a development handbook passed down from the European industrial revolution; Africa too could be a globally-renowned sensation. Perhaps if African norms and lifestyles were afforded a progressive fluidity rather than the erasure that came with Western modernity, they, too, could be textbook examples of success. Maybe then we would meet at the table as authentic, just as they are, and engage without the inherent hierarchy and inferiority complex.
We can only be victims in a world where information about us is shaped by observers whose understanding is shaped by uninformed literature. As our stories continue to pronounce our miseries, we will likely become the offering at the altar of sustained emancipation to the developed world and continuously emasculate Africa and her people. Having realised that existing institutions are working against us, we must educate each other and ourselves to tell our narratives to the world with more pride and authority. We must create large pools of correct and representative information to beat the growing disinformation.
Patrick Karekezi is a development and policy scholar passionate about amplifying African lived realities in global development discourse.
Twitter: @pro_youngpeople
Email: pkarekezi1@gmail.com