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Stanley Mushava
The 2012 production raises new bearings on the continent’s development discourse against the reactionary characterisation of Africa as the backyard of civilisation.
Media frames which cast Africa in a 3D horror show of disease, destruction and disaster have long been the corporate task-pane of global media echo chambers. The documentary short-circuits the stereotypes not only through articulate arguments but also a graphic presentation of the continent’s ascendant trajectory as obtaining on the ground.

“Show a people to be one thing, only one thing,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says, “and that is what they become.”
The consignment of more than one billion Africans, spread across 54 countries, speaking more than 3 000 languages, into a clueless and doomed continent has a negative potency which is invalidated in the film.

A dynamic body of possibilities is no longer only irrepressible but also apparent as Africa dis-invests its hope from aid to economic self-reliance. Even some of the Western media outlets have begun to recycle Africa from the write-off stacks of their propaganda cabinets.

The Economist magazine is among this contrite coterie, having retracted from branding Africa the Dark Continent and acknowledged her as the Hopeful Continent. We will take this for a fair first step.

A former BBC correspondent, George Alagiah, once confessed: “My job is to give a fuller picture. But I have a gnawing regret that, as a foreign correspondent, I have done Africa a disservice, too often showing the continent at its worst and too rarely showing it in full flower.”

“By reporting those aspects of African life deemed to be important to the Western readers, the media select stories according to the Western Values. As a result, African successes measured according to African values are never reported,” further observed media critic Beverly Hawak.

“Although a water pump in a rural area may transform a community and its economy, it hardly makes good copy. Coups and wars make better copy and can be succinctly communicated to a reader. Press coverage of Africa in the context of the world events marginalizes things uniquely African,” Hawak observed.

“Africa Straight Up” records the continent’s emerging success stories, insisting on the continent’s right to be acknowledged as a formidable force in its own right.

The documentary also hits the nail on the head as to the cost of recovery: “I have never heard of a country that developed on aid. I know of countries that developed on aid, innovation and business,” says Herman Chinery-Hesse, a software developer,

“I don’t know of any country that got so much aid and suddenly became a First World country. So that track is wrong, it leads to nowhere. Only Africans can develop Africa,” Chinery-Hesse says.

“We are tired of being the subject of everybody’s charity and care. We are grateful but we know that we can take charge of our own destinies if we have the will to reform. And what is happening in many African countries now is a realisation that no one can do it but us,” says Nigerian Finance Minister Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

There is nothing inherently wrong about aid. The problem when it is doled as a means to a manipulative end. When aid is estimated to further interests, agenda or ideology, as the case is with most Western aid, it becomes a demobilising trap more than a growth stimulus.

It is tragic how some African countries fail to read between the lines and forfeit their sovereignty and moral integrity in the process. Often a cocktail of malignant ulterior motives inheres behind the wads of greenbacks these countries are so desperate to secure, whatever the values at stake.

In 2012, Malawi swallowed the hook of the Western pro-gay agenda without any qualms simply because it was concealed within the bait of financial aid.

Uganda’s anti-gay stance, on the other hand, torched a bonfire, with European countries levelling punitive financial measures against the country. In light of these interventions, it becomes clear that is commonly called the global village is not a utopia come true but an uneven combo of elites and its vassals.

To consolidate inclusive growth and harness ubuntu, our leaders must be constantly reminded of the impoverished masses at the base of the class pyramid.