Misrepresenting Africa...Again

By Maia Irvin 

Time and again, western media projects a false and stereotypical image of Africa. This image is generally dominated by underdeveloped cities, governments incapable of helping their citizens and poverty among most of the population of the continent. 

Western news organizations have historically reported this image of Africa, and they continue to do so today. Now, though, it can be more subliminal and less outright than in the past. This BBC article from September provides an example of this more subliminal stereotyping of Africa. 

The article is about the incredulity and immense surprise that many people had when Africa, specifically South Africa, was reporting such low death rates from COVID-19. Many people expected there to be a severe outbreak in Africa because Africans live in crowded places rife with poverty. So when Africa seemed to be doing much better with COVID-19 numbers than much of the rest of the "developed" world, people started trying to look for answers as to why. 

The article discusses possible hypotheses like the fact that Africa's population is generally younger compared to other continents because Africans do not live as long as people in other places around the world. However, the much more realistic reason would be the fact that African governments responded very quickly to the virus. This fact is briefly mentioned in the middle of the article, but I think that it should have been the highlight of the entire story. 

If I were to write this story, instead of making the story about surprise and hypotheses, I would have focused the story on the fact that many African governments responded fairly quickly to the pandemic with things like mask mandates, and this is what probably contributed most to Africa's low death rate from the virus. This shows that African countries can be just as intelligent and organized, maybe even more so, than some western countries instead of perpetuating the image of poverty and high mortality rates in Africa. 

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