{"id":420,"date":"2016-06-16T15:43:00","date_gmt":"2016-06-16T15:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mrmushava.wordpress.com\/2016\/06\/16\/missing-angles-in-africa-narratives\/"},"modified":"2026-10-25T15:02:25","modified_gmt":"2026-10-25T15:02:25","slug":"missing-angles-in-africa-narratives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=420","title":{"rendered":"Missing Angles in African Narratives"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n
\"http:\/\/d.gr-assets.com\/books\/1377648681l\/18263743.jpg\"<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Add caption<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
Book: The Bright Continent\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Author: Dayo Olopade\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
ISBN: 978-0-547-67831-3<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
The United Nations (UN) solicits European entries for a poster design competition to mark the tenth anniversary of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
The winning entry by Stefan Einarsson from Iceland merges barefooted African children, apparently queuing for food at a refugee camp, with medium shots of G8 (EU, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, UK and US) leaders.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
The caption \u201cDear world leaders, we are still waiting,\u201d runs across the digitally manipulated image, juxtaposing power and poverty.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
This 2010 image epitomises Western media echo chambers, development agencies and capitalist institutions\u2019 framing of Africa as a helpless continent, \u201cthe white man\u2019s burden,\u201d forever condemned to stretch desperate hands to Babylon.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cThe Bright Continent: Breaking the Rules and Making Change in Africa\u201d is a forceful rebuttal of this narrative. Dayo Olopade, a Nigerian-American journalist, gleans a range of anecdotes from the field to present the case for an Africa which is taking strength from within and rising to be one of the formidable centres of the 21st century.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0\u201cA panel of UN judges validated the biggest lie in modern history: that poor and passive Africans exists only in the shadow of Western action,\u201d Olopade refutes the poster in her opening chapter titled \u201cOrientation.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
This figment of Western fantasy is just the launchpad into an extensively argued case for domestic agency. \u201cIf you have read other \u2018development\u2019 books, it\u2019s easy enough to get that impression (of an Africa dependent on white benevolence),\u201d Olopade observes.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cEven as popular discourse begins to question the logic of foreign assistance to the region, the conversation remains focused on how \u2018the West\u2019 can improve its performance,\u201d she laments.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cFamiliar voices write prescriptions for everyone, from the leaders of the G8 to the infantry of the World Bank to the heads of landlocked countries like the Central African Republic.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Though many have spent decades examining the various ruts and bottlenecks in economic growth, it is rare to hear about what ordinary Africans are going to do to help themselves,\u201d writes Olopade.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Africa is neither the Dark Continent whose best part is to bask in Western lamp-posts nor the backyard of civilisation dappled with trouble spots. On the contrary, Olodape presents a Bright Continent powering to the fore with vast possibilities.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Olopade, who has covered global politics and development policies for the \u201cAtlantic,\u201d the \u201cDaily Beast,\u201d \u201cForeign Policy,\u201d the \u201cNew Republic,\u201d the \u201cNew York Times\u201d and the \u201cWashington Post,\u201d spent years in various sub-Saharan countries, coming to terms with the everyday struggles, frustrations and triumphs of ordinary people.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
These stories come to life in the book, thanks to Olopade\u2019s breezy narrative style and her meticulous handling of details. In spite of the level at which she pitches her debate, the diction is consistently down-to-earth and the stories human-centred.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Olopade contests the appropriation of formalistic, GDP-centric indices in assessing Africa\u2019s place in the 21st century. Characterising Africa through top-level lenses, she argues, ignores the agency of everyday man and woman in getting on with life against adverse settings.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Her gripe is not just directed at the failure of offshore development but also African governments. She observes that leaders have, by and large, failed the continent, perpetuating a system of corruption, neglect and make-up rhetoric.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Yet the people survive and thrive in spite of the institutional sabotage. The heroes of \u201cThe Bright Continent\u201d are not the grand debaters in the Pan-Africanist square but ordinary people who fend for their families and raise empowered generations in failing economies.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
These include Benson Muthame, Gladys Mwande and their six children. The security guard and his family grow maize and raise chickens at a commercial scale on an abandoned colonial home situated at a busy intersection of Nairobi, despite lacking a title to the land.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Olopade marvels at their nerve: \u201cThe family has no official rights, supports, or farming expertise but like millions of subsistence farmers in Africa, found a way to make one (borrowed) acre count for something,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cTheir quiet rebuke and commitment is a direct rebuke to the UN poster, and a great example of bold opportunism that makes Africa\u2019s development trajectory so different and exciting,\u201d she says.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
She notes that there are different, mostly wrong, angles for perceiving such obscure sites as Benson and Gladys\u2019s adopted home: to adjacent homeowners, an abandoned eyesore; to government planners, criminal trespass.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
For Olodape, Africa cannot be rated through the performance of the ruling elites but through the resilience of its disenfranchised majorities. These are the demographics which people Olodape\u2019s optimistic book.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cSharing these hidden triumphs is the best way I know to respond to the depressing top-level narratives that have held the region back\u2026Stories can help to challenge the bad news occupying a thin column in a Western, or scrolling across the lower edge of a cable news broadcast,\u201d she says.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0\u201cThe Bright Continent\u201d retraces European explorers\u2019 search for the Nile foreign correspondents\u2019 sensationalist coverage of continent, taken to scale Henry Morton Stanley\u2019s 1878 rendering of the Africa \u201cdark continent,\u201d a phrase which has since stuck.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
The mistakes of history included not just condescending narratives but also ungeographical maps, mistakes equally occasioned by disregard of Africans.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Olodape says these mistakes are being perpetuated by development agencies whose desktop solutions for Africa falter for being steeped in stereotypes at the expense of real interaction with the people on the ground.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Development discourse informed by a messianic complex rather than consultation \u2013 New African gave short shrift to Band Aid in the same spirit earlier this year \u2013 is good for the ego for the ego of the agent rather than the recipients.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0Her book proposes four platforms for assessing development in Africa \u2013 the family map, the technology map, the nature map and the youth map.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
The family is a strategic entity in Africa\u2019s communalistic society \u2013 as opposed to other individualistic cultures \u2013 and its cohesive function important in ensuring that success is shared and upward mobility guaranteed.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Technological penetration is another game-changer in Africa. \u201cSince the late 1990s, the continent has become a $56 billion mobile phone ecosystem, with over half a billion subscribers; there are now 10 times as many cell phones as landlines south of the Sahara,\u201d Olopade presents the picture in Buzzfeed.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cIn 1999, less than 10% of Africans lived in areas with mobile phone coverage. Today, that number is more than 60%. Those owning phones were clustered mainly in Arab North Africa and South Africa; by 2012, 650 million people in sub-Saharan Africa \u2013 from tiny Gabon to sprawling Sudan \u2013 had subscriptions,\u201d she writes.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Information and communication technology is not just fertile ground for job-growing start-ups but also the democratisation of information and knowledge, resources central to any economic endeavour.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Africa also enjoys a vast array of natural advantages, a minimal carbon footprint, abundant resources which can translate to fortunes, given determined efforts to beneficiate, capacity to generate energy and an environment which favours good health.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
The youth, accounting for a vast majority of the African population are a dynamic and energetic demographic who saddle the promise of the continent.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Some of them, conscientious and technologically astute, are using their skills to compensate for the failure of the system to protect its citizens.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
The heroes of \u201cThe Bright Continent,\u201d including Usahidi, a citizen media solution incepted to fight political violence in Kenya.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Olopade gives it up to the enigmatic defender of the people, Ghanaian journalistic Anas Aremeyaw Anas. Recently featured in the New Africa\u2019s \u201c100 Most Influential Africans of 2015,\u201d Anas\u2019s disruptive trail reduces the manga \u201cCity Hunter\u201d to a joke.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
The enigmatic journalist is credited for \u201cdishing up some of the most fearless investigative stories in Africa \u2013 from timber smuggling in Sierra Leone, to the horrendous world of witchcraft deployed against and killing albinos in Tanzania and much more,\u201d New Africa reports.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
His crowning achievement is, however, his recent documentary \u201cGhana in the Eyes of God.\u201d Secretly recorded footage features major players in his country\u2019s judiciary taking bribes from criminals, some of them alleged murderers, and releasing them from the legal dragnet.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Youths like Anas and many more heroes in \u201cThe Bright Continent\u201d warrant optimism for Africa. While Africa has an observable record of governance and humanitarian problems, her people are not passive sufferers but intelligent and enterprising solution-brokers.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Foreign aid remains important, particularly in the areas of food security and the fight against disease epidemics but must be informed by exhaustive consultations on the ground as opposed to stereotypes and desktop solutions.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Add caption Book: The Bright Continent\u00a0 Author: Dayo Olopade\u00a0 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin ISBN: 978-0-547-67831-3 The United Nations (UN) solicits European entries for a poster design competition to mark the tenth anniversary of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). \u00a0 The winning entry by Stefan Einarsson from Iceland merges barefooted African children, apparently queuing for food at a refugee camp, with medium shots of G8 (EU, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, UK and US) leaders. \u00a0 The caption \u201cDear world leaders, we are still waiting,\u201d runs across the digitally manipulated image, juxtaposing power and poverty. \u00a0 This 2010 image epitomises Western media echo chambers, development agencies and capitalist institutions\u2019 framing of Africa as a helpless continent, \u201cthe white man\u2019s burden,\u201d forever condemned to stretch desperate hands to Babylon. \u00a0 \u201cThe Bright Continent: Breaking the Rules and Making Change in Africa\u201d is a forceful rebuttal of this narrative. Dayo Olopade, a Nigerian-American journalist, gleans a range of anecdotes from the field to present the case for an Africa which is taking strength from within and rising to be one of the formidable centres of the 21st century. \u00a0 \u00a0\u201cA panel of UN judges validated the biggest lie in modern history: that poor and passive Africans exists only in the shadow of Western action,\u201d Olopade refutes the poster in her opening chapter titled \u201cOrientation.\u201d \u00a0 This figment of Western fantasy is just the launchpad into an extensively argued case for domestic agency. \u201cIf you have read other \u2018development\u2019 books, it\u2019s easy enough to get that impression (of an Africa dependent on white benevolence),\u201d Olopade observes. \u00a0 \u201cEven as popular discourse begins to question the logic of foreign assistance to the region, the conversation remains focused on how \u2018the West\u2019 can improve its performance,\u201d she laments. \u201cFamiliar voices write prescriptions for everyone, from the leaders of the G8 to the infantry of the World Bank to the heads of landlocked countries like the Central African Republic.\u00a0 \u00a0 Though many have spent decades examining the various ruts and bottlenecks in economic growth, it is rare to hear about what ordinary Africans are going to do to help themselves,\u201d writes Olopade. \u00a0 Africa is neither the Dark Continent whose best part is to bask in Western lamp-posts nor the backyard of civilisation dappled with trouble spots. On the contrary, Olodape presents a Bright Continent powering to the fore with vast possibilities. \u00a0 Olopade, who has covered global politics and development policies for the \u201cAtlantic,\u201d the \u201cDaily Beast,\u201d \u201cForeign Policy,\u201d the \u201cNew Republic,\u201d the \u201cNew York Times\u201d and the \u201cWashington Post,\u201d spent years in various sub-Saharan countries, coming to terms with the everyday struggles, frustrations and triumphs of ordinary people.\u00a0 \u00a0 These stories come to life in the book, thanks to Olopade\u2019s breezy narrative style and her meticulous handling of details. In spite of the level at which she pitches her debate, the diction is consistently down-to-earth and the stories human-centred. \u00a0 Olopade contests the appropriation of formalistic, GDP-centric indices in assessing Africa\u2019s place in the 21st century. Characterising Africa through top-level lenses, she argues, ignores the agency of everyday man and woman in getting on with life against adverse settings. \u00a0 Her gripe is not just directed at the failure of offshore development but also African governments. She observes that leaders have, by and large, failed the continent, perpetuating a system of corruption, neglect and make-up rhetoric. \u00a0 Yet the people survive and thrive in spite of the institutional sabotage. The heroes of \u201cThe Bright Continent\u201d are not the grand debaters in the Pan-Africanist square but ordinary people who fend for their families and raise empowered generations in failing economies. \u00a0 These include Benson Muthame, Gladys Mwande and their six children. The security guard and his family grow maize and raise chickens at a commercial scale on an abandoned colonial home situated at a busy intersection of Nairobi, despite lacking a title to the land. \u00a0 Olopade marvels at their nerve: \u201cThe family has no official rights, supports, or farming expertise but like millions of subsistence farmers in Africa, found a way to make one (borrowed) acre count for something,\u201d she says.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u201cTheir quiet rebuke and commitment is a direct rebuke to the UN poster, and a great example of bold opportunism that makes Africa\u2019s development trajectory so different and exciting,\u201d she says. \u00a0 She notes that there are different, mostly wrong, angles for perceiving such obscure sites as Benson and Gladys\u2019s adopted home: to adjacent homeowners, an abandoned eyesore; to government planners, criminal trespass. \u00a0 For Olodape, Africa cannot be rated through the performance of the ruling elites but through the resilience of its disenfranchised majorities. These are the demographics which people Olodape\u2019s optimistic book. \u00a0 \u201cSharing these hidden triumphs is the best way I know to respond to the depressing top-level narratives that have held the region back\u2026Stories can help to challenge the bad news occupying a thin column in a Western, or scrolling across the lower edge of a cable news broadcast,\u201d she says. \u00a0 \u00a0\u201cThe Bright Continent\u201d retraces European explorers\u2019 search for the Nile foreign correspondents\u2019 sensationalist coverage of continent, taken to scale Henry Morton Stanley\u2019s 1878 rendering of the Africa \u201cdark continent,\u201d a phrase which has since stuck. \u00a0 The mistakes of history included not just condescending narratives but also ungeographical maps, mistakes equally occasioned by disregard of Africans.\u00a0 \u00a0 Olodape says these mistakes are being perpetuated by development agencies whose desktop solutions for Africa falter for being steeped in stereotypes at the expense of real interaction with the people on the ground. \u00a0 Development discourse informed by a messianic complex rather than consultation \u2013 New African gave short shrift to Band Aid in the same spirit earlier this year \u2013 is good for the ego for the ego of the agent rather than the recipients. \u00a0 \u00a0Her book proposes four platforms for assessing development in Africa \u2013 the family map, the technology map, the nature map and the youth map. \u00a0 The family is a strategic entity in Africa\u2019s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,8,104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-culture","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nMissing Angles in African Narratives | Blockspace<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=420\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Missing Angles in African Narratives | Blockspace\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Add caption Book: The Bright Continent\u00a0 Author: Dayo Olopade\u00a0 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin ISBN: 978-0-547-67831-3 The United Nations (UN) solicits European entries for a poster design competition to mark the tenth anniversary of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). \u00a0 The winning entry by Stefan Einarsson from Iceland merges barefooted African children, apparently queuing for food at a refugee camp, with medium shots of G8 (EU, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, UK and US) leaders. \u00a0 The caption \u201cDear world leaders, we are still waiting,\u201d runs across the digitally manipulated image, juxtaposing power and poverty. \u00a0 This 2010 image epitomises Western media echo chambers, development agencies and capitalist institutions\u2019 framing of Africa as a helpless continent, \u201cthe white man\u2019s burden,\u201d forever condemned to stretch desperate hands to Babylon. \u00a0 \u201cThe Bright Continent: Breaking the Rules and Making Change in Africa\u201d is a forceful rebuttal of this narrative. Dayo Olopade, a Nigerian-American journalist, gleans a range of anecdotes from the field to present the case for an Africa which is taking strength from within and rising to be one of the formidable centres of the 21st century. \u00a0 \u00a0\u201cA panel of UN judges validated the biggest lie in modern history: that poor and passive Africans exists only in the shadow of Western action,\u201d Olopade refutes the poster in her opening chapter titled \u201cOrientation.\u201d \u00a0 This figment of Western fantasy is just the launchpad into an extensively argued case for domestic agency. \u201cIf you have read other \u2018development\u2019 books, it\u2019s easy enough to get that impression (of an Africa dependent on white benevolence),\u201d Olopade observes. \u00a0 \u201cEven as popular discourse begins to question the logic of foreign assistance to the region, the conversation remains focused on how \u2018the West\u2019 can improve its performance,\u201d she laments. \u201cFamiliar voices write prescriptions for everyone, from the leaders of the G8 to the infantry of the World Bank to the heads of landlocked countries like the Central African Republic.\u00a0 \u00a0 Though many have spent decades examining the various ruts and bottlenecks in economic growth, it is rare to hear about what ordinary Africans are going to do to help themselves,\u201d writes Olopade. \u00a0 Africa is neither the Dark Continent whose best part is to bask in Western lamp-posts nor the backyard of civilisation dappled with trouble spots. On the contrary, Olodape presents a Bright Continent powering to the fore with vast possibilities. \u00a0 Olopade, who has covered global politics and development policies for the \u201cAtlantic,\u201d the \u201cDaily Beast,\u201d \u201cForeign Policy,\u201d the \u201cNew Republic,\u201d the \u201cNew York Times\u201d and the \u201cWashington Post,\u201d spent years in various sub-Saharan countries, coming to terms with the everyday struggles, frustrations and triumphs of ordinary people.\u00a0 \u00a0 These stories come to life in the book, thanks to Olopade\u2019s breezy narrative style and her meticulous handling of details. In spite of the level at which she pitches her debate, the diction is consistently down-to-earth and the stories human-centred. \u00a0 Olopade contests the appropriation of formalistic, GDP-centric indices in assessing Africa\u2019s place in the 21st century. Characterising Africa through top-level lenses, she argues, ignores the agency of everyday man and woman in getting on with life against adverse settings. \u00a0 Her gripe is not just directed at the failure of offshore development but also African governments. She observes that leaders have, by and large, failed the continent, perpetuating a system of corruption, neglect and make-up rhetoric. \u00a0 Yet the people survive and thrive in spite of the institutional sabotage. The heroes of \u201cThe Bright Continent\u201d are not the grand debaters in the Pan-Africanist square but ordinary people who fend for their families and raise empowered generations in failing economies. \u00a0 These include Benson Muthame, Gladys Mwande and their six children. The security guard and his family grow maize and raise chickens at a commercial scale on an abandoned colonial home situated at a busy intersection of Nairobi, despite lacking a title to the land. \u00a0 Olopade marvels at their nerve: \u201cThe family has no official rights, supports, or farming expertise but like millions of subsistence farmers in Africa, found a way to make one (borrowed) acre count for something,\u201d she says.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u201cTheir quiet rebuke and commitment is a direct rebuke to the UN poster, and a great example of bold opportunism that makes Africa\u2019s development trajectory so different and exciting,\u201d she says. \u00a0 She notes that there are different, mostly wrong, angles for perceiving such obscure sites as Benson and Gladys\u2019s adopted home: to adjacent homeowners, an abandoned eyesore; to government planners, criminal trespass. \u00a0 For Olodape, Africa cannot be rated through the performance of the ruling elites but through the resilience of its disenfranchised majorities. These are the demographics which people Olodape\u2019s optimistic book. \u00a0 \u201cSharing these hidden triumphs is the best way I know to respond to the depressing top-level narratives that have held the region back\u2026Stories can help to challenge the bad news occupying a thin column in a Western, or scrolling across the lower edge of a cable news broadcast,\u201d she says. \u00a0 \u00a0\u201cThe Bright Continent\u201d retraces European explorers\u2019 search for the Nile foreign correspondents\u2019 sensationalist coverage of continent, taken to scale Henry Morton Stanley\u2019s 1878 rendering of the Africa \u201cdark continent,\u201d a phrase which has since stuck. \u00a0 The mistakes of history included not just condescending narratives but also ungeographical maps, mistakes equally occasioned by disregard of Africans.\u00a0 \u00a0 Olodape says these mistakes are being perpetuated by development agencies whose desktop solutions for Africa falter for being steeped in stereotypes at the expense of real interaction with the people on the ground. \u00a0 Development discourse informed by a messianic complex rather than consultation \u2013 New African gave short shrift to Band Aid in the same spirit earlier this year \u2013 is good for the ego for the ego of the agent rather than the recipients. \u00a0 \u00a0Her book proposes four platforms for assessing development in Africa \u2013 the family map, the technology map, the nature map and the youth map. \u00a0 The family is a strategic entity in Africa\u2019s\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=420\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Blockspace\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-06-16T15:43:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-10-25T15:02:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/d.gr-assets.com\/books\/1377648681l\/18263743.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"hardsouth\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"hardsouth\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blockspaceballads.com\\\/?p=420#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blockspaceballads.com\\\/?p=420\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"hardsouth\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blockspaceballads.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/a336a678f28eacb341ce63c6b84b17d0\"},\"headline\":\"Missing Angles in African 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\/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Missing Angles in African Narratives | Blockspace","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=420","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Missing Angles in African Narratives | Blockspace","og_description":"Add caption Book: The Bright Continent\u00a0 Author: Dayo Olopade\u00a0 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin ISBN: 978-0-547-67831-3 The United Nations (UN) solicits European entries for a poster design competition to mark the tenth anniversary of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). \u00a0 The winning entry by Stefan Einarsson from Iceland merges barefooted African children, apparently queuing for food at a refugee camp, with medium shots of G8 (EU, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, UK and US) leaders. \u00a0 The caption \u201cDear world leaders, we are still waiting,\u201d runs across the digitally manipulated image, juxtaposing power and poverty. \u00a0 This 2010 image epitomises Western media echo chambers, development agencies and capitalist institutions\u2019 framing of Africa as a helpless continent, \u201cthe white man\u2019s burden,\u201d forever condemned to stretch desperate hands to Babylon. \u00a0 \u201cThe Bright Continent: Breaking the Rules and Making Change in Africa\u201d is a forceful rebuttal of this narrative. Dayo Olopade, a Nigerian-American journalist, gleans a range of anecdotes from the field to present the case for an Africa which is taking strength from within and rising to be one of the formidable centres of the 21st century. \u00a0 \u00a0\u201cA panel of UN judges validated the biggest lie in modern history: that poor and passive Africans exists only in the shadow of Western action,\u201d Olopade refutes the poster in her opening chapter titled \u201cOrientation.\u201d \u00a0 This figment of Western fantasy is just the launchpad into an extensively argued case for domestic agency. \u201cIf you have read other \u2018development\u2019 books, it\u2019s easy enough to get that impression (of an Africa dependent on white benevolence),\u201d Olopade observes. \u00a0 \u201cEven as popular discourse begins to question the logic of foreign assistance to the region, the conversation remains focused on how \u2018the West\u2019 can improve its performance,\u201d she laments. \u201cFamiliar voices write prescriptions for everyone, from the leaders of the G8 to the infantry of the World Bank to the heads of landlocked countries like the Central African Republic.\u00a0 \u00a0 Though many have spent decades examining the various ruts and bottlenecks in economic growth, it is rare to hear about what ordinary Africans are going to do to help themselves,\u201d writes Olopade. \u00a0 Africa is neither the Dark Continent whose best part is to bask in Western lamp-posts nor the backyard of civilisation dappled with trouble spots. On the contrary, Olodape presents a Bright Continent powering to the fore with vast possibilities. \u00a0 Olopade, who has covered global politics and development policies for the \u201cAtlantic,\u201d the \u201cDaily Beast,\u201d \u201cForeign Policy,\u201d the \u201cNew Republic,\u201d the \u201cNew York Times\u201d and the \u201cWashington Post,\u201d spent years in various sub-Saharan countries, coming to terms with the everyday struggles, frustrations and triumphs of ordinary people.\u00a0 \u00a0 These stories come to life in the book, thanks to Olopade\u2019s breezy narrative style and her meticulous handling of details. In spite of the level at which she pitches her debate, the diction is consistently down-to-earth and the stories human-centred. \u00a0 Olopade contests the appropriation of formalistic, GDP-centric indices in assessing Africa\u2019s place in the 21st century. Characterising Africa through top-level lenses, she argues, ignores the agency of everyday man and woman in getting on with life against adverse settings. \u00a0 Her gripe is not just directed at the failure of offshore development but also African governments. She observes that leaders have, by and large, failed the continent, perpetuating a system of corruption, neglect and make-up rhetoric. \u00a0 Yet the people survive and thrive in spite of the institutional sabotage. The heroes of \u201cThe Bright Continent\u201d are not the grand debaters in the Pan-Africanist square but ordinary people who fend for their families and raise empowered generations in failing economies. \u00a0 These include Benson Muthame, Gladys Mwande and their six children. The security guard and his family grow maize and raise chickens at a commercial scale on an abandoned colonial home situated at a busy intersection of Nairobi, despite lacking a title to the land. \u00a0 Olopade marvels at their nerve: \u201cThe family has no official rights, supports, or farming expertise but like millions of subsistence farmers in Africa, found a way to make one (borrowed) acre count for something,\u201d she says.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u201cTheir quiet rebuke and commitment is a direct rebuke to the UN poster, and a great example of bold opportunism that makes Africa\u2019s development trajectory so different and exciting,\u201d she says. \u00a0 She notes that there are different, mostly wrong, angles for perceiving such obscure sites as Benson and Gladys\u2019s adopted home: to adjacent homeowners, an abandoned eyesore; to government planners, criminal trespass. \u00a0 For Olodape, Africa cannot be rated through the performance of the ruling elites but through the resilience of its disenfranchised majorities. These are the demographics which people Olodape\u2019s optimistic book. \u00a0 \u201cSharing these hidden triumphs is the best way I know to respond to the depressing top-level narratives that have held the region back\u2026Stories can help to challenge the bad news occupying a thin column in a Western, or scrolling across the lower edge of a cable news broadcast,\u201d she says. \u00a0 \u00a0\u201cThe Bright Continent\u201d retraces European explorers\u2019 search for the Nile foreign correspondents\u2019 sensationalist coverage of continent, taken to scale Henry Morton Stanley\u2019s 1878 rendering of the Africa \u201cdark continent,\u201d a phrase which has since stuck. \u00a0 The mistakes of history included not just condescending narratives but also ungeographical maps, mistakes equally occasioned by disregard of Africans.\u00a0 \u00a0 Olodape says these mistakes are being perpetuated by development agencies whose desktop solutions for Africa falter for being steeped in stereotypes at the expense of real interaction with the people on the ground. \u00a0 Development discourse informed by a messianic complex rather than consultation \u2013 New African gave short shrift to Band Aid in the same spirit earlier this year \u2013 is good for the ego for the ego of the agent rather than the recipients. \u00a0 \u00a0Her book proposes four platforms for assessing development in Africa \u2013 the family map, the technology map, the nature map and the youth map. \u00a0 The family is a strategic entity in Africa\u2019s","og_url":"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=420","og_site_name":"Blockspace","article_published_time":"2016-06-16T15:43:00+00:00","article_modified_time":"2026-10-25T15:02:25+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/d.gr-assets.com\/books\/1377648681l\/18263743.jpg","type":"","width":"","height":""}],"author":"hardsouth","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"hardsouth","Est. reading time":"7 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