#afropositivism

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A single story is insufficient but through the accumulation of multiple stories we get a better picture.

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#TheAfricaTheMediaNeverShowsYou Campaign

The video above, produced by Al Jazeera in 2015, provides an overview of the campaign, examines the beginning of the campaign, and the spread of the hashtag through the use of social media while analyzing patterns. Furthermore, the video incorporates discussions with social media users and an African female head of state regarding the campaign.

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#TheAfricaTheMediaNeverShowsYou Campaign

The campaign was started by a seventeen year old user from Ghana attempting to showcase Africa’s rich culture and natural beauty by using the hashtag on Twitter. The purpose was to counteract the afro-pessimist approach. It first gained traction in South Africa, moving onto Kenya, and then Senegal. Then, the campaign peaked in 2015 on Twitter crossing over to other social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, etc.

The hashtag was even seen on news outlets such as BBC, The Guardian, and Quartz. Furthermore, the hashtag produced over 100 000 tweets in 2015 showcasing images of Africa’s unique geographical beauty, high-fashion, art, and cuisine. The creator’s goal was to help change the negative stereotypes associated with Africa perpetuated by the media in hopes of also attracting tourists. She also emphasized that the mission of this campaign was NOT to erase problems found within Africa, but rather celebrate the beauty across the continent.

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Exposing One-sidedness 

Various youtube videos with a growing number of afro-positive speakers are seeking to undermine the one-sidedness representations of Africa. The video above is an example where a TEDx speaker advocates for “a new narrative”.

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See Africa Differently. 8,758 likes · 3 talking about this. When you think of Africa, what springs to mind? Do you think of Nobel prize winners, successful businesses and thriving agriculture? No?...

Social Media in Fighting the Single Story

Social media pages, such as “See Africa differently” on Facebook, serve to serving to preclude any negative associations with Africa. This allows for the correcting of misconceptions and supports tourism in the cases where individuals who having visited post their trip contradicting the stereotypes and single story of Africa. 

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Positive Tourism in Africa provides a crucial counter-narrative to the prevailing colonial and reductionist perspective on Africa’s tourism trajectory and future. It offers a uniquely optimistic outlook for tourism in Africa whilst acknowledging the many challenges that African countries continue to grapple with. By examining broad and localized empirical studies, conceptual frameworks, culturally centered paradigms, and innovative methodological approaches for African contexts, this book showcases the many facets of tourism in Africa that illustrate hope, resilience, growth, and survival. This volume explores themes such as community-based tourism, wildlife tourism, tourism governance and leadership, crisis recovery, regional integration, the role of indigenous knowledge, event tourism and the impact of smart technologies. It acknowledges the challenges and opportunities for growth that exist in these various contexts and explores how tourism creates value for the spectrum of its participants. Including a wide selection of contributions from diverse authors, many of them African, this book offers an Afro-centric interpretation of tourism phenomena. It will be of great interest to students, researchers and academics in the field of Tourism and African Studies, as well as Development Studies and Geography.

In this book, authors discuss the linkages intertwining social media with afro-positivism and afro-pessimism. Moreover, from a post-colonial lens,  African scholars argue for the creation intellectual spaces where subaltern peoples speak for themselves generating cultural discourses in various areas of thought through the use of social media platforms. This theoretical approach exposes essentialism and can be seen in action in our present day through the interactions on social media.

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Social Media Facilitates the Sharing of Stories

Social media narratives play a key role in shaping perceptions of “place”. According to scholars, social media has provided an opportunity to redress-representational biases through growing the influence and volume of counter-narratives regarding Africa. The figure above shows twitter and facebook trends in addition to the percentage of tweets and facebook users across Africa.

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The West’s Single Story of Africa in Media

In some cases, the west has even created a single stories through an afro-positivist lens. The latter seeks to counterbalance afro-pessimism while recognizing the challenges and the range of realities faced by actors across all African societies. In addition, afro-positivism attempts to challenge the simplistic neo-colonial nature of afro-pessimism. Nevertheless, both angles present extreme perspectives which can result in problematic outcomes and incomplete stories.