The Consequences Of Our One Sided Narrative

By Ishaq Bilal

Ideologies about people especially regarding their way of life are often informed by various agents. Ranging from experience based on close contact or relationship, historical background or the way of life of their progenitors and narrations from the media. People have always had one thing or the other to say about other folks.

These dispositions about us and others developed in our heads and affirmed by the media's output of information have often helped us to define the inhabitants of this world.

Africans are often described as Blacks and Europeans as Whites. This definition did not just neglect the presence of indigenous African countries like Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt that do not belong to the Black-colored race. It also attach to Africans the media socially created symbolism which portray black as evil, unproductive, unattractive, undeveloped and so on. With this characteristics, Africans have been seen in these circle of Negativity.

Unlike Black, White symbolism as a signifier of peace, development, success and achievement are what we attach to the Western blocs because they are whites.

However, with the help of the media, these definitions have been made strong and turned into one sided stories, irrespective of any contradicting character to the already held belief. They are spread wide to far away lands and believed as permanent truth.

Big media conglomerates sets agenda on these definitions for their world wide range audiences, just to drive home the point. The point that Blacks (Africans) are inferior while the Whites (Europeans) are superior. The point that exceptional capacity or potential possessed by Africans are waste except if they are harnessed for the benefit of the whites.

These points have made it possible for someone who never shared any close contact or relationship with the African society to confidently talk about the ills in the way of life of Africans. These include stories about the corruption in governance, the poverty in the continent and the dearth of development. All of these dispositions forms the one sided story that have been used to define Africa and Africans, informed from TV news, books, newspapers, magazine or social media.

However, these stories are largely sensationalized, not objective, one sided, fabricated and falsified to project their superiority complex. As not always the case, there are lots of positive happening in Africa and also lots of negativities happening on the western bloc. For example, Rwanda have enjoyed remarkable developmental achievement, Morocco's reaching the Semi finals of the FIFA World Cup, the new smart city projects in Egypt etc are proves of the fast growing developmental policies of African nations.

However, the rate at which these African positives and the European negativities are underreported have geared up questions about the imperialistic agenda of the west. Major reports concerning African countries from the global and trans national media organizations focus on the negative stories of the continent. They make issues of poverty, underdevelopment, corruption, terrorism, famine etc their beats and flash points to make big headlines and gear up public discussions, neglecting the good policies, technological innovations and great movements happening in Africa

Consequently, the world including Africans see this negative one sided stories as a definition accrued to the African continent as hell, a place for the poor, a harbor for terrorists and inhuman individuals. Africans have consequently lose confidence and hope in themselves in making their nations great with their potentials and resources.

On the contrary, the reports about the western bloc, are focused on technological advancement, prosperous policies, peace and stability, enjoyment for the common man and aids extended to the world. These one sided story of course portray the European nations as heaven on earth with all the good of life. They also neglect and hide the hurricane, terrorism activities, flood, government corrupt practices, unemployment and hardship, so as not to been seen as the same with the one sided stories created for Africans. These have also informed the desire of Africans to cross the African boarders to enjoy the good life they see on Tv, read on newspaper and magazine, watch in movies and on social media.

Advantageous to the west, these stories, aside from informing hopelessness in the African continent, have also enable them (the European blocs) to exploit African nations of their human and natural resources. This has ultimately led to Neo-Colonialism.

Neo-Colonialism is the last stage of Imperialism. It is the ideological way of indirectly exploiting an underdeveloped or developing country by a rich, powerful and developed nations through aids, exploitative policies, treaties and developmental projects.

This is the case of Africa where European giants take on entrepreneurship skills. They falsify information and identify a problem. In the move to solve the problem, they establish their presence and consequently make the nation dependent on them and ultimately exploit their resources. Case study of the Syria, Iraq and now Russia-Ukraine war

However, it is time for Africans to open their eyes to these exploitations influenced by the media popularizes propaganda, the negative one sided stories that have marred our thinking about ourselves. Africans in diaspora must open their eyes to the impact they have on the well being of these western bloc and therefore see the need to develop our own mother land with the same potentials and not a foreign land.

What hinders Africa's development is not lack of resources, whether human, mineral or capital resources but the mentality created by the much told negative one sided stories, which have made the entire world including Africans to loose hope in their motherland.

We as Africans need to believe in ourselves, as it is time to correct the negative stories. It is time to wise up and not allow the our tap of good, be drained by the greedy white folks. The good stories about Africans and our development should overshadow the bad ones, so that we become self sufficient and not allow our pots of soup be enjoyed by foreigners in exchange for spoilt brooks that will run our stomach later.