Sep 21 2008
Africa is either dark or lit up by wildfires …
I spent all of yesterday working as support staff for focus groups. Half of the day was with Africans (sub-Saharan black Africans, primarily from West and Central Africa). One of the main complaints about the US media is how it portrays Africa. Everything is primitive or bad or poor when it comes to Africa. Forget the bustling cities of Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa. Forget the amount of progress being made all around the world.
Well, I found this image on-line — the “World at Night” — and it kind of reinforced some of those complaints.
(to see a larger picture, click here)
As you can see from the picture – there are barely any city lights (the white spots) in Africa. Instead it’s pretty much all dark (meaning no lights at all) or there’s that nice long strip that’s all red (signifying “wildfires” as the source of light at night). I’m sorry, but seeing as places like Ghana and Chad actually have electricity pretty much 24/7 … as I’m sure does Ivory Coast and possibly places like Kenya and Cameron … this map just frustrates me. You also got to love how Lagos, Nigeria is pretty much lit up by “natural gas flares” (the green). Can Africa get any more primitive?
And it’s all based off of information gathered from NASA (of course).
NOTE: I’m equally enraged by the “fishing fleet lights” off the coast of South America. But at least they get some bright white lights on their continent. And Australia?? … let me just focus on Africa.
Bunmi Ishola
Hello Ms Ishola,
I am Thornton Carter II, the co-auther of The Pan-Africans’ Book that was published by The Pan-African Publishing Company in 2007 which has been completely sold out
A new edition of the Pan-Africans’ Book is planned to be released each of the years throughout the rest of the 21st century.
I would like to send you a free copy of the 2007 edition of The Pan-Africans’ Book for your evaluation and if you are interested, we would like for you to be a contributing editor for the 2008 edition.
Respectfully submitted,
TC2
P.S. Log on http://www.thepanafricans.org/ for a synopsis of The Pan-Africans’ Book
I’m a Ghanaian woman born in Canada and I COMPLETELY hate the media’s (especially US) representation of Africa. It’s disgusting how they only show and promote one side of the story. I understand that there are places that are poor and need our help but by the media exaggerating the extent of poorness or tribal peoples not only does it enforce stereotypes about us (i.e. how we are all undereducated etc) but it makes issues where there are them seem too big to be solved so people feel more inclined to back off like: “Oh the whole country (another fallacy of their thinking the continent as a country) is poor we can’t help them.”
It’s just really angering that they can get away with this kind of crap. Ah, wells.