Here are 5 popular assumptions about Africa, plus the reality:
1. DRUM BEATS
Any show about Africa always but always opens with 'appropriate African music' which is: fast drumming accompanied by lone, mournful wailing or aggressive chants by deep-voiced men.
Reality: Modern Africans listen to African-flavoured Hip Hop, RnB and Afropop by homegrown artists performing in English/pidgin/local languages. Drums do play a major role and traditional African Highlife-style music is popular, but most of the jungle-drumming, Lion Sleeps Tonight 'African sound' you hear is only venerated by Westerners.
2. HUTS
Prince William's Africa took some British youths to Botswana for the first time, and the voice-over stated that they were to "live as Africans: in a simple hut with no hot water, no electricity and a diet of pap porridge." I almost kicked my TV in anger.
Reality: I've visited Nigeria and I NEVER saw a thatched roof, mud-walled hut. Basic, ramshackle structures yes, but even when I visited my grandparents' village I saw two-storey houses and paved roads. I have been to a house with one of those 'squat over a hole' toilets, but the majority of homes in towns and cities are built with bricks and have (sporadic) electricity and water out of taps thank you very much.
Lagos: Look, no Huts!
Lagos Airport: But Western journalists want the 'real' Africa
I'm not saying huts don't exist, I'm saying 60% of Africans live nowhere near one. The funny thing is that airports are situated in the cities so the first thing Western journalists see when they arrive is the bustling traffic and office buildings common to every city, but they don't start filming until they've driven six hours into the most remote village out in the middle of nowhere and call that Africa. Then they return to their comfortable hotel rooms in the city to prepare their reports.
3. WILD ANIMALS
The prevalence of nature documentaries filmed in Africa means that wild animals are so intertwined with notions of the continent that some think lions, tigers and rhinos are a common sight for Africans.
Reality: I saw lizards, cattle, emaciated dogs and one snake, but no safari animals. I know these are mostly found in South Africa or Kenya, but contrary to popular opinion the majority of Africans don't live side by side with giraffes, and only a small population of poor tribes living away from their country's cities hunt game for food.
4. AFRICA AS A COUNTRY
The former US vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin famously referred to Africa as a country, and when many visit Ghana for example they say they've been to 'Africa,' lumping 54 unrelated countries into one indistinct entity.
Reality: The African continent is made up of 54 countries with over 1 billion people and 2,000 languages with almost as many cultures. Each African country has a particular personality and differentiating one from another helps to promote this fact.
5. LOIN CLOTHS
There's the over-used convention when film crews visit Africa of filming a row of scantily clad women in grass rara-skirts and beaded ankle jewellery, and spear-wielding, loin-clothed men with feather-headpieces singing and hop-dancing to welcome visiting western dignitaries who look on in benevolent appreciation.
Reality: I watched the DVD extras for the well-known movie The Gods Must Be Crazy (1981) which revealed that the loin-clothed African Bushmen running around the Kalahari dessert featured in the film were wearing costumes the director provided, as they usually dressed in trousers and T-shirts. Most of the 'authentic Africans' presented as a spectacle for tourists dress that way to make money. Whilst this display of culture is interesting, it does not reflect the daily attire of rich and poor Africans who wear 'western' clothing or fully-covered ethnic designs similar to those featured on my British Weddings vs Nigerian Weddings post.
Constantly featuring images of Masai warriors and Zulu dancers and saying 'This is Africa' is like focusing on Burberry & gold-jewellery-wearing 'Chavs' or handkerchief-waving Morris Dancers and saying 'This is Britain.' These are distinct sub-groups and traditional 'actors' that do not represent the whole population.
A rarity on western TV: Well-dressed and well-fed African children
