A Change is Gonna Come: The power struggle between Africa's youth & it's leaders

The British Media and the Global South is a short film that attempts to investigate why the Western media, British in particular, portray Africa in a predominantly negative way.



The interviewees make the usual points, the press are only interested in negative stories and if Africans want a different narrative of their continent they should tell it themselves.

If you are in the habit of reading blogs and using social media you will know that the younger generation are already telling their own far more complete story. In fact, they are not only the narrators of that story they are also the characters.Yes, they acknowledge the problems on the continent, but they are brimming with solutions. They are either thinking of ways to, or are already taking positive action towards progress in their countries.

Case in point? This video shows a successful, positive, African, business woman. Magatte Wade certainly does not seem to suffer from any sort of inferiority complex. She is truly inspirational!



I've been mulling over my last post and the penny dropped. The problem with Walter's opinion is not the fact that he uses provocative language. It is the constant reference to the past. To what we as Africans have failed to do.

Field Ruwe's account of this conversation is not telling us anything new. It may be said in a blunt manner, but it is certainly not a light bulb moment for most of us.

In fact, in my opinion what is most disturbing about Walter's assessment is the conclusion, as I see it, that only intellectuals can contribute to the development of our continent. I firmly believe that equality of opportunity, a creative mind and self belief can go a long way.

African leaders, who incidentally are mostly dinosaurs, are not so different to the Western media or Walter. They see Africa's problems, but are not offering many useful solutions. They are still recycling the same old ideas, weighed down by their fight for independence and consequent 'failure' to achieve what they had envisioned for their nations.

Field Ruwe asserted as much when he wrote about the lack of innovation amongst our leaders. I would, however, point out that while Mr Ruwe talks about waiting a term or two for a new President who will encourage innovation we, the youth, are less patient. One of the major characteristics of a lot of the demonstrations and movements in Africa is that they are taking power back from governments, not waiting for the powers that be to act.

This Tweet says it all;

LaetciaB Laeticia 

“We are neither Communists, Catholics nor socialist. We are African nationalists. We reserve the right to choose our friends " #Lumumba

The old categories are gone. We are so connected that all those artificial differences don't matter any more. We are able to see what those in more developed countries have and can no longer be content with scraping by.

This is not just an African story it is a global phenomenon. Consider this highly rated (if strongly worded) comment by a reader of The Guardian regarding proposed  US legislation for the control of on line piracy ;

Kinelle

18 January 2012 5:31PM

Let's be honest, the people behind SOPA/PIPA are smart, very smart. They know without a doubt the bill will not put a dent in piracy. The kind of people who pirate and run piracy services are far too smart to be brought to heel by mere legislation and have continued to elude the best efforts of the US and it's lackeys. SOPA/PIPA exists for one reason, to protect an ageing and crooked business model, dominated by large corporations who are slowly but surely being eroded by people like you and me. 

These corporations want to stifle the Internet because the Internet is the biggest threat to their dominance that has ever existed. For decades, through control of radio stations and television channels, corporations have made bank, but now, all the money in the world can't save them from guys in their bedrooms and home-made studios creating content that is more relevant to the current generation. 

The variety the big media corporations refused to provide because it "wasn't profitable", is now being provided by hundreds of thousands of amateur, semi-pro and professional independent creators and directors and we're all competing for the most important currency of all, time. The time you spend watching our material is time you don't spend watching theirs. It's money directly out of their pocket that they could have been earning before the Internet came along and that's the hilarious thing about this whole deal. Piracy is not what's killing their profits, completely legitimate competition from the Internet is.

 They use the cause of "fighting piracy" as a Trojan horse to force through bought and paid for legislation to kill independent content creation for good because they can see the end is nigh for their ageing and increasingly irrelevant business model. They know they cannot win legitimately, so they do what they've always done, exploit a corrupt political system to bully and extort their way to what they want.

This is what SOPA/PIPA are really about and that is why you should oppose them. You are standing up for what your generation represents, just as previous generations have done the same on a slew of different issues. As much as those in power would like us to believe we are the apathetic, lazy generation. The truth is we are anything but and that scares the shit out of them.