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Good story, but that's what happens when you let others tell your story.
When you let others tell your story, they tell it the way they like.

>From: salifou issoufou <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: "AAM (African Association of Madison)"
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: A good article!
>Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 19:04:59 -0700
>
>
>This is a great article (or piece of writing) showing the positive side of
>the 'bashed continent.' Enjoy!
>Salifou
>The Africa You Never See
> >
> >By Carol Pineau
> >
> >Sunday, April 17, 2005; Page B02
> >
> >In the waiting area of a large office complex in Accra, Ghana, it's
> >standing room only as citizens with bundles of cash line up to buy shares
> >of a mutual fund that has yielded an average 60 percent annually for the
> >past seven years. They're entrusting their hard-earned cash to a local
> >company called Databank, which invests in stock markets in Ghana,
>Nigeria,
> >Botswana and Kenya that consistently rank among the world's top growth
> >markets.
> >
> >Chances are you haven't read or heard anything about Databank in your
>daily
> >newspaper or on the evening news, where the little coverage of Africa
> >that's offered focuses almost exclusively on the negative -- the virulent
> >spread of HIV/AIDS, genocide in Darfur and the chaos of Zimbabwe.
> >
> >Yes, Africa is a land of wars, poverty and corruption. The situation in
> >places like Darfur, Sudan, desperately cries out for more media attention
> >and international action. But Africa is also a land of stock markets,
>high
> >rises, Internet cafes and a growing middle class. This is the part of
> >Africa that functions. And this Africa also needs media attention, if
>it's
> >to have any chance of fully joining the global economy.
> >
> >Africa's media image comes at a high cost, even, at the extreme, the cost
> >of lives. Stories about hardship and tragedy aim to tug at our
> >heartstrings, getting us to dig into our pockets or urge Congress to send
> >more aid. But no country or region ever developed thanks to aid alone.
> >Investment, and the job and wealth creation it generates, is the only
>road
> >to lasting development. That's how China, India and the Asian Tigers did
> >it.
> >
> >Yet while Africa, according to the U.S. government's Overseas Private
> >Investment Corp., offers the highest return in the world on direct
>foreign
> >investment, it attracts the least. Unless investors see the Africa that's
> >worthy of investment, they won't put their money into it. And that lack
>of
> >investment translates into job stagnation, continued poverty and limited
> >access to education and health care.
> >
> >Consider a few facts: The Ghana Stock Exchange regularly tops the list of
> >the world's highest-performing stock markets. Botswana, with its A+
>credit
> >rating, boasts one of the highest per capita government savings rates in
> >the world, topped only by Singapore and a handful of other fiscally
>prudent
> >nations. Cell phones are making phenomenal profits on the continent.
> >Brand-name companies like Coca-Cola, GM, Caterpillar and Citibank have
> >invested in Africa for years and are quite bullish on the future.
> >
> >The failure to show this side of Africa creates a one-dimensional
> >caricature of a complex continent. Imagine if 9/11, the Oklahoma City
> >bombing and school shootings were all that the rest of the world knew
>about
> >America.
> >
> >I recently produced a documentary on entrepreneurship and private
> >enterprise in Africa. Throughout the year-long process, I came to realize
> >how all of us in the media -- even those with a true love of the
>continent
> >-- portray it in a way that's truly to its detriment.
> >
> >The first cameraman I called to film the documentary laughed and said,
> >"Business and Africa, aren't those contradictory terms?" The second got
> >excited imagining heart-warming images of women's co-ops and market
>stalls
> >brimming with rustic crafts. Several friends simply assumed I was doing a
> >documentary on AIDS. After all, what else does one film in Africa?
> >
> >The little-known fact is that businesses are thriving throughout Africa.
> >With good governance and sound fiscal policies, countries like Botswana,
> >Ghana, Uganda, Senegal and many more are bustling, their economies
>growing
> >at surprisingly robust rates.
> >
> >Private enterprise is not just limited to the well-behaved nations. You
> >can't find a more war-ravaged land than Somalia, which has been without a
> >central government for more than a decade. The big surprise? Private
> >enterprise is flourishing. Mogadishu has the cheapest cell phone rates on
> >the continent, mostly due to no government intervention. In the northern
> >city of Hargeysa, the markets sell the latest satellite phone technology.
> >The electricity works. When the state collapsed in 1991, the national
> >airline went out of business. Today, there are five private carriers and
> >price wars keep the cost of tickets down. This is not the Somalia you see
> >in the media.
> >
> >Obviously life there would be dramatically improved by good governance --
> >or even just some governance -- but it's also true that, through
>resilience
> >and resourcefulness, Somalis have been able to create a functioning
> >society.
> >
> >Most African businesses suffer from an extreme lack of infrastructure,
>but
> >the people I met were too determined to let this stop them. It just costs
> >them more. Without reliable electricity, most businesses have to use
> >generators. They have to dig bore-holes for a dependable water source.
> >Telephone lines are notoriously out of service, but cell phones are
>filling
> >the gap.
> >
> >Throughout Africa, what I found was a private sector working hard to find
> >African solutions to African problems. One example that will always stick
> >in my mind is the CEO of Vodacom Congo, the largest cell phone company in
> >that country. Alieu Conteh started his business while the civil war was
> >still raging. With rebel troops closing in on the airport in Kinshasa, no
> >foreign manufacturer would send in a cell phone tower, so Conteh got
>locals
> >to collect scrap metal, which they welded together to build one. That
>tower
> >still stands today.
> >
> >As I interviewed successful entrepreneurs, I was continually astounded by
> >their ingenuity, creativity and steadfastness. These people are the
>future
> >of the continent. They are the ones we should be talking to about how to
> >move Africa forward. Instead, the media concentrates on victims or
> >government officials, and as anyone who has worked in Africa knows,
> >government is more often a part of the problem than of the solution.
> >
> >When the foreign media descend on the latest crisis, the person they look
> >to interview is invariably the foreign savior, an aid worker from the
> >United States or Europe. African saviors are everywhere, delivering aid
>on
> >the ground. But they don't seem to be in our cultural belief system. It's
> >not just the media, either. Look at the literature put out by almost any
> >nongovernmental organization. The better ones show images of smiling
> >African children -- smiling because they have been helped by the NGO. The
> >worst promote the extended-belly, flies-on-the-face cliche of Africa,
> >hoping that the pain of seeing those images will fill their coffers. "We
> >hawk poverty," one NGO worker admitted to me.
> >
> >Last November, ABC's "Primetime Live" aired a special on Britain's Prince
> >Harry and his work with AIDS children in Lesotho. The segment, titled
>"The
> >Forgotten Kingdom: Prince Harry in Lesotho," painted the tiny nation as a
> >desperate, desolate place. The program's message was clear: This helpless
> >nation at last had a knight -- or prince -- in shining armor.
> >
> >By the time the charity addresses came up at the end, you were ready to
> >give, and that's good. Lesotho needs help with its AIDS problem. But
>would
> >it really have hurt the story to add that this land-locked nation with
>few
> >natural resources has jump-started its economy by aggressively courting
> >foreign investment? The reality is that it's anything but a "forgotten
> >kingdom," as a dramatic increase in exports has made it the top
>beneficiary
> >of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a duty-free, quota-free
> >U.S.-Africa trade agreement. More than 50,000 people have gotten jobs
> >through the country's initiatives. Couldn't the program have portrayed an
> >African country that was in need of assistance, but was neither helpless
> >nor a victim?
> >
> >Still the simplistic portrayals come. A recent episode of the popular NBC
> >drama "Medical Investigation" was about an anthrax scare in Philadelphia.
> >The source of the deadly spores? Some illegal immigrants from Africa
> >playing their drums in a local market, unknowingly infecting innocent
> >passersby. Typical: If it's a deadly disease, the scriptwriters make it
> >come from Africa.
> >
> >Most of the time, Africa is simply not on the map. The continent's
>booming
> >stock markets are almost never mentioned in newspaper financial pages.
>How
> >often is an African country -- apart, perhaps, from South Africa or Egypt
> >or Morocco -- featured in a newspaper travel section? Even the listing of
> >worldwide weather includes only a few African cities.
> >
> >The result of this portrait is an Africa we can't relate to. It seems so
> >foreign to us, so different and incomprehensible. Since we can't relate
>to
> >it, we ignore it.
> >
> >There are lots of reasons for the media's neglect of Africa: bean
>counters
> >in the newsroom and the high cost of international coverage, the belief
> >that American viewers aren't interested in international stories, and the
> >infotainment of news. There's also journalists' reluctance to pursue
> >so-called "positive stories." We all know that such stories don't win
> >awards or get front-page, above-the-fold placement. But what's happening
>in
> >Africa doesn't need to be cast in any special light. The Ghana Stock
> >Exchange was the fastest-growing exchange in the world in 2003. That's
>not
> >a "positive" story, that's news, just like reports on the London Stock
> >Exchange. I imagine a lot of consumers would have found it newsworthy to
> >learn where they could have made a 144 percent return on their money.
> >
> >My independent film was made possible by funding from the World Bank, for
> >which I am extremely grateful. But the bank wouldn't have had to step in
>if
> >the media had been doing their job -- showing all Africans in all facets
>of
> >their lives. In a business that's supposed to cover man-bites-dog
>stories,
> >the idea that Africa doesn't work is a dog-bites-man story. If the media
> >are really looking for news, they'd look at the ways that Africa, despite
> >all the odds, does work.
> >
> >Author's e-mail: [log in to unmask]
> >
> >
> >
> >Carol Pineau, a journalist with more than 10 years of experience
>reporting
> >on Africa, is the producer and director of the film "Africa: Open for
> >Business," which premiered last week at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
>
>
>
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