Lola Adesioye

On a post I wrote some time ago about stereotypes of Africa in the media, one of my readers made a comment that I thought was spot on. He wrote:

Lola, the big part of the problem is with us Africans, lies within our own perceptions of our own selves as Africans….If we can change that, I strongly believe we can influence the Western perspective and perception of Africa in a more positive way, and, my guess is, there will be less steriotypes directed to[wards] Africa and Africans.

Big head nod from me on that one. I agree.

There’s no doubt that the image of Africa perpetuated by powerful media sources from outside the continent is in dire need of a shift. But as someone who believes that power comes from within, and that each of us has to BE the change we want to see (that is, that we are response-able rather than being at the effect of what others do), I am led to ask how we Africans see ourselves and talk about ourselves and what impact that has on us.

Yes, others may represent us poorly, but how do we view ourselves? Yes, others may talk about us as fraudsters, criminals and corrupters, but do we talk about ourselves in the same terms?

If we do not have an image of ourselves and our continent that is empowering, it is unlikely that anyone else will have an empowering view of us either. More importantly, if we are not empowered we cannot and will not take empowered actions.

If we really saw ourselves as great, we would not stand for being represented as anything other than who and what we really are as a people and as a continent.

We got 99 problems…

I haven’t done any kind of poll on this, but I would contend that there are many Africans who also see themselves and their continent in the same way that the mainstream media portrays. I know that when we get together we can tend to have hours-long debates about the terrible things happening in whichever African nation. We ourselves often focus on the negative and can often feel overwhelmed and resigned at what seems like the sheer mountain of problems that need resolving. I took the image below from an article on Nigeria. This tells you a lot:

This is not to say that we should pretend that Africa is all fine. No, pretending is not the answer. Clearly there are issues to be addressed. But acknowledging issues is quite different from dwelling on them and believing that they define you. I wonder how many Africans believe that their country or the continent is indeed defined by corruption, fraud,  poverty and illness?

We just need better leaders…Or do we?

Conventional “wisdom” would say that Africans would talk differently about Africa and that we’d see ourselves and the continent differently if these circumstances weren’t present. If we had better leaders, we’d have no need to complain. If we had more resources, we’d be ok. Apparently.

This idea that our external circumstances dictate our internal perceptions is hugely popular. It is one of THE most dominant social notions. We see this on an individual level – someone who is overweight, for example, will think that she/he will feel much better about themselves once they lose weight; someone with financial issues believes that they will feel better once they get more money. The idea is that once I get X, then I will be Y. But, although this seems to make sense, is actually counter to how things work in reality.

Perception creates reality

In reality, it is what we believe and what we perceive that creates our external world. It is not the external world that creates how we perceive life. Please take that in for a second and get the impact of what that means. What that means is that what matters most is what we say about a situation. This is how The Hunger Project is able to take starving and impoverished communities around the world and transform them in the space of a few years – their premise is that it is how people see themselves that has the most impact on their external reality.

In best selling book The Three Laws of Performance – which is based on transformational work which has radically altered how problems are solved by individuals, organizations, communities and societies – author Steve Zaffron writes that: “How people perform correlates to how situations occur to them.” What this means in essence is that the way in which you perceive the world is what gives you how you act and react to the world. People take actions which correlate to how they see the world, which then shapes, influences, impacts and creates the world in which they live.

So, coming back to us Africans… This essentially means that if we shifted our perception, we would take different actions which would lead to different outcomes, all of which ultimately would necessarily result in the world seeing us differently. We are seeing this already in small ways. Magazines like ARISE which present Africa in a new light are having people outside the continent say “wow, we didn’t know this side of Africa”. ARISE could not have been created by someone who believed that Africa is defined by corruption and poverty.

Similarly, the Nigeria Leadership Initiative (disclaimer: I am part of it) which was founded by Segun Aganga, who is now Nigeria’s finance minister, could not have been created by someone who thought that Nigeria had no chance or that Nigerians were no good.

It’s up to us!

So us being viewed differently from the outside requires not just other people to shift, but ourselves to shift first. And, most importantly, once this kind of shift happens, we would impact not just perception but the actual reality of life for Africans.