Always use the word ‘Africa’ or ‘Darkness’ or ‘Safari’ in your title. Subtitles may include the words ‘Zanzibar’, ‘Masai’, ‘Zulu’, ‘Zambezi’, ‘Congo’, ‘Nile’, ‘Big’, ‘Sky’, ‘Shadow’, ‘Drum’, ‘Sun’ or ‘Bygone’. (…)
Source: Wainaina, Binyavanya “How to Write about Africa.” In: The View from Africa – Granta 92 (2005).
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current affairs
In her TedTalk “The Danger of a Single Story,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie expands on what is wrong with telling a single story about Africa. The Guardian article “Poverty porn vs empowerment: The best and worst aid videos of 2016” offers some videos that do tell better and worse stories about poverty in aid campaigns.
links
questions
1. Make a list of the features that Wainaina recommends tongue-in-cheek in writing about Africa. Turning this around, what should a writer really strive for in writing about Africa?
2. What makes poverty campaigns problematic? What makes them into models of good practice?
3. What point does Adichie want to make by introducing the Igbo word “Nkali”?