Africa has an image problem. What comes to mind when most people hear its name? Starving children. Ivory poachers. Violent warfare. Ebola. The bad-news list goes on and on.
But such images present a lopsided view of a continent whose reality is as rich and varied as real life is anywhere else.
Fed up with the common perception of an Africa so unlike her own, a 17-year-old from Ghana named Rachel* decided to do something about it. Last June, she created a Twitter hashtag, #TheAfricaTheMediaNeverShowsYou, and started tweeting images and stories about the Africa that she and her friends and family know and love: beautiful beaches, busy modern cities, thriving businesses, stylish fashion, natural wonders, and a rich heritage that goes back thousands of years.
The hashtag spread quickly, with people posting countless other good-news photos and anecdotes of life in Africa. That’s just fine with Rachel. “I started this campaign because I felt that it’s time the world knew the truth about Africans, to hear our stories and to see the Africa we know and see, rather than what some/most media outlets show to them,” Rachel recently wrote to the website Mashable. “There is so much more [here] than the poverty, ethnic wars, and the disease.”
We hear you, Rachel. So we looked for other images of Africa that show the diversity of people’s lives there. Check them out.
*Rachel prefers not to use her full name for Internet security reasons.