Africa has always been studied by Eurocentric scholars who tend to write about Africa pointing out the negatives. For example Araya (2007) states that Africa as a continent continues to be misrepresented as “victims of poverty, violence and ridden with HIV/AIDS” rarely looking at the positives of how the continent has changed and in some instances improved politically, socio-economically and citizens well-being. Those who write about African’s diaspora have often never touched African soil, yet write about these experiences as though they have lived through them. This has resulted in the stereotyping of the continent as being in despair and in need of foreign aid to come to its rescue. Arguably this has resulted in the conditioning of not only Western first world countries citizens but African’s themselves in seeing all the negatives and never celebrating all the positives that the continent has and what countries have achieved. The continent is viewed as this large country, where people speak the same language, dress a certain way (animal skin clothes) and eat unconventional foods (Wainaina, 2005).
But what the world does not know is that our cultures, religions, races and languages differ greatly, we are all bound only by the geographical borders of continent, but more importantly, by the intangible belief that this is home (Soyinka-Airewele and Edozie, 2010). The media continues to broadcast Africa as this needy child that is starving, with its women being helpless, with the continent and its countries having no past or history (Wainaina, 2005). Most white Eurocentric scholars write about colonisation as if it came to save Africa from its ‘uncivilized’ ways, yet not holding colonises accountable for their contribution to the wars they perpetuated. This has not only resulted in the gap between how Africa is written about but how Africa has been represented and framed to the rest of the world lacking accurate, truthful and authentic representation by African writers. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2015), argues that this therefore requires that one digs deeper into the complex systems of thought rather than just relaying on the process of decolonization but look at historical processes of constitution and configuration of specific colonial structures of power that produced Africa as a an idea that has been reproduced as a dependent subject constantly experiencing war and terror from their brutal governments. For Mbembe (2001), Africa is never seen as possessing proper attributes of ‘human nature’, if this was the case how were the pyramids of Egypt built and are still standing today.
The epistemic violence related to knowledge about how Africa is written about has resulted in African people losing their agency in making and writing about their own history and experiences (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2010). This is not to say work written by Western/Eurocentric scholars should be completely taken away and disposed but rather, there should be more African scholars who have had a lived experience of what it means to be African in order to write more comprehensively on the African experience. African scholars who in their literature go beyond then just writing in response to the discourse presented by Eurocentric scholars but bring forth practical solutions and academic literature that engages on the African experience and how Africa is more that just war and terror or tourism when it suits Eurocentric media. To re-represent and reframe Africa’s agency in positive literature that acknowledges Africa’s human experiences interpreting the literature from all the different lived experiences of all scholars from the continent which would be the first indication to the West that Africa is not one large country but is has different countries within the continent. Therefore, there should be careful treading on each person’s experience of how Africa should be studied as each individual’s experiences is different and will never be the same.
In conclusion, having an ‘outsider’ write about what is happening in your home will never capture the true essence of one’s lived experience. If their definition of what it means to be Africa is being black, then a Eurocentric white scholar will never be able to unpack this philosophy in an objective manner. How to study Africa should be from a lived experience. It does not just end in scholarly writings but is a day-to-day lived experience for many. Thus to just look at the skewed representation in most academic literature takes away in how ordinary African’s decide how they want to study Africa.