MORE often than not, especially in our political discourses on the representation of Africa by the global and mostly Western media, we tend to argue that these media want to portray Africa as a place laden with coups, wars, diseases, chaos, darkness and a host of other ills.
We have never bothered to ask ourselves if we have actually fed these kinds of framings.
The death in the United Kingdom of Zambia’s president Michael Sata, the recent political chaos in Burkina Faso and the Ebola epidemic in West Africa are some, but not all of the ills that speak to the so-called negative image Africa gets from the outside world.
Of course, it’s problematic to collapse all the countries in this continent into “Africa”.
Africa is not a country, but sometimes it is inevitable to draw parallels and similarities in the way we conduct business.
It is curious to know why it is that our leaders see nothing wrong when they are always flying to the United States, the East or Europe to seek medical care even at their own expense.
Their children, usually funded from State coffers, attend foreign schools and universities instead of local ones. This speaks to the larger-picture: Just like the citizens they have no confidence in the national systems, be they medical or educational.
It speaks volumes when we have to welcome dead bodies of our leaders at the airports when at the time they were campaigning for our votes they promised us honey and glory.
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Their manifestos not only talk of sovereignty and all the high-sounding nothings, but also the development of clinics, hospitals, schools, colleges and all.
However, what we get at the end of the day is a situation where the roads used by the leaders from the airports to their houses, or from their houses to the government offices are the only ones without potholes.
We have a situation whereby public officials, ministers and their various departments have specialised in hoodwinking our heads of State into believing that all is functional even when things are falling apart.
We need to have leaders who commit to the utilisation of the very institutions that exist in their own countries as this will encourage them to expend their time and energy developing them.
How does one explain our political leaders’ expensive trips to the West and East for medical care? How else do you expect the global media we accuse of bias and myopia to cover such issues?
Our leaders can afford medical care or to send their children to school abroad, but cannot afford their citizens the same facilities within their countries. How do they want to run and contribute to a system you do not have confidence in? 
Corruption and lack of support for our young African youths has led to millions of them fleeing their countries as economic or political refugees to countries they think have better amenities to cater for them.
But the realities are sometimes different.
Some of the youths who flee have found themselves as corpses in various and often treacherous seas like the hydro-graveyard Mediterranean trying to make their way into Europe.
Tens of thousands of mostly youthful people have died in these waters. Some meet their fate in the deserts while desperately trying to go through them in an attempt to cross over to the promised lands.
The argument here is that our young people under the age of 35, who make about 75% of Africa’s population, deserve better especially from the current crop of leadership. Their future is dark in this continent.
Another thing that lets Africa down is a lot of dead wood that runs the show in most strategic and public institutions and offices.
For example, you have marketing officers, public relations officers, technology advancement officers and the like working in big and supposedly strategic offices, but cannot use e-mail, the Internet, have no clue about Twitter, Facebook or applications that others are using elsewhere.
It’s time we moved on and adopted technologies that will make us function in this problematic global village the world has collapsed to be.
We want to claim space and equality and yet the best talent we bring forward are clueless dinosaurs whose only worry is “what I am gonna make out of this”.
Many of us know of officials who worry about making useless trips abroad in an attempt to make money through out-of-pocket allowances. Trappings of power!
How about creating a legacy and a contribution that outlasts your presence in an institution? What legacy are some leaders building, especially during the Ebola pandemic?
Some global brands, when in Africa, seem to adopt a “typically African way” of doing things.
I am borrowing this idea of “typically African” from BBC’s coverage of the 2010 World Cup. A few weeks ago I happened to be boarding the Greyhound Coach from Johannesburg to Bulawayo.
It was a Wednesday and check-in was supposed to be at 8am.
In a typically African setting where time is disregarded (there I go), there was a three-hour delay and they decided to send me (and other passengers I presume) an sms at 7:36am just when I was checking in.
This was indeed typically African. When I complained that this was ridiculous, I was told they could refund me. One lady (Zimbabwean of course) who had come to inquire about something else told me “it’s okay you can sit there, at least there are chairs”.
A few weeks later the same delay happened and I asked the attendant if his bosses cared. His answer was simple: “You Zimbabweans will never be taken seriously.”
A few moments later I looked into the parking bay.
A Greyhound bus just arrived from Cape Town. As passengers disembarked, the hostess was by the door thanking them for their patronage.
I asked our crew why Zimbabweans or those going to Zimbabwe did not get a similar treatment. He asked me if I wanted him to put me on his back and thank me.
They used the irritating and often-not-working public address system to thank the passengers.
I call it corporate arrogance. Even our own largest network provider Econet Wireless exudes some sense of self-importance and arrogance.
For example, my language of choice on my Econet line is my mother tongue — Ndebele.
I usually get misspelt notifications. I complained via their Twitter account in May. They promised to rectify. I asked them who would rectify since they seemed out of depth.
We went to and fro until they decided to ignore me, even after I had promised to correct for them for free.
Last Thursday in the morning, I punched a wrong recharge voucher number into my mobile. This was the error message: “Ivoucher activation code oyitshayileyo aikho”.
When I re-entered the voucher I had used the message was: “Ivoucher yako ikeyasebenziswa nguwe.” I do not drink Coca-Cola, but I have observed the mutilation of Ndebele by the conglomerate too.
The Zimbabwe passport is riddled with many Ndebele spelling mistakes. My bank, Barclays has done the same. Is language important to a nation? When customers protest should they not be taken seriously?
Whatever the case, it seems our big businesses (or is it business in Africa) and governments do not take us seriously.
They are the architects of this chaos, arrogance, dysfunction and all. So why do they want the global media to project a serious image of Africa when they are failing to build one?
Shepherd Mpofu is a media studies and journalism lecturer at Nust. He writes in his personal capacity.
