Times of change in Africa
From colonial reckoning to key shifts in perception, here are recent events showing Africans are tired of stereotypes from the Global North and of dysfunctions of their own leaders' making...
Dear readers,
A few key stories I was able to write about this past week…
How harmful stereotypes and media bias are costing Africa billions
Issued on: 29/11/2024
Play - 22:04 : https://www.rfi.fr/en/podcasts/spotlight-on-africa/20241129-how-harmful-stereotypes-and-media-bias-are-costing-africa-billions
Harmful stereotypes about Africa in the global media are costing the continent billions each year and shaping damaging perceptions, campaigners are warning. A recent report explored the economic impact of biased media narratives, linking them to lost investment opportunities and higher borrowing costs for African nations.
“Negative narratives about Africa have real consequences for people’s lives and futures,” said Abimbola Ogundairo, campaign lead for the NGO Africa No Filter, which produced the report and works to promote balanced storytelling about the continent.
The organisation's latest research found these biases cost African economies $4.2 billion annually in lost investment opportunities.
It found that persistent portrayals of poverty, conflict and corruption have far-reaching consequences, from deterring investment to increasing borrowing costs for African nations.
Stories of success, innovation, and resilience were overlooked.
Using case studies and data analysis, the report examined how media narratives influence investment, particularly during election periods. It compared African countries to their global peers and quantified the costs of misrepresentation.
The report also quantified how biased media coverage correlates with sovereign bond yields – a critical financial indicator.
It found that even nations with strong democratic institutions are often framed through lenses of instability and corruption – reinforcing negative stereotypes and overshadowing progress.
The Spotlight on Africa podcast explores this issue, featuring interviews with both Ogundairo, who is from Nigeria, and the acclaimed filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako, from Mauritania.
Both emphasise the need for African voices to take control of the continent’s narrative…
listen here:
How harmful stereotypes and media bias are costing Africa billions
The end of empires?
Belgium to pay damages for forced separations in Congo during colonial rule
Belgium’s Court of Appeals on Monday ordered the government to pay compensation to five Congolese women who were forcibly separated from their mothers during colonial rule. The court ruled that the abductions, which happened over 70 years ago, amounted to crimes against humanity.
Issued on: 02/12/2024 - 15:09
By: Melissa Chemam
Congolese women taken from mothers in Belgian colonial era win case against Belgium
The Brussels Court of Appeals has ruled that Belgium must pay reparations to five Congolese women who were taken from their mothers and put in orphanages during the Belgian colonial rule over the Congo. The court found that the forced separations were crimes against humanity.
Belgium must pay restitution to five women who were forcibly taken from their mothers and placed in orphanages in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) when it was still a Belgian colony, the court ordered on Monday.
The Court of Appeals in Brussels overturned an earlier decision by another court that too much time had elapsed for the state to be charged.
The appeal judges ruled that although the abductions happened 70 years ago, they constituted crimes against humanity and were therefore not subject to statutes of limitations.
"The court orders the Belgian state to compensate the appellants for the moral damage resulting from the loss of their connection to their mother and the damage to their identity and their connection to their original environment," the judgement read.
It said that Belgium had carried on "an inhumane act of persecution."
The state's conduct constituted a crime against humanity and as such was not subject to a statute of limitations, in line with a United Nations resolution adopted after World War II, the court found.
"We won, it's a total victory," the women's lawyer, Michele Hirsch, told news agencies.
The verdict is "historic" as it marks the first time a country has lost a court case on this legal basis, for acts committed during colonisation, she added.
"The court orders the Belgian State to compensate the appellants for the moral damage resulting from the loss of their connection to their mother and the damage to their identity and their connection to their original environment," the court said in a statement.
The women had been demanding initial compensation of 50,000 euros each.
Long battle for justice
The five women at the center of the case are Simone Ngalula, Monique Bitu Bingi, Lea Tavares Mujinga, Noelle Verbeeken and Marie-Jose Loshi.
The mixed-race women demanded reparations from Belgium after being taken from their mothers in Congo 70 years ago took their fight to a Brussels appeals court Monday.
The women have accused the country of crimes against humanity over a colonial-era practice that saw them taken from their families and placed in institutions.
The case is the first in Belgium to shed light on the fate of biracial children born in the former Belgian colonies in central Africa, DR Congo, Rwanda and Burundi.
These children are thought to number around 15,000, though there could be more, as there has never been an official count.
Most of the children born of a union between a black woman and a white man were not recognised by their father and were not allowed to mix with either whites or Africans.
As a result, many were placed under state guardianship and put in orphanages usually run by the Catholic Church.
The complaint covers the period 1948-1961 and concerns the entire policy of placing mixed-race children in religious institutions managed by the Church, resulting from a racial policy put in place by the Belgian colonial administration in the Congo.
Systematic search
"The appellants, born in the Belgian Congo, were abducted from their respective mothers, without their consent, before the age of seven, by the Belgian State," the court said.
This was "in execution of a plan to systematically search for and abduct children born to a black mother and a white father, raised by their mother in the Belgian Congo, solely because of their origins," it added.
The five women wanted justice, the recognition of these crimes, but also compensation.
The Belgian authorities had recognised that between 14,000 and 20,000 children are involved in this case, but, despite their considerable number, their fate has long been ignored.
Belgium had also apologised to the mixed-race descendants in 2019.
Its rule over what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo was one of the harshest imposed by the European powers that ruled most of Africa in the late 19th and 20th centuries.
King Leopold II governed the vast country in central Africa (the size of continental western Europe) as his personal property between 1885 and 1908, then made it a Belgian colony.
Europe-Africa-Americas relations
Benin to give nationality to descendants of those deported as slaves
In Benin, the government has voted through a law offering nationality to "people with an African ancestor deported as part of the slave trade", with applications due to open in December.
Issued on: 30/11/2024
By: Melissa Chemam
When introducing the bill to parliament last May, the Beninese government stated that the slave trade had "left deep wounds on Africa and the descendants of the deported people" and that it wished to to help reconnect these descendants with their origins.
Millions of enslaved Africans were dispatched from the shores of West Africa, including from Benin’s beaches.
Following the adoption of a law on 30 July paving the way for recognition of Beninese nationality for Afro-descendants, the government published the terms of the decree on 20 November.
Applications are to be submitted online, with a site under construction and due to be accessible from the start of December.
Senegal - France
As Senegal commemorates the 1944 Thiaroye massacres, historians made France move towards recognising responsibility
Senegal commemorates the 80th anniversary of the Thiaroye massacre on Sunday, honouring the African riflemen killed by French colonial forces on 1 December, 1944. For the first time, French President Emmanuel Macron has officially recognised the killings as a massacre – calling it a tragedy that demands the uncovering of the full truth.
By: Melissa Chemam
The massacre unfolded at a military camp in Thiaroye, near Dakar, as West African soldiers who had fought for France in World War II demanded their unpaid wages. French troops opened fire, killing an unknown number of unarmed men.
The commemorations have been prepared all of this year 2024, as the truth on the real scale of the massacre is finally emerging slowly.
Since 2014, Paris has assured that it has given Dakar a copy of all the archives it has on the massacre in Thiaroye in 1944.
But in Senegal, there are suspicions about the existence of other documents kept secret to prevent light from being shed on this dark episode of France's colonial history.
French inquiry
The massacres occurred while World War II was drawing to a close.
Hundreds of demobilised riflemen had returned to Africa and took up residence in the Thiaroye military camp in Senegal, when on 1 December 1944, while demanding payment of their bonuses in this transit camp on the outskirts of Dakar, some of them were shot dead on the orders of French officers.
Now, five French MPs called on 26 November for the establishment of a commission of inquiry to shed light on this bloody episode in colonial history.
A few representatives of the presidential camp are among the signatories, but the text is mainly defended by the various left-wing parties.
If the inquiry is validated by the parliament, the work would not begin before March 2025.
The 30 members of the committee would then be able to summon and hear under oath whoever they wanted, including historians, descendants of victims of the Thiaroye massacre, but also and above all members of the historical service of the French Defence.
Historians' versions clashed for long with the colonial military authority of the time on whether the events should be recognised as a massacre, a mutiny, a shooting, or repression.
And questions remain: How many deaths exactly were there? The tolls vary from 35 to more than 300.
Why were they killed? Who gave the order to shoot? Was access to the archives total? And why is this event so little known?
For now, only former French president François Hollande has spoken openly about it:, in 2014, acknowledging a bloody repression.
He spoke of massacres on 25 November, saying it was indeed a "massacre" that the French army committed on 1 December 1944 in the military camp of Thiaroye, in the suburbs of Dakar, Senegal.
In a recent report on the events, the French newspaper Le Monde estimates that, while military authorities only acknowledged 35 deaths at the time, historical research suggests a much higher number.
On historian, Armelle Mabon, estimates that there were between 300 and 400 victims.
A Senegalese memorial duty
Mamadou Diouf is a historian at Columbia University and president of the commemoration committee set up by Senegal.
He told RFI that both Senegal and France have to share their version of the story. He salutes the journey of Senegalese historians to France this month.
He sees the matter of archives as key as the French authorities have made access to them very difficult, in the same way they did about the Vichy period.
He believes that archives are still in France, and hopes the Senegalese historians will finally get access to them.
For decades, artists and especially filmmakers gave the Thiaroye massacre its place in Senegalese collective memory.
Among them, Ousmane Sembène, a former Senegalese rifleman, turned filmmaker and writer, who directed the film Camp de Thiaroye in 1988.
Songs, poems and plays have also shed more light on the events, and given a voice to those forgotten by history.
Nigeria, between crises and change
As Nigerian President Bola Tinubu was in France late in November, I spoke to some young Nigerian business leaders.
Though the west African country is going through an economic crisis, it remains the continent's leading oil producer, the most populated nation, and it has a robust film industry.
The challenges posed by insecurity and corruption have however left 129 million Nigerians living below the poverty line, more than half the country's population.
But Tinubu hopes to boost the economy by finding more foreign investment.
Busy schedule
Kolawole Osinowo is the CEO of Baobab Plus, a French-Nigerian renewable energy distribution company based in Nigeria. He is also one of the laureates of the French Africa Foundation.
Bola Tinubu is up for a packed programme of visits and meetings, and brought with him a number of Nigerian entrepreneurs and young leaders.
Osinowo is part of the two-day visit.
These meetings include a dinner with President Macron and his wife, a brainstorming event at the headquarter of the Agence Française de Développement (AFD or French Development Agency), and other bilateral encounters.
To him, this trip is a great opportunity as the head of a company already working with French investors, especially to improve his goals in terms of sustainable energy practices.
"A lot of people in Nigeria don't have access to electricity. So we are supporting the government by bridging the gap. So that's what I do every day," he told me while in Paris, after travelling from Italy.
"We do have ties to France. Baobab Plus is part of a major investor which is based out of France. There's a connection there, in terms of technological and financial support that is key," he adds.
His aim is to move away from a relation between Africa and Europe based on aid, and to look to scale up the growth currently happening, especially in Nigeria, thanks to investment.
He is also looking to advocate for the creation of more employment in the country, for younger people especially, so "people don't have to migrate out of the country and cause different migration issues around the world."
This trip is very important to him, in terms of leverage, and to deepen the ties between Nigeria and France, a partner that most keen Nigerians see as both reliable and new enough to make a difference.
He also says that both personal and professional ties bring him to France, as his father already had productive exchanges with French businesspeople, and he sees France as a partner with a lot to offer.
A positive relationship
Nigerians have quite a positive image of France, other leaders and experts told me.
And France is looking to diversify its economic partnerships in Africa in the tense context generated by the military coups in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Gabon in recent years.
Professor Jibrin Ibrahim, who used to teach political science at Ahmadu Bello University, in Zaria, Nigeria and is now an activist in Abuja at the Center for Democracy and Development, told RFI that Nigeria has a simpler relationship with France than most of its neighbours, as it is not a former colony.
Uchenna Pedro is an entrepreneur, a Harvard Kennedy School graduate and the founder and CEO of Bella Naija, Africa’s most influential lifestyle and advocacy platform. Boasting millions of followers, the CEO is listed among Forbes Africa’s 50 Most Influential Women.
"While we're based in Nigeria, we work with about the whole of Africa and diaspora as well," Pedro told me.
"And we have a working relationship with several French companies, examples including the beauty and fashion industries, including L'Oréal."
Pedro is part of the young leaders of the French Africa Foundation, and says French industries in her domains bring high value, and she has a strong image of French culture and economy, especially in its belief and investment in the arts.
She also wants to acknowledge and respect the views of "people in other countries that have a different historical structure with France," like the Sahel, but has hopes for improvements.
Like many Nigerians, she knows the United Kingdom more, but says that Nigeria has room for partners from all over the world, and believes that France has a chance to become a strong one.
Chioma Ogbonna, singer, songwriter, and activist known as Cill, seconds that.
"I think that because of how the arts and the creative industry thrives here in France and how it is prioritised, it is an important destination for Africans and Nigerians, especially," she told me.
"I think it's great just because of that excellence that exists in France. And I also believe in Nigeria. It's a great partnership," she concluded.
thanks for reading, as always.
With nest wishes,
melissa
Melissa Chemam
Journalist, Audio Producer & Writer
RFI English, New Arab, Byline Times, i paper...
Website: https://sites.google.com/view/melissachemam
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@MelissaChemam