When it comes to Africa, when displayed in western media outlets, its stories and information are brimming with stereotypes. The reason for this lies in the presence of a primitive ideological thought process, by the name of imperialism. Along with the biased structure of modern day news media.

Dating back to the colonial era, the Europeans and Americans primarily encountered Africa through both myths and stereotypes.

The western news media, at the time, tends to prefer portraying Africa as a poverty stricken land filled with primitive lands which held immoral savages as its denizens. As such the westerners had no qualms colonizing Africa.

The root of this widespread view of Africa was due to the single story of Africa offered by the media. Since to the majority of the population, Africa is not something they know too much about. The only thing they know is what is told to them. Thus constructing an oversimplified and stereotypical view of Africa. Not to mention, that at the time, the western media supported the European colonizers ideology and contributed in spreading the justification of their imperial initiative in Africa. Such justification includes, the benefits of expansion (new markets were necessary to avoid overproduction), developing the civilization of the savages (gentrification), and also through the concept of Social Darwinism, “Survival of the fittest”. This twisted theory of racial superiority was a common thought process influenced by the American colonies in the 17th-18th century, and became highly popular with the white westerners during the colonial age. As told and shown by various works concerning colonialism, such as it being a theme present in one of the colonial era’s most renowned work, “Heart of Darkness”, and other showcases of genocide.

However, out of all this, the one thing that the media did that sticks to this day is how they attempted to portray Africa, as a whole, as different from Europe whilst ignoring the differences between the Africans themselves. By doing so, they are refusing to acknowledge the cultural variety present in Africa. As such, colonizers could effectively create distinct categories which reinforces stereotypes making it easier to justify and implement colonial superiority. It is through this that modern day stereotypes like Africa being a single country, are formed.

In modern day western media reporting on Africa, issues that were present in the colonial age was no longer present in today’s media outlets.

However, present day media inadvertently condone the practice of misrepresenting both Africa and Africans, though in a different form from how it was in the 19th century. The reason for the systematic process of western media’s negative portrayal of Africa being an Inadvertent act rather than deliberate is due to two main factors: colonialism’s success in creating stereotypes inherited with each generation as well as the structural media biases in the construction of the news which, as a result, precludes the media from presenting news that refrains themselves from stereotypical ideas.

The two common type of informational bias that the media is holding onto is mainstream and personalization bias. Particularly when something large is trending, mainstream bias is a habit of the media to constantly report upon that particular thing, the purpose of this is to avoid other more controversial topics. This concept is just like how you would change the subject of a conversation to avoid being in the short end of your relationship. Meanwhile, personalization bias is basically, to not show the bigger picture. “This is the lives of this Chinese family because of water pollution… they are drinking thick dark liquid which only consist of 30% undrinkable water and 70% unknown products…”, whilst not showing how it affects the city as a whole, either economically or globally. The concept behind this is similar to the idea of, “I’m not lying, i’m just don’t feel like telling the whole truth”, since although this idea and personalization bias is different in purpose the result of it is the same, the bigger picture refrains from not being hid from plain sight.

Though purpose of these bias ingrained in the structure of the media is to simplify complex news stories for the audience, by doing so for Africa, the media’s stories will build upon the century long work of a stereotypical single-story of Africa. Rather than growing from it and display Africa in a less exotic fashion. The cause for this effect is similar in nature with the stereotypes formed in the colonial era. By repetitively showing Africa’s exoticism through personalization bias, the media will successfully present Africa’s culture to be indifferent to the rest of the continent. Thus denying individuality between different African culture. Which is, essentially, the definition of stereotypes.

In addition to this, even if a journalist or reporter were to passionately desire to address Africa in a manner different to the stereotypical single story they’ve been building up upon for centuries, it would just probably get rejected throughout the editorial process, due to the concern of lack of interest.

However, in the western media’s defense, they have been placing the effort in building upon content and articles covering the positive aspect of Africa. Media sites like BBC and CNN have dedicated series like “African Voices” and “African Dream”, which focuses on Africa’s economic growth, African entrepreneurs, and developments in Africa.

However, in a parallel note, it can be argued that media outlets such as BBC are refraining from maximizing these programs to its full potential, in fear of dropping the interest of their commonly covered stories concerning Africa. The reason for this is due to the fact that, although the BBC has excellent coverage of the continent, consisting of local journalist and African staff members back in london, who abstains from doing anything major relating to Africa and instead, confides them to a research role.

Of all the thousands of times i’ve been exposed to the western news, it has now come to my attention that the media from the past does not differ that greatly from the present. That at the end of it all, modern day media stereotypes and 19th century stereotypes are doing the same thing, to deny individuality amongst Africans even if they do it through different, more evolved means. Since the justification method of stereotyping from back in the day was no longer effective due to the vast difference in ideology throughout the populace, along with the fact that imperialist ideologies are not really a dominant ideology no longer. Modern day stereotypes exploits the stereotypes derived from imperialist ideologies are still present, told to by their parents with each generation. As such, to gain more viewer interest, news media outlets presents stories that fits in with these stereotypes. They do this, through informational bias. Nay, the ones i’ve seen, personalization and/or mainstream bias. It is a bit ironic that today’s stereotypes are derived from something as primitive as imperialism yet stereotypes modern day Africa to be primitive.