AfRiCa iSn’T wHaT yOu tHInK iT Is

At 4:30 am (May 17) I was on Twitter, as usual, trying to delay sleep at all cost (yes, I have issues). I then have a random thought about Nas Daily, so I decide to check if he’s still doing his travel the world project. If you don’t know who Nas Daily is; his real name is Nusseir, he’s a vlogger who’s been traveling around the world for a while now and he makes daily 1-minute videos on his travels, last I checked. He might be doing something else now, but I really don’t care so I didn’t bother to look it up.

There’s this video he did titled Be Careful in Africa! and basically, he documents some good things about the African cities he’s been to; Cape Town, Kigali, Nairobi, Casablanca, Lagos. He points out the good of Africa; nature, growing economies, there’s even a shot of a fancy car thrown in there and I don’t really get why. His whole point is that the Africa we see on international media isn’t accurate because there are clean roads in Kigali, so duh, Africa isn’t a sh*thole. I think I’ve always had a problem with these kinds of videos (not just his) because they oversimplify the issues that have and continue to challenge almost every country on the continent, since the end of colonialism.

When talking about Cape Town he shows a clip of a white man next to a van and then an aerial shot of some residential area in the city while saying, “these houses go for $2 million USD each, this is one of the most expensive real estate on the continent!”. Now, this is problematic, even though it is a fact. To put this out there as something we Africans should be proud of and something that non-Africans should find nicely surprising is not a good look. South Africa is the most unequal country in the world. Not even a lifetime ago, the country was deeply segregated. The white minority controlled most of the wealth and their government implemented strict discrimination laws against the black natives and other non-white groups. I’m sure even Nusseir’s life overlaps with South African apartheid. Cape Town is what it is today, expensive and highly modernized in comparison to almost every other African city, because of apartheid. To single it out as “this is the Africa they don’t show you” is just weak. Unemployment rates in South Africa continue to be high, 20+ years after apartheid and many black South Africans continue to live in poverty. Why? Because of the system that enabled Cape Town to be what it is today while disenfranchising, exploiting and marginalizing the natives.

This Nas Daily video represents everything I hate about Africa conversations in the western world. I’ve had several eye-roll moments when people would talk about how amazing Tanzania is and how living there is like experiencing a paradise. I even fell into this trap myself until one day in 2019 when I was at a dinner party and this man started talking to me about his travels to Tanzania while he lived in Kenya and all I could think of was #cantrelate. Most people who from African countries find their lives unbearable and unhappy because, “we live in paradise, but none of us have the time or the means to actually live here” (Deni, Guava Island).

I absolutely hate every single “Tanzania” video on the internet that tries to be overly positive about the country, because they oversimplify the issues, just like the Nas Daily videos, and create a narrative that only works for specific demographics. To experience paradise in Tanzania you have to be rich, non-black and if you are black then you need to be a straight man. I’ll give an example from my own experience. Women in Tanzania get mistreated and a good number of us feel trapped and unhappy when we’re there yet you’ll see videos praise Tanzanian women for our decency. But we can’t even wear what we want. We have to be “decent” and cover our knees, etc. so that we don’t get beaten in the street (yes, it’s a thing) or get told that we’re trying to “tempt” men. We can’t express ourselves as intellectual and sexual beings without being called sluts and told that we should know our place in society, because God didn’t create us to equal men and so we can’t have the same freedoms – yes, I’ve been told this very many times by family members. To make a video that ignores the story behind is insulting and careless.

This is just one example of the many issues in Africa that videos like Nas Daily’s fails to address and therefore, contributes to the same problem he’s trying to “fix” (my choice of word, not his). These videos are presented as content created to debunk myths like the world’s wrong perception of African countries as poor, diseased and with all kinds of evils, including the killings of people with albinism, among other things. Well, the truth is that these issues are present in Africa, very present, and I think it’s time we started being vocal about them on social media. Fearing for your life is a reality for many people, and poor living conditions are basically life in most African countries. I understand why we need to push back against the narrative that Africa is just huts and wildlife and not much going on. But we have to do it in a way that doesn’t downplay the issues that Africans face.

Fact is, those three skyscrapers in Dar es Salaam won’t erase the unnecessary conservatism that enables inefficient authoritarian rule and misogyny to exist in Tanzanian society. They are there because the government allowed them to be. The same government that will rent them for public office space and restrict entry for women wearing pants and skirts that don’t cover our knees (I am not making this up). We keep saying, ‘Africa is changing’ to mean positive developments, but is it?