Anecdotes from Africa
Student blog
About Anecdotes from Africa
The aim of the blog
The East Africa blog initiative is inspired by Sefa Dei’s call to (re)conceptualize Africa. African nations are and continue to be plagued by crisis narratives, pessimism and exceptionalism which casts the Continent into the penumbra of relevancy and current events. Dei’s work is therefore a call for transgression – to transgress the dominant discourses and instead, highlight the rich complexities, complicated histories and, importantly, tell success stories. By seeking out a positive narrative of Africans, one which does not value or judge them by their ability to imitate Eurocentric ideals, we avoid the trap of a one-dimensional and incomplete image of the diverse individuals who live on the giant Continent. As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie rightly puts it “I have always felt that it is impossible to engage properly with a place or a person, without engaging with all of the stories of that place and that person […] a single story robs people of dignity. It makes our recognitions of our equal humanity difficult.”
Therefore, we must move away from defining Africa by the devastating outcome of the looting and exploitation it has experienced for centuries - the patronizing definition which places Africa in oppositional value to the Western world; as Franz Fanon rightly explains it, “It is the colonist who fabricated and continues to fabricate the colonized subject. The colonist derives his validity, I e., his wealth, from the colonial system.” Therefore, not only is Africa as it is currently conceptualized created in relation to the West, but it is also understood only within the parameters of Western logocentricity. For example, Africa could not be referred to as the “Dark” continent if not in direct relation to the “light”
Africa is thus both created and understood solely from the Western lens in such a way that empowers Western ideologies at the expense of the African peoples. This is what we are referring to when we call to transgress from the “single story” of Africa: just as there is no single, European standard for beauty which we can apply universally, there is also no single, European standard for what stories deserve to be told as universal truths. Therefore, we must push to see Africans with the same dignity, agency, respect and authority that we, by default, give the West: we must push to see Africans as more than their failures and struggles; their histories as more than slavery and defeat, and their cultures as having something unique and valuable to teach all of us. It is time we transgress from the typical and tired homogenization, stereotyping, and infantilism of the incredibly diverse Continent. As Sefa Dei puts it: “(Re)Conceptualizing Africa requires a sincere acknowledgement that Africa is in many ways an artificial construct and that there is power of knowledge in theorizing and teaching Africa beyond its artificial boundaries [...].”
Let us stop trying to define Africa by what the West has understood it to be and instead listen so that Africans can authentically define themselves.
Read more about the Ghanian-Canadian scholar, Sefa Dei here
https://www.canadianscholars.ca/authors/george-j-sefa-dei
Dei, G. J. S. (2008). Teaching Africa: towards a transgressive pedagogy (Ser. Explorations of educational purpose, 5). Springer
Positionality of the writers
The owners and contributors are all students at the University College Utrecht (UCU) in the Netherlands. The students have mixed backgrounds, representing countries from North America, South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. All of them are part of UCU’s East Africa program and share a commitment to learning more about African Studies, following Sefa Dei’s anti-colonial and transgressive approach.
All of the students, although reflecting very diverse histories, share some privileged statuses, as university students at a prestigious college in the Netherlands. Subsequently, while designing and managing this blog, it must be emphasized that all the contributors share a commitment to critical self-reflexivity and self-interrogation. All the contributors wrestle with tough questions, including, for example: How does my own positionality affect the stories I identify and prioritize? How does my own positionality affect how I represent and frame these stories? Who are these stories being told for? With what aim? Are they beneficial and relevant to the Continent? Are there adverse/unintended effects of highlighting these stories? Are forms of (white) ‘saviorism’ implicated in such an activity and initiative? How must this be interrogated?