What are some positive stories about Africa?

November 22, 2005 2:43 PM

Positive stories about Africa.

So much of the news coming out of Africa is negative - war, famine, genocide, poaching, AIDS, FGM, human trafficking. I'm looking for some good news about Africa, possibly to make into a documentary. Any advice?

posted by Amizu to Society & Culture (17 answers total)

Conservation? My girlfriend has worked with conservation near Kruger park (SA), and has some heartwarming tales to tell.

Also, there are definitely AIDS success stories in Africa; Rwanda comes to mind, I think. (But I don't know a whole lot about that.)
posted by metaculpa at 2:50 PM on November 22, 2005

I bet tristeza's [former?] boss would have some good ones here. He would go there often to make documentaries on public health issues.
posted by matildaben at 3:08 PM on November 22, 2005

Look up Mark Shuttleworth on Wikipedia and his own personal website - he's a fantastic African businessman, spaceman and all round nice guy.
posted by rc55 at 4:03 PM on November 22, 2005

It's depressing that there isn' t more here.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:38 PM on November 22, 2005

Best answer: Metaculpa is right. Check out the Green Belt Movement and its leader, the amazing Wangari Maathai--she didn't win the Nobel for nothing.

Speaking of women in power in Africa, there's the recent election of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf to the presidency of Liberia. A surprise winner over the soccer star George Weah, she's the first democratically elected premier on the continent. There are a few other impressive high-powered women that might be of interest: Luisa Diogo is prime minister of Mozambique, and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is Nigeria's take-no-shit finance minister. (Oh, PS, her son just released a well-reviewed novel.)
posted by j.s.f. at 4:42 PM on November 22, 2005

According to a song, "It began in Africa." Not sure what "it" is.
posted by yerfatma at 6:08 PM on November 22, 2005

Not exactly "news", but the most recent Harpers had in it's "Readings" section a bunch of short (one or two paragraph) responses to the question "Do you love Africa? or Do you Hate Africa" written by Africans. The tone was mostly positive, with people listing the things they loved about Africa.
posted by duck at 6:14 PM on November 22, 2005

Chimfunshi Chimpanzee Orphanage deep in the bush of northern Zambia was started by a married couple, David and Sheila Siddle, about twenty years ago. Since then they have poured everything they have into it.

Why is there a need for a Chimpanzee Orphanage? In short, because baby chimps are really, really cute. Imagine the cutest toddler you've ever seen and multiply that by 1,000. So poachers go into the bush, they find a band of chimps, they kill the adults, and they take the babies. Then the sell the babies on the black market.

Sometimes the babies are recovered when they are little. Sometimes they are only recovered when they reach puberty and quickly become extremely unsuitable as pets. (When I was there, there was one chimp who had spent about a dozen years chained to a bar stool where he had been taught to drink and smoke cigars.) The problem is that chimps can't simply be released into the wild. They live in large groupings, and they are extremely hostile to chimps from other groupings. So what the Siddles have managed to do --- which no one had done before --- was create a couple of bands of chimps in their refuge land, and introduce new chimps to them as they get them.

The operation is very low budget, very humble and modest. It hasn't been written about much in the west. But it's pretty incredible. When I visited (for just one morning) we had a chance to take the two-year olds out into the woods for their play time. Let's just say they were very friendly, good-natured, and athletic! At that time the orphanage was also home to a half-tamed hippopotomus who lived in a room in the Siddle's old house. It didn't come out while I was there, though, so I only got to see its rump. Apparently it likes to be fed milk from the bottle.

There are many other stories, like about the chimp that masterbated into the ear of a BBC cameraman, but I'll let you get those from the Siddles. If you go there, say 'hi' from the old boyfriend of Bernie and Pete Kleinschmidt's daughter.
posted by alms at 6:39 PM on November 22, 2005

Not sure if this is what you're looking for exactly but a book called Harmattan: Wind Across West Africa is one of the best travelogues I've ever read.
posted by Jaybo at 7:26 PM on November 22, 2005

That hoodia plant might make the Bushmen of the Kalhari billionaires. Yes, I know, shallow, especially in comparison to the Greenbelt, but I do like the idea of a profoundly marginalized minority striking it rich.
posted by Sara Anne at 9:30 PM on November 22, 2005

I have a friend who starts village schools in Tanzania. Because the country is so poor the government doesn't have the resources to send every kid to school to there are standardized tests that everyone must pass to continue in school. The problem is that even if you pass the test you may not get into school because there physically is no room for you. So many students have no chance to get any education past primary school.

Village Schools International goes to villages without schools and makes an agreement with the village. If the village will build the school, the organization will provide teachers. This way the education is not forced on the village - they have to want to build the school to start - and the entire village has ownership. This is a Christian organization - I'm not sure if that matters or not - but this is no missionary school from 200 years ago. Loving the child and giving them a good education is the first priority.

The website is okay - gives the basic information - but what are so heartwarming are the personal emails from the man who runs this program. Email me and I'll forward some to you. These are wonderful stories of how children (especially girls) are allowed a second chance at life from a system that had no room for them or from family who thought they were stupid. I almost cry sometimes reading about them.
posted by riverjack at 12:10 AM on November 23, 2005

A pretty neat story is the success that National Geographic's Mike Fay has had in establishing forest reserves in Africa. The one instance I remembered offhand is the establishment of natural reserves in Gabon, comprising about 10% of the country's total land area. There's an NPR story and one of the stories in National Geographic about it. This Nat'l Geo story is about the lobbying efforts Fay undertook, but one of the strongest factors in convincing the government of Gabon to establish the parks was a photo essay in the magazine detailing Fay's 2000-mile trek through wilderness areas. I can't find a link to that work at the moment, though... Many photojournalists consider it one of the great contemporary triumph's of the medium.
posted by msbrauer at 5:40 AM on November 23, 2005

There's some good stuff in this thread. (Unfortunately, the NY Times story that was my main link has long since disappeared into the archives, but people contributed all sorts of other goodies.)
posted by languagehat at 6:30 AM on November 23, 2005

(I work/do research in sustainability and international development, looking at both community/organizational and technical issues. My work is mostly in Latin America, but my colleagues do a lot of work in Africa, primarily Zambia, Ghana, and Lesotho.)

General thoughts: My impression of positive things happening in Africa is that they are happening on a smaller scale. With the exception of the Green Belt Movement and some of the other large political stirrings of empowerment of women and the natural environment, it seems that the greatest impact in Africa is made on small scales, often starting at the village or neighborhood level.

Specific examples:
Besides Dr. Maathai, another positive story is that of Mohammed bah Abba of Nigeria. He's most known for adapting the principle of evaporative cooling in nested clay pots to the creation of small businesses in northern Nigeria ("pot-in-pot"). That region has a strong tradition in clay and pottery, and now a new generation is learning these techniques and making a living from them. The pots they make are sold to entrepreneurs who use them to keep vegetables fresh for sale - things that used to go limp in hours or a day can now be sold for between several days and three weeks. Not only are the pots used by people already established in the market, it has created opportunities for women to collect and sell things from their homes. This, in a patriarchal (his words) society, is revolutionary. He is also working with groups in Nigeria that promote the empowerment of women through education. A professor in business himself, he is influential in helping establish opportunity for their capacity-building. In the next couple years he is considering entering politics, running for the governor of Jigawa, a state of 13 million people.

More common are regional cooperatives that focus on capacity building and job creation through technology at the appropriate scale/materials/cost. A couple that my colleagues work with include ApproTech in Ghana, and Appropriate Technology Services of Lesotho. These local organizations make and sell technology that can improve quality of life and productivity (especially agricultural), including: water filtration/purification, low cost drip irrigation, peanut shellers, grain grinders, etc. There's a long list of things developed by these organizations or adapted by them from similar services elsewhere or adapted from industrial tech. One thing they all share in common is an unstoppable entrepreneurial spirit and the reuse/adaptation of materials to a new purpose.

Metaculpa mentioned AIDS... There's a lot going on, and they're not in my field, so I'll keep each of these brief but enough to start on:

Organizations that provide home care for AIDS patients are becoming more common. This is critical to getting care to people in many parts of Africa where, despite the prevalence of the disease, it is highly stigmatized. One of these in Lusaka, Zambia, is supported by the US-based Power of Love foundation, others are completely run by and supported by locals.

As a documentarian, you'll appreciate that people are using media as a way to inform others about the risks and consequences of the lifestyle/risk behaviors that can result in infection. You may want to check out Living with AIDS, a documentary made by Africans, for Africans (with the support of a UK NGO) - it is very powerful, though definitely not always positive - it's hard to be positive and yet remain realistic.

What metaculpa is referring to in Rwanda is profiled in the November 5 issue of Time - there's a doctor working on vaccines or something. That entire issue of Time has some great stories in it, along with a good presentation of the case for why all of this work needs to happen.

Above all, the positive stories should include how well the traditions and values held for ages have, in many ways, survived both extreme hardship and the onslaught of modernization. Unfortunately it includes the preservation of some old conflicts and inequalities, but the continuation of life and family as they've known it for centuries is something important to take away from any experience.

posted by whatzit at 7:01 AM on November 23, 2005

Also, feel free to email if you want more information on any of those groups or more contacts in a specific region/sector - these are initiatives I know because I've been thinking about them recently, and like I said, I work mostly in the Americas, and could get a lot more contacts from people I work with.
posted by whatzit at 7:04 AM on November 23, 2005

blah ... contacts in Africa from colleagues who work there.
posted by whatzit at 7:05 AM on November 23, 2005

ITDG (formerly "Intermediate Technology") could be a good source of stories. They are a charity geared towards producing sustainable technology at the local level - bicycle trailers, low cost cooking stoves, etc.
posted by rongorongo at 9:46 AM on November 23, 2005