The Bright Continent
Breaking Rules & Making Change in Modern Africa
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"For anyone who wants to understand how the African economy really works, The Bright Continent is a good place to start" (Reuters).
Dayo Olopade knew from personal experience that Western news reports on conflict, disease, and poverty obscure the true story of modern Africa. And so she crossed sub-Saharan Africa to document how ordinary people deal with their daily challenges.
She found what cable news ignores: a continent of ambitious reformers and young social entrepreneurs driven by kanju—creativity born of African difficulty. It's a trait found in pioneers like Kenneth Nnebue, who turned cheap VHS tapes into the multimillion-dollar film industry Nollywood. Or Ushahidi, a technology collective that crowdsources citizen activism and disaster relief.
A shining counterpoint to conventional wisdom, The Bright Continent rewrites Africa's challenges as opportunities to innovate, and celebrates a history of doing more with less as a powerful model for the rest of the world.
"[An] upbeat study of development in Africa . . . The book is written more in wonder at African ingenuity than in anger at foreign incomprehension." —The New Yorker
"A hopeful narrative about a continent on the rise." —The New York Times Book Review
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Nigerian-American journalist Olopade's first book rebuts the view of Africa as mired in poverty, war, and failed aid projects, and instead offers a hopeful perspective. Olopade looks past the arbitrary boundaries of sub-Saharan Africa's colonial legacy and re-maps it according to categories of Family, Technology, Commerce, Natural, and Youth. Instead of dwelling on political shortcomings, corrupt leadership, and stunted infrastructure, Olopade embraces the spirit of kanju, a Yoruba word for hustle ("the specific creativity born from African difficulty") that bolsters a vibrant informal economy ranging from fake license plate sellers in Lagos to Kenya's M-Pesa system of mobile phone-based payments. She assails foreign aid dynamics that provide Africans with donated used clothes, for example, which disrupts local manufacture and "privileges Western convenience as much as the intended recipients." Despite a multitude of examples of inventive responses to sociopolitical obstacles, Olopade tends to frame her pro-technology vignettes with buzzwords that sound like a Silicon Valley startup's pitch for venture funding. She also leaves virtually unaddressed the effects of latter day economic colonialism in the form of massive Chinese investment, and the ongoing impact of war and political insurrection. The African continent is certainly brightening, but not quite at the pace Olopade ambitiously tries to portray. 21 b&w photos and charts.
