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To be or not to be
| Content Provider | Scilit |
|---|---|
| Author | Langmia, Kehbuma |
| Copyright Year | 2021 |
| Description | Book Name: Routledge Handbook of African Media and Communication Studies |
| Abstract | In June 2009, Facebook Swahili was launched by Swahili scholars in the west (BBC News 2009). This marked a major step towards decolonizing media dissemination and consumption in the horn of Africa from the claws of western domineering languages (English, French and Portuguese). If Cheikh Anta Diop is reputed to have said “no nation ever developed using the language of another people” (Asante 2007a, 13) then this is a major step in the right direction. This decolonized mindset would go a long way to debunk Curtin’s (1964) assertion that there “never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white” (42). The African person is ‘civilized’ as he/she is conscious of his environment in the same light as Jomo Kenyatta knew that the English language was not making him authentic before his people and so “broke into Swahili to the applause of his auditors” (Skinner 2001, 31). Given the fact that Facebook opened the Afrikaans version on March 15, 2009, and since there is a possibility that in the near future Facebook will also be available in other African languages like Wolof, Hausa and Yoruba, one could say that the process of media decolonization in Africa has begun. Language is the vehicle of culture and culture is the mores of a people. Apart from language, African media content needs to be decolonized. African electronic media systems are the offshoots of ontological, and to a much larger extent, the axiological tenets of the west, thereby making African communication a pseudo-western system devoid of African culture. Examples abound: The west did not only colonize Africa to supplant political and economic control, they wanted assimilation in all spheres of African life. The newspaper, radio, television and now the Internet-mediated platforms on African soil are structured and programmed to fit and align with what pertains in the west. After all, there is no one transmission device for radio, television and Internet manufactured in Africa. So, African media organizations import finished products, including program materials from Europe, America and China, for wider dissemination on the continent in their original western languages. The same goes for news programs. According to Mazrui (2009) “Nigerian media (electronic or print) cannot afford to have their own correspondents in major African capitals, or war reporters in Darfur and the Democratic Republic of the Congo” (15). My own country, Cameroon, has never deployed its own reporters to major UDEAC, Francophonie or ECOWAS summits to cover the entire event beyond the short stay of its 82president and entourage. All other information from those events, including major conflicts in the region, is reported through the camera lens of western sources. With this type of mediascape in Africa, we can never decolonize. Ali Mazrui continues to state that: “Much of Africa has borrowed western tastes without western skills. It has borrowed consumption patterns without production techniques. It has promoted urbanization without industrialization and has learned capitalist greed without capitalist discipline” (21). These are the realities that Africa after more than 50 years of self-rule is witnessing after the colonial experience. To borrow western taste without mental re-evaluation is nightmarish. To continuously consume western digital communication gadgets in colonial languages without interrogating our minds and challenging western manufacturers to involve Africa and African languages in the process is to fall prey to Thomas Sankara’s (Akomolafe 2014, 66) saying that “he who feeds you controls you”. We have reputable African languages like Kiswahili, Yoruba, Hausa, Wolof, IsiXhosa, Zulu, Amharic etc even being taught in western universities, yet they are being paid lip services on digital media on the continent. Africa has been feeding fat on western production materials without looking back to where she belongs in the world gamut of world productions and consumption patterns. |
| Related Links | https://content.taylorfrancis.com/books/download?dac=C2017-0-48550-0&isbn=9781351273206&format=googlePreviewPdf |
| Ending Page | 90 |
| Page Count | 10 |
| Starting Page | 81 |
| DOI | 10.4324/9781351273206-6 |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited |
| Publisher Date | 2021-01-23 |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Subject Keyword | Book Name: Routledge Handbook of African Media and Communication Studies Cultural Studies African Languages Manufacturers Languages Like |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Chapter |
