African Cultures and Representations in the Digital Era

Abstract

This chapter uses critical analysis to offer a contextualized study of culture and cultural identity in the age of digital globalization, the cultural plurality and civilizational unicity of Africa, patterns of representation and misrepresentation of African cultures, and Africa’s need to reclaim its global image in the digital age. The author argues that Africa’s prodigious cultural diversity does not negate its civilizational unicity and that misrepresentations of any African culture are misrepresentations of facets of Africanity or the organic omnitude of African civilizational identity. The author further argues that ignorance, racism, and Machiavellianism are the underlying causes of the exploitative misrepresentations of African cultures in foreign media, literature, academia, and political narratives. He concludes that the African media industry can play a far-reaching role in reclaiming Africa’s global image in the twenty-first century by applying three paradigms: corrective domestic information and communication, corrective global information and communication, and a deontological self-scrutiny.

He who controls how you see the world vitiates your sense of reality.

He who controls how the world sees you dictates your place in it.

He who controls how you see yourself desecrates your identity.

—Mohamed Saliou Camara