« Day 3: Morning reports from the blogs | Main | Twittering TEDGlobal »
06 June 2007
From blogger Jennifer Brea: "Writing A New Story About Africa"
Beijing-based blogger Jennifer Brea is one of 100 Fellows attending TEDGlobal. She's the Francophonia editor for Global Voices, and a prolific and powerful blogger about Africa. I love what she wrote about rethinking media coverage of Africa. Just an excerpt below. Read the full post here.
The first day's speakers--Euvin Naidoo, Andrew Mwenda, Carol Pineau, Andrew Dosunmu, Zeray Alemseged, and Newton Aduaka--took the story of Africa, the tired story of dependence, desperation, and despair, and tore it to shreds. They took the West's gaze, and killed it, stomped on it, mocked it, burned its effigy (Joseph Conrad to be precise) so that we could start an entirely new conversation using an entirely different vocabulary. We killed famine, death, hopelessness, hunger, tragedy, poverty and started using words like potential, opportunity, wealth, entrepreneurship, ingenuity, art, imagination, creativity, success, investment, growth, choice.
These are words the media use liberally when writing about emerging nations like India, China or Brazil, but not to describe some of the fastest-growing economies in the world when they happen to be in Africa.
Now imagine spending four days where you only use the good words to talk about Africa: words of forward motion, words of change. I'm not talking about bringing Tony Robbins on stage and dreaming of a better future. I'm talking about hearing from the mouths of people who are out there living it, building it, succeeding (and quite possibly getting very rich) in Africa.
It's been thrilling.
Technorati tags: tedglobal2007, Africa
Technorati tags: Africa, TEDGlobal
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://blog.ted.com/cgi-bin/mte/mt-tb.cgi/3039
Tools for TED.com
Find transcripts >>
Download the TED Miro player >>
Subscribe to the TED Blog's RSS feed >>
Join our Facebook Group >>
Tips? Comments? contact (at) ted (dot) com
Get the latest TED Prize news on TEDPrize.org>>
TED Bloggers
Chris Anderson | Curator
June Cohen | Director of TED Media
Amy Novogratz | TED Prize Director
Tom Rielly | Humorist
Bruno Giussani | TED European Director
Jason Wishnow | Director, Film + Video
Emily McManus | Editor, TED.com
Matthew Trost | Editorial Assistant, TED.com
Blogs we watch
>> TEDPrize.org | Updates on the 2008 TED Prize winners and wishes: Dave Eggers' wish blog; Karen Armstrong's wish blog; Neil Turok's wish blog
>> Thomas Dolby | TED Musical Director, blogging at ThomasDolby.com
>> Bruno Giussani | TED European Director, blogging at LunchOverIP.com
>> Emeka Okafor | TEDAfrica Director, blogging at Timbuktu Chronicles and Africa Unchained
Archives
Recent Comments
dadamsx on XO laptop redesign: Pics!
denmeade on TEDTalks turn 2!
walkermann on Eva Vertes told us first: Stem cells may cause brain cancer
AntoniK on Wordle, an addictive new web toy
hesap123 on TEDTalks turn 2!
rmoede on TEDTalks turn 2!
John5 on "Clonie": Nellie McKay on TED.com
MooseRocket on 50 million TEDTalks viewed, more on the way
docsharp01 on Stroke of insight: Jill Bolte Taylor on TED.com
docsharp01 on 100 Websites You Should Know and Use








