Africa remains shrouded in myth

The way a large part of the western press have portrayed the attack by separatists in Angola on the Togolese football team as if it happened in South Africa is typical of prejudice against the continent. Stereotyping of Africa, its problems and solutions, has devastating consequences. It has helped retard the continent's development.

For starters, if this terrible incident had not taken place, the African Nations Cup would have been a little footnote in most reports. "Africa" is still often only in the news only because of war, as a development "burden" or as a humanitarian crisis. The western media too often see the whole continent of Africa as one country rife with corruption, "tribal" conflicts, natural and humanitarian disasters. It is a place of exotic, bizarre and unexplainable goings-on.

Often, for example in the 2008 crisis in the Congo, the conflict is framed as one of "tribal" wars, but neglect the crucial element of western companies fuelling the conflict, by paying off rebel factions. Because this important element of the strife is not covered, western governments do not have the complete picture and therefore come up with inappropriate policies on Africa.

The devastation the HIV/Aids pandemic is wreaking on the continent is a fact. Incidents have been reported of men targeting girls younger than eight for sex in the misguided belief that it will cure them. Reading some of the reports it would seem that every African male in every village, township and city somehow clings to this belief.

Similarly, western media also influence which African leader becomes a "good" leader. This is rarely based on their democratic commitments, more on their rubber-stamping, often in return for aid (which goes into individual leaders' pockets), of western decisions (which often goes against the interests of their own countries). Uganda's leader, Yoweri Museveni, and Ethiopia's prime minister, Meles Zenawi,are cases in point. Both are astonishingly undemocratic, but are generally portrayed as examples of African "democratic" leaders.

Most of the coverage about Zimbabwe concentrated on how minority white farmers were forced from the land, but little focused on how Robert Mugabe brutalised other black people. What was really a case of a dictator, Mugabe, oppressing all his people, no matter what their colour, was portrayed as a black dictator attacking "whites". Furthermore, there was little context either, of the bitter legacy of colonialism, or Britain's failure to live up to its promises at independence to make funds available for land reform in Zimbabwe. This failure became an excuse for Mugabe to cover his opportunistic actions.

The global financial crisis caused by irresponsible lending in industrial nations is affecting Africa worse. Yet because the impact of the global recession on Africa does not feature prominently on news networks, there is little obligation from western governments and international bodies, such as the IMF and World Bank, to adopt policies at national and global level to ease the burden on African countries.

Similarly, it is often reported that aid to Africa is abused by corrupt governments. But strings attached to such aid mean the bulk of it is spent on western accountants, agencies, employees and companies.