I've heard individuals use the word "civilized" to describe the West, implying that Africa is somehow "un-civilized."
One person I met believed all of Africa was a wasteland, an uninhabitable desert, and this was why "everybody" in Africa was destitute, starving, and diseased.
It's a sad fact that many of us remain ignorant about the continent Africa. And the images offered to us by the media are always bleak-starving children, AIDS, e-bola, war, child soldiers, genocide.
I cannot deny that those are problems facing Africa but I am sorry that so few positive images emerge from the continent itself and that so few western journalists understand their responsibility to present a balanced vision of a continent that has been misunderstood and objectified for centuries.
I am also sad that we rarely remember the West's culpability in those problems, so even if we understood the positive side of African nations and people, we forget to mention that slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism, the World Bank and the IMF all contributed to and created many of the problems faced by Africans today.
How does a high school or college instructor introduce young people to Africa in a way that is sensitive and knowledgeable, but also piques student interest in the continent? The following are a list of resources in both book and film that teachers can use in their classrooms. It is not a comprehensive list, nor is it an arcane list. I chose books and films that are easily accessible through libraries and video stores. Further, I chose books and films almost exclusively directed and written by Africans (black and white Africans alike.)
I hope that these lists, with their short annotations, will be valuable resources for teachers who want to introduce their students to non-Western history, literature, and culture.
THE BEST EIGHT BOOKS
THINGS FALL APART by Chinua Achebe. Set in Nigeria among the Igbo people in the late 19th century, at the advent of colonialism. I cannot think of a better book to use to introduce students to African culture and traditions prior to colonialism, nor a better book to demonstrate the destructive nature of colonialism to African culture and for the African people.
KAFFIR BOY by Mark Matabane. Set in South Africa during the 1970s. This story demonstrates clearly the divisiveness, racism, and violence of apartheid South Africa through the eyes of a young black man growing up in the townships of Soweto, outside Johannesburg. Not only does this book effectively show how detrimental apartheid policies were for all people in South Africa but it also gives hope for a better future.
