The struggle for Africa

How many companies and people don’t give regard to African creators

I hate the term “ third world country” and as I think of a befitting title for this, it pains me that, that ugly word would come to my head. Over the years, Africa has not been taken seriously, we are widely regarded as “black waste” and it is evident, as even black Americans are segregating themselves from us. Many people through the effect of a single story, stories that were constructed by world organization when soliciting funds on our behalf, I am not saying the funding and the purpose for it is bad, all I am saying is that, in a bid to try and get people’s empathy or at least sympathies, they have blinded people’s eyes and have painted wrong, disgraceful pictures of who Africans are, all in the name of publicity.

People forget we are not all needy, weak, and the suffering mother and child that are on display on magazines and homepages for donations against malaria, famine, drought, civil war or some diseases. I blame the organizations that are enhancers for disgusting imaginations they like to pass around so that some privileged white kid won’t waste food so that some celebrity or rich people and international banks can put down heavy donations, and worst of all, in this same way, they create mental pictures for people all over the world, they make people draw imaginations of a whole continent from their speech and we become objects of sympathy, shame and people who have to daily live on hand-downs from them, we become primitive compared to the rest of the world, all of this from some front page.

I have experienced this also, everyone in Africa has experienced it, in one way or another and at this point, it is important to let our white friends know that Africa is not a country, we are a continent because it easily eludes the thinking of most white people and some black people too( shame on those) that Africa is a continent.

The generation of children, that were fed with hideous stories of lions and zebra walking and playing in our backyard and beautiful sunset over arid land has grown up and have been successful and have made apps and business online that now affects how the world tilt. And because those children have largely been taught whether directly or indirectly that Africans are not worthy of the Internet, that Africans are too primitive to even operate their apps and online software and businesses. But Africans can be a fertile land to enslave people, to use them and take their resources without blinking, or remorse, they have been taught, that we are a continent that they can harvest our resources and take our manpower and we will do nothing.

And the children of the slave owners once again, try to harvest our skills, our energy, our brains, our manpower, our articles, our songs, our data, our intellectual property, our sweat, our work and not recognize us neither do they even want to pay us. These ancestors of slave owners are the owners and developers of Spotify, medium, cash app, anchor, apple, Google, pandora, stripe and a whole bunch of other apps and online companies that are discriminatory to Africans and not willing to support our effort but yet they want our input and our work.

It is a shame that though Nigeria, for example, is the powerhouse of music in Africa, yet Spotify, Google play music and some songs on apple music also are not made available in Nigeria, yet they take credits when appropriate for our music within and outside Africa, Spotify especially. They put up our artiste pictures on the street and anywhere possible but they never think on making their app available for the audience within the artiste home country Nigeria, the power play of sucking us dry that has always been in existence just got modified into the entertainment world and since it is the kind of exposure that our artistes need, they forget to mention it or even bring it up and I don’t blame them.

Much kudos to all African freelance writer, medium page owners, blog owners and content creators generally. I just got into this sphere recently and I have to appreciate what you are doing, contrary to what the government is doing, what the society dictates, what environmental factors put out in each country, you guys are still pushing through and meeting the deadline. I particularly understand the struggle here in Nigeria, where electricity is not regularly available and due to the stereotype that Nigerians are criminals, getting online work or online credibility is particularly hard.

Medium, for example, wants us to put up our articles and poems and intriguing stories yet they don’t want to pay us. They only want to partner with stripe, a financial company that is discriminatory towards Africa and some other countries like India. And all our efforts, all the claps becomes unnecessarily because you can’t join a paid partnership with them. People send in emails after emails, yet nothing is done.

The same goes for Anchor, Anchor is a free podcasting app that I highly recommend for people that are planning to make a low budget podcast like me, but the problem starts when you realize that they want you to put up your work on their platform, but the gratitude from sponsorship ( a very nice idea) is not available for Africans and some other countries.

This is just an example, there are other popular apps like Google play music and more that I don’t even want to get started on them, as it infuriates me.

But to everyone reading this, Africa deserves more, Africa is better than this and a very effective way to get this done is for big companies that are involved in online financial transactions for example, to partner with companies based on location. I.e. medium should partner with other companies based on location, maybe if Stripe is serving to say north and south American countries, then partner with maybe flippay or Cowry wise or PayPal or Piggyvest or some financial startup or bank that are custom-tuned to continents.

Also, online job givers should be very careful as this article doesn’t disregard the fact that online fraud is still a very big issue in Africa, but these online job givers should not subscribe to the idea that all African freelancers are scammers, but rather verify them properly and give jobs to them in good faith.

We are Africans. I am an African, we are resilient in our pursuit for knowledge and wisdom, we will stop at nothing to understand how everything works, but we will never allow to be taken for granted, the world has let us down before, our ancestors have given the world their best, its now time for the world to recognize Africa.

P.s: the day is coming when we will talk about countries that are exploiting Africa also. Watch out.