Sharing Your African Experience Through Blogging

Sam Adeleke | February 26, 2016

Ø Breaking the Single Story Narrative Ø Adventures of a Travel Writer Ø New Media Tools of the Future

#BungeeJumping #JInjaUganda

Travel Branding Expert

At the 2009 Ted talk, Chimamanda Adichie spoke of the “The danger of a single story” in narrating the African experience and warned that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.

She went on to further talk about stereotypes

But I have 5 Big Questions - Does Africa have an image problem? - Why do Africans worry about how Africa is portrayed in western media? - Why are there more negative than positive stories about Africa? - Is Africa’s negative image justified? - Who is hiding the real Africa?

At a recent BBC Debate on Africa’s global image, a participant noted: “The image of Africa as it is, is correct … It is true that there is famine. It is true that there is poverty, there is war. All those are true. But let’s talk about Brazil, for example. Brazil is poor. There is prostitution. There is horror. There are drugs. But what is the image of Brazil in the world? The image of Brazil in the world is the image of a country that is successful, that is progressive, that is exciting … The Brazilians themselves have taken the agenda in their own hands to promote it. In Africa … we have abdicated our responsibility to drive our own image”.

So whose responsibility is it to launder the African image?

“There is an increasing decline of the so-called western media and their influence in Africa. A lot of local media houses are emerging that can tell the narrative of the African situation far more effectively than the international media will ever do … In about five to seven years the international media will become completely irrelevant. And that is why you got that reaction to the 2012 Documentary on Joseph Kony (the Ugandan rebel that abducted over 30,000 children and turned them into child soldiers for 26 years) because it was in complete contrast to the situation on the ground.

Robert Kabushenga, CEO, Uganda’s Vision Media Group

And the people who went against it were not even the traditional ones – it wasn’t the army, it wasn’t the government. It was the bloggers who said, ‘This is not correct’. Finally there is a process in the media in Africa that is beginning to reverse these perceptions. Very soon we will have our own infrastructure that tells the story differently.”

Robert Kabushenga, CEO, Uganda’s Vision Media Group

Today that infrastructure has been established via a platform called

For the past 3 years, we have been criss-crossing the African continent, documenting, blogging and providing dynamic travel and leisure information on untapped Africa and its surrounding islands. Our aim is to work with individuals, organizations, governments, key decision shapers and policy makers in promoting the untapped potentials of the world’s most culturally rich and diverse continent.

w ww.af ro tour ism.com

So let’s do a quick tour of the Africa you don’t see on TV

View of CMS, Lagos, from the Pedestrian bridge at night

Hand park, Calabar, Cross river state, Nigeria

Boat cruise on Marina resort, Calabar river, Cross river state

Port Harcourt Zoo, Trans-Amadi, PortHarourt, Rivers state

Double Decker bus tour @ Tinapa, Calabar

Ngwo Cave, Enugu, Nigeria

Oguta Wonder Lake, Oguta, Imo state

Obudu Mountain Resort, Cross river state, Nigeria

Cable car rides @ Obudu Mountain Resort, Cross river state

Pink Lake, Senegal

Quad biking desert safari, Hurghada, Egypt

Elephant Orphanage, Nairobi, Kenya

Aero beach, Entebbe, Uganda

Somaliland

Capetown, South Africa

Afriskii Resort, Lesotho

Congo Brazzaville

Ivory Coast, Abidjan

Kenya

South Sudan

Off from Juba teaching Hospital via Mobil street. Juba City (early 2014)

South Sudan Hotel, Juba

Made in Madagascar

Rwanda… a classical example of African stereotypes

Rwanda is a fast developing East African nation with a stable democracy.

They all love their president because he has been incorruptible and magnanimous in all his dealings after ending the 1994 genocide & civil war.

Methane Gas Plant on Lake Kivu, from which electricity is generated.

With joy, the citizens recently voted in a referendum which passed with

over 98% support of Rwandans saying they want President

Kagame to run for a third seven-year term.

This means that President Kagame

could remain in power till 2034.

Interestingly, everyone I spoke to in Rwanda from the capital Kigali to the farthest districts of Cyangugu loves Kagame and wants him to

lead them as long as he lives. Yet, the western media chooses to cast a dictatorial mantle on Kagame.

Folks, there’s no other way to tell the true African story other than visiting these places to get first-hand experiences of events and happenings.

We need to appreciate the fact that Africa is a unique continent and each of its 54 countries is adopting unique ways to solve its own problems.

Having said these…

So how can African bloggers, tourists, brands, marketers and governments effectively tell the

African story through the new media while standing out from the clutter?

First of all, we all know that the beauty of the new media is its democratic temper. With any electronic device, anyone at all, can set up a communications unit, using a phone, a tablet, a laptop, a desktop, and simply occupy the social space and broadcast information which in a matter of minutes may go viral and condition public opinion. So if it is that simple, why can’t exclusive stories and facts from Africa go viral?

A Quick Illustration

Did you know that Megafauna like giraffe, zebra, gorilla, hippopotamus, chimpanzee and wildebeest are unique to the African continent?

So why are such facts, stories and images not as popular as it should be? According to Mary Meeker's annual Internet Trends report, over 1.8 billion images are posted to social media each day, yet 80 percent of these images lack identifying text.

So how can you stand out from

the clutter?

Right now, the visual web has dropped a cloak on social media. For example, if someone shares a photo of an African destination or even a product but doesn't tag the brand with a hashtag or caption, there's nothing that tells the marketer, "Hey, I'm talking about your brand, so you should listen."

This is where image recognition comes in. It’s the new darling of the social media world. Take the Wolfram Language Image Identification Project, for example, which can identify the content of any picture uploaded to the site.

So how does image recognition work in a social media context?

Image recognition makes it possible to find and categorize those untagged photos by analyzing their visual content for patterns specific to a brand (consumers holding cans of Coke, for example). This provides brands not only with useful content they couldn't find before without accompanying text, but also with better connections to their biggest fans.

Real-time image recognition tool Mantii is used for "visual listening": It watches social media as new images appear, then grabs the ones that are relevant to the respective brand and displays them on a dashboard.

Mantii also analyzes the demographics and sentiment associated with these images, so marketers can quickly get a sense of who's talking about their brand and what they're saying.

So to what extent is Mantii and similar social media watching tools useful?

Marketers can use tools like Mantii to identify the top influencers and engage with them through direct advertising or obtain rights to their photos for user-generated content.

Great Badagry Festival, 2015

The next time an influential consumer posts a selfie with a loved one at a popular African destination (wearing the country’s T-shirt), it could turn into a yearlong advertising campaign for that country or company. In that sense, "going viral" becomes more scientific and accessible for marketers, so they can ride the wave rather than chase after it.

Bloggers, Marketers and Brand managers can also use new social media tools such as Mantii to benchmark their brand against competitors to get the big picture of their industry on the visual Web.

From the foregoing, it is obvious that we can now have a scientific approach towards telling the African story. And this can only be done if we are more deliberate and conscious about it.

Finally… As African bloggers, marketers, brand managers and influencers, it is our responsibility to actively participate in sharing our stories using the evolving social media tools. In the words of Brene Brown: “You either walk inside your story and own it or you stand outside your story and hustle for your worthiness.”

Connect with us

w. www.afrotourism.com t. @frotourism f. facebook.com/Afrotourism i. instagaram/afrotourism

samadelstudios.com @samadeleke facebook.com/sam.adeleke instagaram/afrotourism

References • https://www.imageidentify.com • http://www.kpcb.com/internet-trends • http://www.adweek.com/brandshare/what-it-s-be-

marketer-era-image-recognition-169207 • https://www.facebook.com/The-Africa-We-Dont-See-on-

Tv-287750344684263/?fref=ts • Gabriel Kolapo Photography • www.google.com • www.afrotourism.com