Re-Telling The African Story

Africa is now reclaiming its own stories, and harnessing generations of storytelling craft to reconfigure the ways in which it is represented and perceived.

Anansi the spider was jealous. When it learned that every story ever told belonged to the sky god Nyame, it longed to have these tales for itself. But Nyame told the spider the stories could never be sold; the price was too high. “Bring me the great python, the mighty leopard, and the ferocious hornets,” laughed Nyame. “In exchange for these gifts, all the stories of the world will be yours.”

Anansi would not be denied, and used its wits and creativity to deliver the sky god its formidable trophies. Now the stories belonged to Anansi. And to Africa.

For centuries the West has understood that to control the narrative was to control history, and to control history was to shape perception. It also learned that if storytelling could sell ideologies, it could also peddle goods and services. We live in the Age of Story. Every brand, every political manifesto, is built on a narrative architecture. Now Africa is reclaiming its own stories, and harnessing generations of storytelling craft to reconfigure the ways in which it is represented and perceived.

Ras Mutabaruka is founder of The African Perspective, “a Pan-African media platform that tells African stories from an African perspective with a mission to re-brand Africa”.

As a Rwanda immigrant to Canada who had grown up without a radio or television, he quickly understood that Western representations of Africa were a distortion of what he had known.