Table Of ContentImages of I Edited by
m
Julia Gallagher
Africa
a
Creation, negotiation g Images of
and subversion
e
s
o Africa
Africa doesn’t have a good image. For many, particularly in the West, the continent
f
summons up ideas of corrupt leadership, malnourished, diseased children, conflict and
crime from internet scams to piracy. Often it seems that outsiders – development A
agencies, well-meaning pop stars and foreign media – are the chief shapers of African
images, while African agents are passive or impotent.
f Creation, negotiation
Images of Africa challenges the idea that Africans are powerless in the creation of
self-image. It explores the ways in which image creation is a process of negotiation r
and subversion
entered into by a wide range of actors within and beyond the continent – in
presidents’ offices and party HQs, in newsrooms and rural authorities, in rebel militia
i
bases and in artists’ and writers’ studies. Its ten chapters, written by scholars working
c
across the continent and a range of disciplines, develop innovative ways of thinking
about how image is produced. They ask who controls image, how it is manipulated
a
and what effects the images created have for political leaders and citizens, and for
Africa’s relationships with the wider world. The answers to these questions provide a
compelling and distinctive approach to Africa’s positioning in the world, establishing
the dynamic, relational and sometimes subversive nature of image.
Images of Africa is for anyone who is interested in depictions of Africa, and will be
of particular use to students of African studies, African politics and media studies. G
a
l
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Julia Gallagher is a lecturer in International Relations at Royal Holloway, University of London a
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h
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Cover image:
Scramble for Africa, 2003. © Yinka Shonibare MBE. (
All Rights Reserved, DACS 2014 e
d
)
www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
ISBN 978-0-7190-9146-9
9 780719 091469
Images of Africa
Images of Africa
Creation, negotiation
and subversion
EDITED BY
JULIA GALLAGHER
WITH A FOREWORD BY
V. Y. MUDIMBE
Manchester University Press
Copyright © Manchester University Press 2015
While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright
in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced
wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher.
Published by Manchester University Press
Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA
www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for
ISBN 978 07190 9146 9 hardback
First published 2015
The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external
or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any
content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Typeset by
Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire
Printed in Great Britain by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Contents
List of figures page vii
Contributors viii
Foreword by V. Y. Mudimbe xi
Preface xiv
1 Theorising image: a relational approach 1
Julia Gallagher
2 Constructing images of Africa: from troubled pan-African
media to sprawling Nollywood 21
George Ogola
3 International news and the image of Africa: new storytellers,
new narratives? 42
Mel Bunce
4 ‘Image management’ in east Africa: Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya
and their donors 63
Jonathan Fisher
5 Mirrors, mimicry and the spectre of a failed state: how the
government of Ethiopia deploys image 86
Emmanuel Fanta
6 Images of a traditional authority: the case of Ker Kwaro
Acholi in northern Uganda 105
Clare Paine
7 The war of images in the Ivoirian post-electoral crisis: the
role of news and online blogs in constructing political
personas 125
Anne Schumann
8 Negotiating narratives of human rights abuses: image
management in conflicts in the eastern Democratic Republic
of Congo 144
Georgina Holmes
viii Contents
9 Re-imagining Ethiopia: from campaign imagery to
contemporary art 167
Wanja Kimani
10 Silent bodies and dissident vernaculars: representations of the
body in South African fiction and film 188
Lizzy Attree
Index 201
Figures
7.1 Multimatum: ultimatum va le tuer!!! 134
http://www.abidjantalk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=23160
7.2 Laurent Gbagbo: Maitre Boulanger-Abidjan, 135
http://gbagbout.over-blog.com/article-le-boulanger-est-de-
retour-63698123.html
7.3 Roland Polman, Caric-Actu, 2011. Image courtesy of
Roland Dekloman. 136
7.4 Chappatte, ‘Ivory Coast’, International Herald Tribune,
12.4.11. Image courtesy of Globe Cartoon. 137
9.1 Untitled by Samuel Habtab (photographic digital print),
2012. Image courtesy of the artist. 174
9.2 Untitled by Zacharias Abubeker (photographic digital
print), 2011. Image courtesy of the artist. 180
9.3 Untitled by Kebreab Demeke (oil on canvas), 2011. Image
courtesy of the artist. 181
9.4 Still from FotograF by Robel Temesgen (film, eight
minutes), 2011. Image courtesy of the artist. 182
9.5 Hole Diggers by Helen Zeru (photographic digital print),
2011. Image courtesy of the artist. 184
The author and editor have made every reasonable effort to contact the
owners of the websites Abidjantalk.com and Gbagbout.over-blog.com
to request permission to use images 7.1 and 7.2. In the absence of a
response the images have been included; however, the author and editor
would welcome copyright discussion with the owners of these websites.
Contributors
Lizzy Attree has a PhD from SOAS, University of London on ‘The
Literary Responses to HIV and AIDS from South Africa and Zimbabwe
from 1990–2005’. Lizzy’s collection of interviews with the first African
writers to write about HIV and AIDS from Zimbabwe and South Africa
was published in 2010 by Cambridge Scholars Publishing, and is enti-
tled Blood on the Page. In that same year she was a visiting lecturer in
the English Department at Rhodes University in South Africa. Lizzy is
the Director of the Caine Prize for African Writing.
Mel Bunce is a lecturer in Journalism at City University, London. Mel is
interested in the political, cultural and technological forces that drive
international news production and she has done extensive fieldwork
in east and west Africa exploring these phenomena. She holds a doctor-
ate in Politics from the University of Oxford, where her thesis exam-
ined foreign correspondents in east Africa. She has previously worked at
Birkbeck, University of London, and the University of Otago in New
Zealand.
Emmanuel Fanta is currently working on a PhD thesis on African states’
foreign relations, focusing on the negotiations with external actors
in cases of peacekeeping missions. He previously worked as a project
researcher for the United Nations University Institute on Comparative
Regional Integration Studies (UNU-CRIS). He has since been working in
different peacekeeping missions in west Africa. Emmanuel edited, with
Timothy Shaw and Vanessa Tang, the volume Comparative regional-
isms for development in the 21st century: insights from the global South
published by Ashgate in 2013.
Jonathan Fisher is a lecturer in the International Development
Department, University of Birmingham. His research focuses on the
place of Africa in the international system and how regional and inter-
national relationships are managed and mediated by African states and
