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Africa: a primer for Americans

BY Chielozona Eze

During my graduate studies at Purdue University, one of my friends often admired my seeming cosmopolitan bent. “How many countries have you been to besides the United States?” he once asked me. I had visited Germany, Holland, Britain, Cameroon, Senegal and quite a few other places, I told him. “And you?” He grinned, pulling at his blond moustache. “Just one ... sorry, two,” he answered, his grin broadening to a wry smile. “Canada and Texas.”

He then turned to me and asked: “Cameroon is in Africa, right?” Such questions are among the many embarrassing inquiries I get. Africa is near Europe, right? Is Africa in Darfur? Are there truly universities in Africa?

Knowing that some of these questions are rooted in plain ignorance, I try my best to explain. Yes, Africa is a continent, I say, where a mélange of ethnic groups speak different languages — Hausa, Yoruba, Shona, Efik, to name a few — each as distinct from the other as French is from Polish. Invariably, I mention the country I was born and raised in, Nigeria, whose 120 million souls make it Africa’s most populous nation.

It was in this friendly and informal spirit last month that the UCLA African Studies Center organized a roundtable discussion, “What Americans need to know about Africa.” The two-hour event was important in a way that an hour spent researching Africa on Google cannot be for the simple reason that there are aspects of life no search engines can ever supply. For example, an Internet search is unlikely to turn up anything thoughtful on, say, what it means when someone who is brought up in the African traditional religion attends a Jesuit seminary.

That, in fact, is exactly what happened to me. My illiterate grandmother might not have developed a systematic theology comparable to the one I learned in the seminary, but the degree of tolerance I feel toward other peoples and religions comes principally from following her as a teenager to worship in our village shrine. Traditional religion plays just as important a role in shaping people’s values as do faiths such as Islam and Christianity.

Africa has its share of religious fundamentalism — and not just among Muslims, who comprise half the continent’s population. American-style evangelical Christianity has taken over Nigeria, meaning that while other parts of the world complained of McDonaldization, Africa could comfortably talk of Jesusification. To this day, people wake up to find groups, armed with megaphones, preaching that Christ’s second coming is certain before the end of the year.

The grossly inexcusable wars in Africa, some of which are proxy wars, are a telling commentary on human nature. Wherever there’s abundant mineral resources, we humans can be found vying for control of them, as is arguably happening in Iraq today. In Rwanda, an overemphasis on ethnic differences has led to one of the most tragic conflicts in modern times.

Come to think of it, Americans needn’t know anything about Africa other than that it is a continent populated largely by people of dark skin — people who eat and drink, make love, fight and laugh, think and plan like people everywhere else in the world.

Eze is a postdoctoral fellow with the International Institute.