Mention Africa in a global forum and the reactions often swing between pity and surprise. A crisis here, a miracle there. Rarely a balanced account. For centuries, the continent’s victories have been downplayed or claimed by others, while its setbacks are magnified until they appear universal.
This pattern of Africa borrowed glory and amplified shadows, is not accidental. It was built into the way the world tells Africa’s story, and it still comes at a cost.
Borrowed Glory: Achievements That Disappeared in Translation
Africa’s civilisations didn’t just participate in history, they led. Yet the credit line often skipped the continent.
Take mathematics. The Rhind Papyrus, written around 1650 BCE in Egypt, contained detailed fractions and geometry. That was centuries before Euclid, but schoolbooks still point to Greece as the “birthplace” of math.
Or medicine. Long before Hippocrates, Imhotep, a physician and architect in ancient Egypt, described surgeries and anatomy with remarkable accuracy. He is barely mentioned in Western medical training.
Nigeria’s iron smelters at Taruga were experimenting with complex furnaces a millennium before Europe. Instead of acknowledgment, colonial accounts insisted such technology must have been “imported.”
The pattern extends into modern life. Abebe Bikila stunned the world in 1960 when he won the Olympic marathon, barefoot. Instead of celebrating the tradition and training behind it, much of the coverage marveled at the oddity. Half a century later, Eliud Kipchoge’s sub-two-hour marathon was heralded as a breakthrough, but more in terms of the European sponsors and venues than the East African culture of distance running that produced him.
The same erasure is heard in music. Jazz, samba, blues, hip hop, they are rooted in African rhythms and histories. Yet Africa is too often reduced to a footnote.
Amplified Shadows: When Crises Become the Whole Story
If Africa’s victories are borrowed, its problems are broadcast louder than reality.
During COVID-19, experts predicted millions of deaths. That never happened. Higher sun exposure, community-driven health systems, and experience with Ebola contact tracing kept numbers lower than Europe or the Americas. But instead of learning from Africa, the narrative was that “data must be wrong” or that the continent got lucky.
Conflict and instability are treated the same way. A terror attack in Nigeria becomes “Africa’s terrorism problem.” Rwanda’s economic growth? An “exception.” Morocco’s historic run to the 2022 World Cup semifinal was covered as a shock, while any poor outing by another African team was used to reinforce stereotypes of unpreparedness.
According to a 2021 Africa No Filter study, nearly three-quarters of global news about Africa still fixates on poverty, conflict, or disease. That imbalance shapes perception far more than reality.
The Price of Misrepresentation
Narratives don’t just shape opinions, they influence money.
The African Development Bank estimates that countries on the continent pay about 10 percent more in borrowing costs because investors assume instability. That adds up to over $100 billion a year.
Tourism suffers too. Stereotypes deter visitors, costing an estimated $4–10 billion annually. And investors, influenced by headlines, often treat Africa as a single risky block. A crisis in one country can scare off capital from twenty others.
This is Africa’s hidden “narrative tax.”
Changing the Lens
There are signs of a shift.
The BBC and Reuters have updated editorial standards to avoid blanket generalisations about the continent. African journalists, through outlets like The Continent, AfricanQuarters Media and Quartz Africa, are challenging the old filters. In culture, Afrobeat has gone global, changing how Africa is heard. Universities from Cape Town to Edinburgh are reworking curricula to restore Africa’s place in world history.
It’s progress, but not enough.
Africa is neither a land of borrowed glories nor a continent of amplified shadows. It is a place of innovation, resilience, and ordinary complexity, like everywhere else. Until narratives reflect that truth, the world will keep underestimating Africa and Africa will keep paying for distortions it doesn’t deserve.
The task is not sympathy, but fairness: to give credit where it’s due and to judge crises in proportion. The world doesn’t need to invent a new Africa. It simply needs to see the real one.
