Fake news not new; just ask Africa

ODM Busia aspirant Paul Otuoma displays a fake campaign poster and a fake Nation leaflet purporting he had defected to Jubilee. On the right is an authentic copy of the Daily Nation of April 13, 2017. Previously, most fake news has been broadcast using the Internet. PHOTOS | GAITANO PESA | NATION MEDIA GROUP

It seems that hardly a day goes by without some form of “fake news” rearing its duplicitous head in my WhatsApp groups, Facebook feed or Twitter timeline.

You will no doubt have seen examples if you spend any time at all online. US President Donald Trump threatening to arrest President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe or Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni. Mr Mugabe calling Kenyans “thieves”.

President John Magufuli banning miniskirts in Tanzania. Eritrea ordering men to marry two wives or face jail. All hoaxes, shared by many who thought them to be legitimate headlines.

Oxford Dictionary named “post-truth” the 2016 word of the year. Coupled with the sudden upsurge in the use and popularity of the phrase “fake news”, it can look like we are experiencing a completely new phenomenon. But, in fact, purveyors of misinformation have always existed; it’s just easier to have more of them now that a fast, cheap and largely unregulated arena exists for them to thrive in.

Many are taking advantage of the ease of publishing news online to distort truth for emotional persuasion or financial gain. What really distinguishes fake news from honest errors in publication is intent. The common definition of fake news is “information published with the intent to mislead in order to gain financially or politically”.

By that definition, there has been lots fake news about Africa. Unlike the contemporary outrageous statements, for example, the longer history of fake news about Africa is insidious, and costly.

For the benefit of colonial interests, Africa was labelled “the dark continent”, obscure and primitive – but that is a major distortion of historical reality. Before colonialism, the continent was home to great civilisations such as Mali, Bornu, Fulani, Dahomey, Ashanti, Songhay, Zimbabwe, Axum.

The underground churches of Lalibela in northern Ethiopia, the magnificent Ife sculptures of western Nigeria – all testify to the extraordinary potential of African technology and creativity. And yet many still believe that Africans have never invented anything.

Even the world map we still use in classrooms today is misleading. The Mercator projection used on these maps gives the right shapes of landmasses, but it also distorts their sizes in favour of the lands to the north.

Africa looks much smaller than it actually is, while Canada, Russia, the United States and Europe are enlarged. Greenland appears about the same size as the whole of Africa on the Mercator, yet in reality it is no larger than the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Making Europe and North America bigger on the map gave Western cartographers more space to mark towns, cities, roads and so forth in their part of the world, at the expense of parts that mattered less to them. It also gave a false view of the world, and of Africa.

Such historical representations of power – through maps, images and stories – greatly inform the way we see our place in the world. The balance of power in trade deals, economic agreements, and diplomatic relations cannot be unlinked from common perceptions built over time.

Fast forward to a more contemporary example. The common understanding of financial aid is that rich countries “help” Africa through aid, but this dominant narrative obscures the billions that are taken out of the continent.

Global Financial Integrity recently published data that shows the flow of money from rich countries to poor countries pales in comparison to the flow in the other direction.

For every $1 of aid that comes in, $24 go out in net outflows. When the Panama Papers revealed the global extent of illicit financial flows, notice was taken of the fact that Africa loses at least $50 billion a year —  almost as much as is received in aid —  mainly through tax avoidance by multinational corporations. Still, the perception that Africa is one large begging bowl prevails.

However, the current fake news phenomenon has an indirect benefit. People are now having to take time to pause and ask: is this real? Is this true? We are questioning more of what we watch, hear and read.

And perhaps, as people who have had our education, economies and ideologies subjugated for so long, this is what we Africans need most: wide-eyed examinations of “truths” that we have long taken for granted.

The digital revolution may have made it easier for fake news to prosper, but at the same time, it has provided greater opportunity for a more decentralised negotiation of truth. Armed with hash-tags, websites and social media pages, many Africans are going online to correct long-standing misrepresentations, and the effect is being felt in the real world.

As we continue to weigh, examine and probe the information we encounter, especially about ourselves, we construct an African identity that is based on what we think, not what we have been taught to think. And this is crucial: for even though you can rise higher than what others think of you, you can never rise above what you think of yourself.

This is an excerpt from a public lecture delivered in Kampala, Uganda, last month. Ms Kacungira, the inaugural winner of the BBC World News Komla Dumor Award in 2015, is a BBC journalist and entrepreneur. The views expressed here are her own.