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I have enjoyed ''How to write about Africa''- a satirical and provocative essay, representing Africa as a 'pitied, worshipped or dominated country' with 'inept thin/short' African people who are  starving and begging aid from the West. A touch of a bitter irony or rather creative sarcasm  penetrating around the continent's 'most important people' celebrity activists and conservationists regularly visiting the country and 'preserving Africa's rich heritage', in reality considering it as a universal reservoir, drawing out all the country's
resources: natural, cultural, economic, etc.( Olga P.)

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I liked Schlee's article because it gave me new perspectives of a map of Africa. It insists that "Horn of Africa" is not a geographical term but a political term. Also, the article discusses that since the end of colonialism many new political units based on new values, such as ethnicity. However, it argues that even political units have a common ethnicity, there is a possibility of segmentation. (Yukie S.)

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This piece - and the lecture on maps - made me stop and think about what I think I know about Africa. Much of what I read is in Western scientific journals or in western news media and even when I visit Africa for work I’m cocooned from what is going on around me.
Jennifer

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I thought the challenge for more books on modern days stories and biographies of great leaders interesting. The article pointed to a lack of these since the 1960’s which I had not considered before. The article also called for investment in new African universities to influence and raise a more nationalist voice to the world. Tanya

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Out of this week's reading, Wainaina's article was the most interesting one for me. I found it refreshing to read a satirical piece - I really had to laugh when he mentioned how Western NGO-workers don't understand when their visa gets rejected.
Yana Kremer

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I really enjoyed this provocative article.  It is absolutely true that when thinking about Africa, people writes about "the "good Africa" (Safaris, Coast, Colourful tribes) or the "bad Africa" (famine, poverty, insecurity, and so on). No one talks about the fact that there are as well plenty of Africans who doesn't live in a mud hut nor encounter daily crisis, therefore there are many sides of Africa(just like other continents) that must be considered and analysed, not only the good and bad ones.
Stefania

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Using Crass Humor to Question Perceptions of the Continent.

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Using Crass Humor to Question Perceptions of the Continent.

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Wainaina does a good job using satirical devices to underline the lazy stereotypes used to write about 'Africa' .  (Melany B.)

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For me this paper sheds light on the immense difficulties  differentiating between nation states, given the illegitimacy of historic devisions (from the colonial period) and also the modern conflicts of competing nationalisms and identities. Recourse to academic relativism also stands in the way of progress.

(Oliver McKenzie)

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Wainaina's, 'How to Write About Africa,' is in my opinion, a sardonic, reductionist, imagining of Africa and the notion of Africanness, as seen through the skewed lens of Western ignorance.
The article is populated with demeaning, stereotypical descriptions of what is commonly referred to as the 'African personality, ' which is generally accepted as being desperate and fawning, or otherwise blood-thirsty and corrupt.
Wainaina's use of humour serves to  underscore the fact that anachronistic ideas about Africa are still prevalent and deeply embedded in Western thought and that perhaps not enough is being done to adjust those pervasive views that exist in relation to Africa and its people.
Laura A

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The most important take away from the article (at least for me) is not to treat Africa as though it were a country, but to remember that we are dealing with a continent comprising of 54 countries and their diasporas, and each coming with its heterogeny of cultures, beliefs, practises etc and the need to treat them as a such. By deconstructing the narrow prisms through which Africa has often been viewed in Western media and scholarship as a jungle of savages, cradle of poverty and a boardroom for Western bodies and political elites, and centre the debate on the diversities of the continent, we shall have had an objective and true anthropological and ethnographic study of Africa.