Africa doesn't have a good image. For many, particularly in the West, the continent summons up ideas of corrupt leadership, malnourished, diseased children, conflict and crime from internet scams to piracy. Often it seems that outsiders - development agencies, well-meaning pop stars and foreign media - are the chief shapers of African images while African agents are passive or impotent.
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 entered into by a wide range of...