The
By Carol Pineau, Director of
washingtonpost.com
In the waiting area of a large office complex in
with bundles of cash line up to buy shares of a mutual fund that has yielded an average 60
percent annually for the past seven years. They're entrusting their hard-earned cash to a local
company called Databank, which invests in stock markets in
Chances are you haven't read or heard anything about
Databank in your daily newspaper or on
the evening news, where the little coverage of
on the negative --the virulent spread of HIV/AIDS, genocide in
Yes,
desperately cries out for more media attention and
international action. But
of stock markets, high rises, Internet cafes and a growing middle class. This is the part of
fully joining the global
economy.
about hardship and tragedy aim to tug at our heartstrings, getting us to dig into our pockets or
urge Congress to send more aid. But no country or region ever developed thanks to aid alone.
Investment, and the job and wealth creation
it generates, is the only road to lasting development.
That's how
Yet while
the highest return in the world on direct foreign investment, it attracts the least. Unless investors
see the
investment translates into job stagnation, continued poverty and limited access to education
and health care.
Consider a few facts: The Ghana Stock Exchange regularly tops the list of the world's highest-
performing stock markets.
capita government savings rates in the world, topped only by
other fiscally prudent nations. Cell phones are making phenomenal profits on the continent.
Brand-name companies like Coca-Cola, GM, Caterpillar and Citibank have invested in
for years and are quite bullish on the future.
The failure to show this side of
continent. Imagine if 9/11, the
that the rest of the world knew
about
I recently produced a documentary on entrepreneurship
and private enterprise in
Throughout the year-long process, I came to realize how all of us in
the media -- even those with a true love of the
continent -- portray it in a way that's truly to its
detriment.
The first cameraman I called to film the documentary
laughed and said, "Business and
images of women's co-ops and market
stalls brimming with rustic crafts. Several friends
simply assumed I was doing a documentary on AIDS. After all, what else does one film
in
The little-known fact is that businesses are thriving
throughout
and sound fiscal policies, countries like
are bustling, their economies growing at surprisingly robust rates.
Private enterprise is not just limited to the
well-behaved nations. You can't find a more
war-ravaged land than
a decade. The big surprise? Private enterprise is flourishing.
phone rates on the continent, mostly due to no government intervention. In the northern city of
Hargeysa, the markets sell the latest
satellite phone technology. The electricity works.
When the state collapsed in 1991, the national airline
went out of business. Today, there are
five private carriers and price wars keep the cost of tickets down.
This is not the
see in the media.
Obviously life there would be dramatically improved by
good governance --or even just some
governance – but it's also true that, through resilience and resourcefulness, Somalis have
been able to create a
functioning society.
Most African businesses suffer from an extreme lack of
infrastructure, but the people I met
were too determined to let this stop them. It just costs them more. Without reliable electricity,
most businesses have to use generators. They have to dig bore-holes for a dependable water
source. Telephone lines are
notoriously out of service, but cell phones are
filling the gap.
Throughout
to African problems. One example that will always stick in my mind is the CEO of Vodacom
while the civil war was still raging.
With rebel troops closing in on the airport in
foreign manufacturer would send in a cell
phone tower, so Conteh got locals to collect scrap
metal, which they welded together to build one. That
tower still stands today.
As I interviewed successful entrepreneurs, I was continually astounded by their ingenuity,
creativity and steadfastness. These people are the future of the continent. They are the ones
we should be talking to
about how to move
on victims or government officials, and
as anyone who has worked in
is more often a part of the problem than of the
solution.
When the foreign media descend on the latest crisis,
the person they look to interview is
invariably the foreign savior, an aid worker from the
are everywhere, delivering aid on the ground. But they don't seem to be in our cultural belief
system. It's not just the media, either. Look at the literature put out by almost any nongovernmental organization. The better ones show images of smiling African children –
smiling because they have been helped by the NGO. The worst promote the extended-belly,
flies-on-the-face cliche of
coffers. "We hawk poverty," one NGO
worker admitted to me.
Last November, ABC's "Primetime Live" aired a special
on
with AIDS children in
in
clear: This helpless nation at
last had a knight -- or prince -- in shining armor.
By the time the charity addresses came up at the end,
you were ready to give, and that's good.
that this land-locked nation with few natural resources has jump-started its economy by
aggressively courting foreign investment? The reality is that it's anything but a "forgotten kingdom," as a dramatic increase in exports has made it the top beneficiary of the African
Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a duty-free, quota-free U.S.-Africa trade agreement.
More than 50,000 people have gotten jobs through the country's initiatives. Couldn't the
program have portrayed an African country
that was in need of assistance, but was neither
helpless nor a victim?
Still the simplistic portrayals come. A recent episodeof the popular NBC drama "Medical
Investigation" was about an anthrax scare in
Some illegal immigrants from
infecting innocent passersby. Typical: If it's a
deadly disease, the scriptwriters make it come
from
Most of the time,
almost never mentioned in newspaper financial pages. How often is an African country -- apart,
perhaps, from
the listing of worldwide weather
includes only a few African cities.
The result of this portrait is an
and incomprehensible. Since we can't relate to it, we
ignore it.
There are lots of reasons for the media's neglect of
the high cost of international coverage, the belief that American viewers aren't interested
in international stories, and the infotainment of news. There's also journalists' reluctance to
pursue so-called "positive stories." We all know that such stories don't win awards or get
front-page, above-the-fold placement. But what's happening in
in any special light. The Ghana Stock Exchange was the
fastest-growing exchange in the world
in 2003. That's not a "positive" story, that's news, just like reports on the London Stock Exchange. I imagine a lot of consumers would have found it newsworthy to learn where they
could have made a 144 percent return on
their money.
My independent film was made possible by funding from
the World Bank, for which I am
extremely grateful. But the bank wouldn't have had to step in if the media had been doing
their job -- showing all Africans in all
facets of their lives. In a business that's supposed
to cover man-bites-dog stories, the idea that
If the media are really looking for news, they'd look at the ways
that
does work.
Author's e-mail: capineau@aol.com
mailtcapineau@aol.com>
Carol Pineau, a journalist with more than 10 years of
experience reporting on
producer and director of the film "
the
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