Dayo Olopade, The Bright Continent: Breaking Rules and Making Change in Modern Africa

Summary

The Bright Continent: Breaking Rules and Making Change in Modern Africa is Dayo Olopade's contribution to Pan-Africanist thought; she is an Africanist herself. She is a Nigerian-American journalist who is currently based in New York but works in Kenya, among other African countries. The book takes us through her journeys and research in Africa, with a significant attention to the sub-Saharan parts of the continent. She rejects the stereotypical impressions made about the continent and challenges the impressions of Africa, starting with the early European explorers who described Africa as a dark continent. Olopade asserts that it is wrong and misleading to see African people as helpless souls who need to be helped without paying attention to the phenomenal efforts which the people are making to ameliorate their lives and conditions. She reveals the ‘hidden triumphs’ of the people of sub-Saharan Africa, challenging the ‘formality bias’ which has consistently been raised against them. ‘The continent,’ Olapade asserts, ‘needs to be seen and heard, not imagined and then ritually dismissed. Because when you talk to real people in Africa – shopkeepers, day labourers, executives, or educators – and commit to telling their stories, once-hidden strength come[s] to light.’ As an African in the diaspora, Dayo Olopade grew up in the ‘fat economy’ of America. Other fat economies include England, Germany, France, and other countries in Western Europe. Sub-Saharan African countries, probably with the exception of South Africa, belong to the ‘lean economies.’ These categories of the ‘fat’ and the ‘lean’ economies determine the map of places and locations in the global geography of prosperity and dispossession. Olopade attempts to reconceptualise the African question using five categories which she include the Family Map, Technology Map, Commerce Map, Nature Map, and Youth Map.

There is little doubt that sub-Saharan Africans encounter privations daily. These privations, however, often propel them to play ‘naughty,’ to bend the rules and devise new games to solve problems. Olopade describes this dynamism as kanju, a Yoruba word which means to be in haste, and which encapsulates the true reality of contemporary Africa: ‘the specific creativity born from African difficulty.’ ‘The commercial system of Africa is so volatile that one comes across ‘traffic marketing’ by which many African thrive and earn their daily living. Circumvention of economic maladies happens with ‘Kanju solution.’