Africa must reclaim power to define its narratives
Writer: Andrew Rugasira. PHOTO/COURTESY
What you need to know:
- Africa does not need a new story. It needs authorship, ownership, and the unapologetic power to tell its own.
Narratives are not innocent. They are the architecture of perception, and perception is the currency of power. In Africa’s case, the narrative has too often been a tool of containment: constructed by outsiders, exported as truth, and consumed globally as unquestioned fact.
From the colonial archives of Europe to the algorithms of modern news cycles, Africa has long been trapped in a story it did not write, one where its people are either helpless or heroic, victims or villains, never complex, never authors.
Consider French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent tour of Africa, where he declared an end to France’s era of interference, while simultaneously deepening military ties and defending the legacy of Francafrique. Or take how Western leaders routinely position Africa as “crucial” to solving the climate crisis, without acknowledging that the continent contributes less than 4 percent of global emissions and yet suffers the worst of its effects.
At COP summits and investment forums, such contradictions are cloaked in the language of partnership, but they reveal a deeper logic: narratives designed to obscure responsibility, control perception, and maintain moral authority. Today’s narrative control no longer marches in boots; it arrives in briefcases and soundbites.
It speaks in keynote speeches, summit declarations, and donor communiqués, reasserting control through the guise of collaboration. These distortions find traction because they echo something deeper, scripts we ourselves have internalised. Narrative injustice is not just imposed from the outside; it is often perpetuated from within.
Too often, we Africans become co-authors of our diminishment. We see it in corporate boardrooms where English accents are equated with competence, and in ministries that publish economic plans in colonial languages while ignoring the linguistic realities of their own populations.
In my own experience, whether building an African coffee brand for export, advocating for adoption reform, or launching fintech innovations, I have seen how deeply perception shapes outcomes. It is easier to raise money for a Western charity that helps African farmers than for an African business offering long-term solutions.
A story of suffering travels faster than a story of strategy. Narrative injustice has social and economic consequences. But narrative justice is not about rebranding. It is about power. It is about reclaiming the lens. Who gets to frame the story? Who decides what counts as progress, as failure, as dignity? When I wrote A Good African Story, I wasn’t trying to inspire.
I was trying to interrogate. Why is African success treated as exceptional? Why must our triumphs be framed in heroic terms, while our challenges are reduced to pathology? I wrote not to celebrate resilience, but to question why it is so often demanded.
Narrative justice does not mean denial. It is not a refusal to confront African failures. We must face the rot of impunity and corruption, the betrayal of post-independence ideals, the abuse of state power, and the marginalisation of minorities. But we must confront these failures on our terms, not as bullet points in a donor report, but as political, moral, and historical reckonings grounded in local truths and realities.
I have also seen resistance. I have seen African youth use film, poetry, and code to document their realities. I have seen women lead grassroots movements for land, health, and justice. I have seen pan-African solidarity grow, not just in conferences, but in the cross-border collaborations of artists, activists, and entrepreneurs.
Narrative justice requires more than critique. It requires construction. We need to fund our own publishing houses, tell our history, and produce our data. We need to achieve our failures and dreams. We need to protect our memory from erasure. Until we reclaim the right to name ourselves and the courage to confront those among us who distort that name, our liberation will remain unfinished, and our future written by others.
Africa does not need a new story. It needs authorship, ownership, and the unapologetic power to tell its own.
Andrew Rugasira is a Ugandan social entrepreneur, writer, and author of A Good African Story. [email protected]
