Africa is not a country\u2014but a continent with one billion people, living in 55 different countries, and speaking more than 2,000 languages.<\/p>\n
Yet a relatively narrow coverage of Africa and its people exists not only in mainstream media, but as a new research paper shows, in academia as well. Virginia Tech University analyzed 20 years of research articles published in two major journals about African politics, namely\u00a0African Affairs<\/em>\u00a0published by Oxford University and\u00a0The Journal of Modern African Studies<\/em>\u00a0by Cambridge University.<\/p>\n The paper investigated whether by reading Anglophone scholarship on sub-Saharan politics between 1993 and 2013, one could actually learn more about the region\u2019s political reality and complexity.<\/p>\n In his paper, published this month, Ryan C. Briggs, an assistant professor at the department of political science, notes that studies around sub-Saharan Africa\u00a0cluster heavily\u00a0on a small number of wealthier, more populous, and English-speaking nations.<\/p>\n Fewer than half of all the countries in the region\u201446 in total\u2014were written about more than 10 times, with the majority of them being former British colonies like Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya. Former French colonies were the focus of about 5 papers on average, while those colonized by Britain had about 27 articles written about them. Population size also mattered a lot: for every 5% increase in a country\u2019s populace, the number of articles in every four-year period increased by about 3%.<\/p>\n If this shows us anything, Briggs writes, it is that Anglophone research does not represent regional politics, but rather uses \u201cbroad generalizations\u201d deduced from specific countries to produce \u201ca skewed image of sub-Saharan Africa\u201d that is then applied to other countries.<\/p>\n Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n Originally published on Quartz Africa.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Africa is not a country\u2014but a continent with one billion people, living in 55 different countries, and speaking more than 2,000 languages. Yet a relatively narrow coverage of Africa and its people exists not only in mainstream media, but as … Continue reading