ABSTRACT
Africa has long been imagined by the West as the ‘heart of darkness’ ever since Joseph Conrad depicted this bleak view in his 1899 novel of the same name. Conrad’s character Kurtz’s depiction of ‘the horror, the horror’ has thus remained etched in the international psyche as of undeniably African origin. These images of ‘darkness’ and ‘horror’ are regularly reinforced by the media’s fascination with representations of the regular ‘tribal’ violence that occurs during civil wars and conflicts, all too commonly reported ‘out of Africa’ (Ofuho, 2003). Yet relying upon these Western historical and contemporary ‘images of Africa’, as sourced via popular media or classic literature, results in a very limited understanding of what contemporary Africa really is.
