‘Africa has zero PR in the West’: Nigerian influencer uses sarcasm against the ignorant | Global development

WWhen Charity Ekezie first joined TikTok in 2020 and started posting videos from her home in Abuja, Nigeria, she had just left a job at a radio station and thought this would be a good way to keep busy and keep her not to let journalistic skills disappear.

Within months, she began to realize from the comments under her posts that some people knew nothing about Africa. Commentators from Britain, the US and European countries asked her how she got a telephone and whether there was water in Africa.

“Wait, are you serious?” Ekezie remembers thinking at the time. “This is not the Africa I live in. I mean, we have phones in Africa. There is mineral water here. I decided to respond.”

Armed with humor and a good dose of sarcasm, Ekezie provides sharp and witty rebuttals to a series of questions – from “Does Africa have planes?” to “Do you have shoes in Africa?” – has earned the 32-year-old a combined following of more than 4.5 million followers across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook, with some posts viewed tens of millions of times.

In a TikTok post responding to a question about how Africans can afford phones but not water, she stands with a bottle of water with more stacked behind her, explaining that people gather every month for a spitting festival. “All the men sing a spiritual chant led by the community sorcerer and all the women and girls take turns spitting into a drum… After two days we go and the saliva is purified. We can grab it now and drink it,” she jokes.

People laughed at the videos, so Ekezie made more, and more questions came up. She thinks some were people trolling her, but many were real.

In one post, she and two cousins ​​were dancing in a lake, in response to comments saying there is no water in Africa.

The video has been viewed more than 22 million times so far, but has also attracted thousands of racist comments. “The water was brown at that time of year,” says Ekezie. “I would get comments like, ‘Oh my God, look at the dirty water you’re drinking.’ People said the water washed away my dirt. That’s why the water was brown and I’m so black.”

People left monkey emojis. Ekezie did not always notice the racism. “I didn’t understand it,” she says. “I knew the concept of racism, but I had never been treated in a racist way before. It hurt me so much.”

But she has also received a lot of positive feedback from many Africans, some of whom joined in the joke in the comments section. In a post that shed light on the fact that many people don’t understand that Africa is a continent and not a single country, people from countries across Africa responded with emojis of their flags. “No matter which country they came from, they were united and in on the joke,” says Ekezie. “One person said, ‘You’re going to unite Africa on your own.’ That was so cool.”

Experience has taught Ekezie, who spent part of her childhood in Cameroon, that “Africa in the West has zero PR and people don’t really know anything about us. I thought people read books; apparently not. It hurts me because we are exposed to Western media, music and culture every day.”

She is grateful to be able to share her perspective through social media. Since her followers on YouTube have increased enormously in the past year, she can make a living from the posts. “I make my videos because people like to see Africa through my lens. They see that Africa is not this miserable jungle,” she says.

“I’m not saying African countries are perfect,” she adds. “I mean, what country is actually perfect? But we have to put our best foot forward. People need to know that despite our own problems, we are also great. We have a great culture, great food, great people.”