As our returned volunteers from the likes of Malawi, South Africa and Ghana will know, many African countries are far from the skewered portrayal they too often receive as archetypes of impoverishment, disease, conflict and corruption.
You visit a country like Ghana or Botswana as I and many Lattitude volunteers have done and you find a vibrant and exciting culture, a happy people and increasingly visions of wealth, prosperity and success.
Africa is a continent of over 1 billion people and 54 countries. It has some of the greatest supply of the most valuable natural resources in the world and has some of the most varied and dramatic natural beauty and biodiversity. Looking to the future, many African countries look to be the generators of global economic growth with their high proportion of young people and consistent growth rates of 7-8%.
African’s, for the first time, are excited about their future prospects and this is being translated into a burgeoning confidence of self-expression through all manner of means, both on the continent and within it’s diasporas across the world, including hubs of African culture in cosmopolitan societies like the UK. When this is compared to the grimmer outlook of the rest of the world, this African vibrancy and cultural confidence is becoming increasingly alluring.
None are more so emblematic of this trend than the British-Ghanaian Afro-Beat artist Fuse ODG, who with hits such as Antenna and Azonto has been bringing Ghanaian music and dance to the forefront of popularity in the UK. It is no secret that African culture has often punched above its political and economic weight in the past, namely through the success of African-American artists in the US and UK who have systematically been the instigators of sequential popular music trends the world over; from blues to funk, disco, hip hop and rap. Furthermore artists such as Peter Gabriel and Paul Simon have been instrumental in exposing the world to more traditional African music. However, unlike in the past, this latest expression of African culture by artists like Fuse ODG comes directly from Africa and importantly is being identified with particular countries such as Ghana.
As Fuse ODG is keen to make a point of through his campaign ‘TINA’ (This Is New Africa) and in his recent interview on Newsnight - Africa is changing, it is different and it represents a positive and aspirational outlook, which in much a reverse to the past, the rest of the world is increasingly looking to.
Now more than ever it is an amazing time to volunteer in countries such as Ghana and Malawi and it is important to realise that as a volunteer you will not only be helping within the community you will be based in, you will also be gaining a lot from the experience – being exposed to an exciting cultural environment, which will be playing an ever more important part in what the world of the future will look like.
