AFRICA TO THE WORLD • SOLLY MOENG
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THE AFRICAN NARRATIVE SOLLY MOENG, FOUNDER OF THE BRAND AFRICA SUMMIT SPEAKS ON THE TRAVEL INDUSTRY’S ROLE IN TELLING AFRICA’S STORY.
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olly Moeng is the Founder and Convenor of the Africa Brand Summit, which has over the years gained significant traction as it builds on its recognition as a leading platform for monitoring evolving perceptions and growing narratives about Africa, as well as their impact on the continent’s ability to attract goodwill and grow into a truly dynamic, inclusive and integrated economy. Solly and others like him who are on an active campaign to redraft the continent’s narrative, believe that it is not by chance that people the world over, find it easy to want to go to Paris, London, Geneva, New York, or to Singapore, Hawaii, Cape Town, Sydney, San Francisco, Vancouver, and countless other traditional destinations, and that they will do so almost with their eyes closed, without seeming to worry about whether they would be safe to eat the food, drink the water, walk the streets, or be safely treated at local hospitals should anything go wrong during their visits.
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Apart from only a handful of them, African destinations have not always easily benefited from the kind of automatic trust described above. Sadly, being African has also not been covered with glory and automatic acceptance in many parts of the world. Africans still get viewed with suspicion when they board international flights, cross national borders, apply for jobs, scholarships, or attempt to rent places to live in, in many places around the world. They easily get asked questions that do not get asked of others, and a lot of the attitudes they face have to do with how Africa tends to be perceived, around the world. To many, it remains a place of little development. Little development in global skills; little development in modern infrastructure; little development in what is accepted as modern savoir faire, savoir vivre and sophistication. It is also perceived as a place of scourges such as high levels of government corruption, dictatorships, illnesses, abject poverty, undeveloped political cultures, and high levels of unpredictability when it comes to economic and political policies.
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