Moky Makura left London for Johannesburg about 30 years ago, shortly after apartheid ended. A friend in Britain asked whether South Africa had ATMs. Makura replied that South African banking was more advanced than Britain’s. The friend was relieved not to carry cash.
That small exchange captures what Makura, now executive director of the advocacy organisation Africa No Filter, calls the Africa visibility gap: the distance between the continent as it actually is and the continent as outsiders imagine it. Writing in an opinion piece, she argues that Western perceptions of Africa remain shaped by outdated stereotypes, and that this gap is the most consequential one facing the continent.
A study confirms what the anecdote suggests
Africa No Filter commissioned a perception study from Dr Adam Hahn, a social psychologist at the University of Bath. The research covered respondents in Britain and the United States. It found that they associated Africa with dysfunction, harsh environments and a lack of modernity. Those associations were not merely abstract: they affected people’s willingness to visit the continent, buy its products and engage with its culture.
Makura traces part of the problem to the legacy of Live Aid and similar campaigns, which fixed an of crisis in the Western mind. Progress, she argues, exists but lacks visibility. The result is a feedback loop in which outdated imagery persists even as the ground shifts.
Where the progress is visible
The evidence is not hard to find, once you look. Africa pioneered mobile money in modern finance. Kenya showed that phones could replace traditional banking for storing and transferring money, and sub-Saharan Africa remains the centre of the global mobile-money revolution. Nigeria ranks third globally for cryptocurrency adoption; Britain ranks 17th. Africa has produced many fintech unicorns valued over $1bn, including Nigeria’s Flutterwave, OPay, Moniepoint and Interswitch. Investors back these entrepreneurs for profit, not charity.
Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man, built the Dangote refinery at a cost of $20bn. It is the largest single-train refinery in the world. Nigeria is Africa’s biggest oil producer, but historically exported crude and imported refined fuel. The refinery signals a shift in that pattern.
Smaller entrepreneurs are just as telling. Siny Samba started Le Lionceau in her kitchen with banana and millet; the Senegalese business launched in 2018 and created markets for local farmers and women’s cooperatives. Diana Orembe’s Tanzanian venture, NovFeed, turns fruit and vegetable waste into affordable fish feed and has worked with at least 200 farmers. Mustapha Abubakar Gajibo began by converting petrol tricycles to electric; his Nigerian company, African Motor Works, now designs and builds electric vehicles and produces about 200 units monthly.
Policy changes are less glamorous and rarely covered, but they matter. Rwanda rebuilt its reputation around innovation, tourism and digital government. Ethiopia transformed its agriculture and reduced dependence on imported wheat. Kenya generates up to 91% of its electricity from renewable sources. Benin keeps more cashews for local processing, Namibia requires more lithium to be processed at home, and Zambia removed fees from state education.
Continental integration is advancing too. Fifty countries have ratified the African Continental Free Trade Area. A pan-African payments system settles transactions in local currencies. Thirty-eight countries have joined a single African air transport market, and 108 new intra-African routes have been created since 2022.
Closing the gap
Several initiatives aim to make this progress more visible. The Opportunity Africa initiative, launched earlier this year, seeks to spotlight African progress. The Correct the Map campaign, led by Togo, challenges outdated perceptions. The #NotWaiting campaign collects proof-point stories of change already under way.
Makura’s argument is not that Africa has no problems, but that the continent’s has not kept pace with its reality. The visibility gap hides both large-scale achievement and the thousands of smaller entrepreneurs who are unlikely ever to make international headlines. Closing that gap, she suggests, is a precondition for the continent being seen as it is.
