“I don’t understand. Why is it that the media only seems to talk about Africa when bad things happen?”
The man behind the counter at my hotel in the Ghanaian capital, Accra, was talking to me about my job, and why I was visiting.
He looked genuinely pained. He told me he is a big fan of the BBC – in west Africa the World Service and language services have a big following – but it seemed to him that the media outside the continent often only noticed when bad things happened.
It’s arguably a fair point. That’s not to say the positive stories don’t get reported, but he can be forgiven for seeing the headlines and thinking all the world sees is war, famine and pestilence.
In fact,, with growth of 5.6% predicted for 2013, according to the World Bank – although research suggests this has yet to trickle down to the very poorest on the continent.
The middle class in sub-Saharan Africa is expanding rapidly. With the seemingly unstoppable growth of the mobile phone, greater access to the internet, and an increase in access to education, change is happening, and more people have more disposable income to spend. Adapted from bbc.co.uk