The way most newspapers and TV news tell it, there's little going on in Africa except poverty, famine, disease, and even genocide. If you spend any time whatsoever watching the TV business channels or waiting for the next great investment idea from the business press, you're not likely to consider or hear anything positive about Africa.

It's as if Africa is viewed strictly through the eyes of racists who have successfully conceived an African image based on myths and misperceptions. And as the old African proverb states, "until the lion tells his own story, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter."

The mostly negative view of Africa can be traced way back to the beginning of Greek, Roman and Eurocentric recorded history. Africa was referred to as the dark, sinister, forbidden continent. The fact, that Africa was indeed the cradle of civilization and its inhabitants had traded freely and profitably throughout the known world was deliberately obscured by the writers of history. It was more interesting and perhaps a bit self-serving and certainly racist to label Africa as the land of cannibals, savages and uncivilized pagans.

No other region in modern history of the "civilized world" is as mischaracterized or misrepresented as the African people or the continent of Africa, notes Ronald  Bookman (Ron Bookman & Associates) in Africa, Myths and Misperceptions Abound. W.E.B. DuBois, the noted African-American historian, scholar and profound thinker commented on the deplorable state of African myths and misperceptions in his neo-classic book, 'The World and Africa'. Written almost six decades ago. Dubois wryly noted, "Africa was no integral part of the world because the world that raped it had to pretend that it had not harmed a man (or woman) but a thing."

As Abraham McLaughlin of The Christian Science Monitor notes in Africans ask: Why isn’t anyone telling the good news? There’s more to Africa than hardship. And there are growing efforts to try to present a fuller, more rounded picture of this continent to the world.

A high-level international conference called to examine ways of improving Africa's image in the western media strongly concluded that this goal will only be achieved if Africa first puts its own house in order. This conclusion was an indication of how profoundly African thinkers have focused on addressing the continent's own weaknesses rather than highlighting the numerous international constraints that continue to hobble Africa's revival.

"Developing a more positive self-image within Africa is much more important than tackling our poor image in the western media," says Ghana's former Communication Minister, Ekwow Spio-Garbrah.

Prime Minister Kintu Musoke of Uganda says that stereotypical reporting, and its preoccupation with the negative, poses a threat to Africa's development by distorting international perceptions. "We are building a new Africa against many odds," he adds.

Featuring starving Africans has become big business, complete with corporate sponsors, lobbyists, and lawyers. Altruism has been murdered, gloriously. Out of the 1994 Rwandan humanitarian crisis came an award-winning photograph by a Western journalist, which showed a severely emaciated child, crouching on a dirt road. His eyes were glazed and his mouth open, gasping for air. A swarm of flies hovered around his face and lower lips. In the background and maintaining their distance were vultures, patiently waiting for the child to die.

Replace the crouching child with "African misery" and the "buzzards" with Western nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), U.S. grain-trading companies, charities, and arms merchants and one gets the gist of Michael Maren’s The Road to Hell. It provides lurid insights into a jumble of predatory interests that collude to feed on and perpetuate African misery. An African humanitarian crisis, notes Prof. George Ayittey, provides corporate "vultures" with an opportunity to profit from the misery.The starving and the needy only come into play as an afterthought.

Africa's critics and naysayers, for centuries have often been driven by unfounded myths and misperceptions based on, for the most part, their own inane racial prejudices, or more commonly, their greed and envy of Africa's beauty and bounty of resources. What drives the critics to continually paint such an abject picture of the most deplorable human conditions is almost numbing. The fact is that the continual negative imagery that is painted of Africa is simply untrue.

It was a fascinating scene, scores of Dutchmen and women, along with other Europeans, brainstorming over Africa's multiplying woes in the city of Utrecht. Under the theme "Aandeel Afrika" or "Interest Africa," Dutch politicians, including the energetic Minister of Development E. L. Herfkens, among others, diagnosed Africa's multiple problems of poverty and the absence of democratization, all with the well-intentioned aim of arriving at solutions for Africa. The symposium showed that when it comes to rescuing Africa, "Good Samaritans" are limitless.

Here they were, analyzing and diagnosing their media's disinterest in Africa, the non-ending negative portrayal of Africa as a poor, wretched, violent and backward Continent. Without a single African voice on the panel, they dissected Africa's media excruciating problems. But perhaps like in all other areas in which Europeans are the dominant "experts", it may be that they could not find a single African journalist half intelligent to discuss and understand the complexities of issues they were tackling. An African in the audience tried unsuccessfully to be heard by raising his hand in helplessness.

But if an African with working media experience had been found with the requisite intelligence to sit with the "experts", he/she would have perhaps told them that what Africa needs is its own media to tell its own stories, carve its own image. They would have heard that the new form of European "parachute journalism", whatever the merits, helps to reinforce the stereotypes. To begin finding solutions, Africans need their own independent media, financially strong, professionally managed, deciding contents and context, and capable of competing with other media. Without this, the continent is interpreted by others who scarcely understand its people, problems, or dreams. Because they understand their readers, viewers and listeners, they tell them what they want to hear, see, or read. It is the war for the markets.

But it borders on the paranoia to believe that the conference organizers deliberately left out their victims in finding solutions to victims' dilemmas. It may be that a good doctor must ask a patient what the problems are. On the other hand, a "smart" doctor can perhaps see through the patient and administer medicines he finds appropriate. If the patient dies, well.

There's simply no denying that Africa has her share of problems. Gigantic problems, in terms of the ongoing development of her tremendous economic, social, political, and human capital resources. And what developing emerging region of the world doesn't have problems. Even China, the current flavor of the day with investors, has a multitude of issues to resolve to bring its people out of poverty. But, within Africa's problems are enormous opportunities that exist unlike that of any other emerging region of the world.  Africa could well be standing at the forefront of a new and exciting array of economic change and unbridled opportunity.

Yet, few serious economists, marketers or global strategists can deny the enormous potential for one of the world's wealthiest geographical regions. For centuries, Africa has been the source of great wealth and prosperity. Her people strapped to slavery for hundreds of years have built the economies of most of today's most prosperous nations, led by the United States of America.

With an aggregate population approaching 900 million people, that translates roughly to over 15 per cent of the world's population and an enormous market. Africa is abundantly endowed with incredible mineral and energy wealth, as well as, a robust agricultural sector. By the year 2020, sub-Saharan Africa, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce and its Bureau of Census, will have a population exceeding 1.2 billion people.

Ghana, which has had in place a democratically elected government for over two decades, is considered by many economists as one of Africa's brightest economic stars. Africa's economies grew by more than 5 percent in 2004 - their biggest expansion in eight years. Central Africa's oil boom spurred 14.4 percent growth for that region. Ghana's stock exchange is regularly one of the highest-performing markets in the world; in 2003, it was No. 1, gaining 144 percent, according to one analysis. Exports to the US from 37 African nations jumped from 88 percent in 2004, to $26.6 billion. Jeans made in Lesotho are sold in US stores. Also, flowers from Kenya and vegetables from Senegal are regularly available in European shops. Use of cellphones and the Internet is growing faster in Africa than anywhere else, according to the United Nations.

These and other statistics are getting more focus amid efforts to boost Africa's image - along with the world's willingness to invest in the continent. Rwandan President, Paul Kagame, speaking in Kenya at the International Press Institute's annual gathering urged the media to play its role,  “not merely as watchdogs and whistle-blowers, but as advocates and educators in our joint venture to make Africa ... a better place."

He further argued the negative portrayal hurts Africa's efforts to fix its problems. "One of the reasons why Africa has not been able to attract enough foreign direct investment is the constant negative reporting," he added.

Another news-balancing effort comes from a pair of South African men. Fed up with overwhelmingly negative cocktail-party talk about their country, they developed books and videos called "South Africa: The Good News.”

Mr. Helge Ronning, professor of media and communications at Oslo University, notes that "Disaster journalism" is a big proportion of western media coverage of Africa, and during emergencies, NGO fund-raising campaigns take on a new vibrancy, gaining tremendously from the images of western humanitarian personnel working heroically as symbols of the decency of international aid and of the NGOs themselves.

“Context is key to getting to the truth about Africa, argues Brett Bowes, one of the "Good News" founders. Many places in Africa may be a mess, he says, "But the question is: Was this a bigger mess five years ago or not?" In other words, has there been progress?

By contrast, observes Charles Stith, former US ambassador to Tanzania, "China has problems, but we see and hear other things about China. Russia has problems, yet we see and read other things about Russia." That same standard, he says, should apply to Africa.

“I’m personally sick and tired of the negative publicity on Africa. These kinds of reports are giving our continent and people very negative image in the World. A positive attitude yields 90% of success in anything that we do. There are a lot of good things going on in Kenya such as the appointment of the first female VC of Kenyatta University, the growth of tourism, the new drilling of oil, the good weather and people! Why should the country receive negative publicity? Why should the onset of rains after the drought, the new anti malaria drug combination that has been discovered be relegated to the periphery? We have enough troublemakers, we now need peacemakers,” notes Maureen Mbugua.

There is need for the continent to seek full international recognition, not on the basis of pleas for fairness, but on the strength of political stability and dynamic involvement in global affairs. Folklore has it that once; a lizard fell from a tall tree and was not hurt. Seeing that no other creature praised her for the feat, the lizard resolved, “If you refuse to praise me, I will praise myself!” Africa needs more of such “lizards” to dispel the myths surrounding the continent.