Hip-Hop in Africa. Msia Kibona Clark
us, including our concepts of self and other, are based on various representations. Representations create reality for us and reinforce or challenge the realities constructed by previous representations. According to the constructivist approach to cultural representation, “it is the social actors who use the conceptual systems of their culture and the linguistic and other representational systems to construct meaning, to make the world meaningful and to communicate about that world meaningfully to others” (Hall 2013, 25). Therefore, when we associate Somalia with lawlessness and piracy, while simultaneously associating America with lawfulness and security, it is because of the representation we have been exposed to about both countries. When Somali-born hip-hop artist K’naan, based in Canada and the United States, presents a representation of Somalia that challenges what we “know,” his representations, especially when supported by further similar representations, can effectively impact our understanding of Somalia. Studies show that distorted media representations of Africa have often constructed in the minds of many in the West an image of an Africa plagued by disease, poverty, war, corruption, and famine (Schraeder and Endless 1998; Mengara 2001; Gallagher 2015). These representations are responsible for what Chimamanda Adichie (2009) referred to as the single story of Africa in her now-famous TED Talk. These representations have impacts on American and European foreign policy, on Western attitudes toward Africa and Africans, as well as on work done in Africa by NGOs and other international organizations.
This does not mean that all representations are interpreted in the same way. The realities constructed by one representation may be interpreted differently, depending on the cultural context from which the audience operates and their understanding of the cultural context from which the representation originates. A well-known example of the importance of understanding cultural context is the American The Wire, an iconic television series, especially within hip-hop culture. The story is told through the lens of an inner-city Black community in America in which hip-hop culture is firmly entrenched. The show challenged America’s assumptions about the inner city, the people who lived there, and the government officials who worked there, in a way that was uncomfortable (Chaddha and Wilson 2010; Mittell 2010). Assumptions about inner-city African Americans, as well the appropriateness of the behaviors of government officials, have largely been shaped by cultural representations found in mainstream TV, film, and news media. Like the hip-hop culture represented in the show, The Wire challenged those representations by presenting a counternarrative to audiences that had already bought into a single story of inner-city African Americans. Understanding the representations presented in The Wire did not require one to have lived the experiences of West Baltimore residents, but it did require one to question, and even set aside, previously accepted representations in order to understand the cultural contexts within which the characters on The Wire operated. Because hip-hop culture featured prominently in the show, the program has become a cult classic with hip-hop heads around the world.
Cultural representations create reality, using coded language familiar to specific audiences and subcultures. In studying hip-hop, or any cultural representation, if one understands the context and the cultural codes of the system, then one can better understand the meanings of the representations. Within hip-hop culture in Africa, audiences inside and outside local communities unable to understand the cultural context of the artist may misinterpret the meanings of the representations. Understanding the cultural context requires a willingness to understand and to accept that previous representations may have constructed an incomplete reality, or a single story. African emcees are in the habit of presenting realities that contradict the single story of Africa. They bring with them complex cultures and histories and use creative wordplay to depict their realities. Hip-hop, wherever one finds it, is a form of cultural representation that informs the listener and constructs certain realities using coded language and the frameworks of hip-hop to speak to specific audiences. The social, political, and economic environments within which hip-hop emerged are significant to understanding its current use by youth across Africa.
Prelude to a Revolution
By the mid-1980s many African economies were facing difficulties, and governments found themselves in need of aid. African countries began talks or entered into financial agreements with international institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in order to help struggling economies (Konadu-Agyemang 2000a; Perullo 2005; Opoku 2008). As a condition of the loans provided by the IMF and the World Bank, many African countries were forced to adopt structural adjustment programs (SAPs) and to restructure their economies. Today SAPs have been replaced by poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSPs), but the latter come with similar conditions.
The SAPs mandated the adoption of neoliberal economic policies, which required countries to open their economies to foreign penetration, deregulation, a rollback of spending on public services, and privatization of public enterprises (Brydon and Legge 1996; Konadu-Agyemang 2000a; Shivji 2010; Liviga 2011). Life in urban Africa became extremely difficult. Residents faced widespread poverty, housing problems, high rates of underemployment and unemployment, and a decrease in access to healthcare and education (ECA 1989; Brydon and Legge 1996; Lugalla 1997; Bond and Dor 2003; Lemelle 2006; Mawuko-Yevugah 2010). In urban ghettos all over Africa, from which would emerge many hip-hop artists, problems included overcrowding, poor housing and sanitation, substandard healthcare and education, and high crime (Brydon and Legge 1996; Lugalla 1997; Ali 2002; Lemelle 2006).
The implemented neoliberal economic policies also led to the displacement, often through land grabbing, of rural peasants who would contribute to Africa’s rapid urbanization and strain an already stressed infrastructure (Jumare 1997; Lugalla 1997; Konadu-Agyemang 2000b; Ali 2002; Weiss 2009; Manji 2012). The ranks of the unemployed also became filled with illiterate and semiliterate youth who increasingly turned to the informal market and illegal activities to survive.
The decline in standards of living due to rapid privatization and economic restructuring not only is the environment in which many hip-hop artists continue to emerge, it also is responsible for fueling and, in many cases, politicizing hip-hop in Africa. The economic environment inspired the development of hip-hop in Africa. Hip-hop provided youth with an opportunity to address the problems they were seeing around them. As in the United States, some of Africa’s most notorious neighborhoods have given birth to some of the strongest hip-hop communities.
Today the continuation, and even acceleration, of repressive economic policies continues to spur youth activism around Africa and in some cases has led to harsher condemnations by artists as well as to artists taking to the streets in protest. The result of the SAPs and neoliberal economics has led to a transformation of the state in Africa, a state no longer accountable to its population but to international financial institutions. According to Firoz Manji, the main role of the state has been to “ensure an ‘enabling environment’ for international capital and to police the endless servicing of debt to international finance institutions” (2012, 5). The results have been increased strikes, protests, and numbers of economic refugees fleeing Africa. Pambazuka’s (2012) publication African Awakenings details the increased uprisings throughout Africa. It is a critical examination of the use of social media to confront neoliberalism. Youth voices are an integral part of current waves of social protest.
Burkina Faso, Egypt, Senegal, South Africa, and Tunisia have seen some of the highest levels of mobilization in public protests in sub-Saharan Africa since 2010. In South Africa it is estimated that over eight thousand acts of public protest have occurred annually since 2005 (Manji 2012). More recently artists and activists have mobilized around the 2012 massacre of the protesting Marikana miners by South African security forces and the protests around the decolonization of education in South Africa during the 2015 #FeesMustFall and #RhodesMustFall protests. Between 2010 and 2012 thousands of Egyptians, Senegalese, and Tunisians, along with several hip-hop artists, took to the streets to protest the governments of then presidents Hosni Mubarak, Abdoulaye Wade, and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, respectively (Manji 2012; Gueye 2013; Berktay 2014; Lo 2014; Wahlrab 2014). Protests would increase or emerge all over Africa. According to Manji, “During the first six months of 2011, protests, strikes and other actions took place in Zimbabwe, Senegal, Gabon, Sudan, Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Benin, Cameroon, Djibouti, Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Botswana, Namibia, Uganda, Kenya, Malawi and Swaziland” (2012, 21).
While