Why Fuse ODG Deserves A Big Bowl Of Fufu

I was supporting Manchester United in a pub in England as usual. At halftime, an advert came on. It was a charity organization looking for donations. I will never forget the images they showed on the screen. They filmed some African children who looked liked they were starving to the point of death. These children had flies on their mouth, phlegm coming out of their nose and a several sores on their face. It was a sickening sight.

I stared at the screen and asked myself, 'where in Africa do they get these pictures from?' Just then, my British mate asked if that was from my home country. Later, a friend from the gym wanted to know how it feels like to play with lions, because he had seen on TV that lions share the streets with people in Africa. Another asked if my family was safe as the war goes on. If you are Ghanaian or know enough about us, you will understand why I was completely clueless about any of those topics. None of that happens in Ghana!

That is not all. In the middle East, I chitchatted with two elderly European women. They were so surprised to hear that everyday life in Ghana was so normal and so different from what they imagined. In the end, they both said they really felt like visiting Ghana to see things for themselves. Kwame Nkrumah would have been proud!

Bear in mind, these are good people living normal lives. But through no fault of theirs, they are so ignorant about an entire continent, and perhaps the only thing they know about Africa is what they see in the media. When you live in that kind of society, the negative images you keep seeing about Africa will condition you in a certain way, whether or not you realize it.

For me, the saddest thing about the negative portrayal of Africa is that it influences everybody to levels we can't even measure. For example, I found it very hard to believe it when my friend said her Sudanese parents go on annual holidays to Sudan's Darfur region. And guess what they do there? Gardening! who would believe that anything could grow in Darfur, when the darfur we see on TV is a place of nothing but drought, disaster and death.

This is why Richard Nana Abiona, a.k.a Fuse ODG should be praised for challenging this negativity.

Every year, singer-philanthropist Bob Geldof rounds up celebrities to release a song to raise funds for some good cause. This year, they chose Ebola and invited Fuse ODG, the chart topping British Afrobeats star of Ghanaian descent to feature in the song. Fuse said NO for very interesting reasons. According to Fuse, Geldof's group, called Band Aid, uses shockingly negative images of Africa to promote their work. While that tactic may raise some money today, the long lasting negative imagery is actually damaging to the continent, making us lose out of investments and tourism over the long term, he adds.

Now how many African artistes do you know, who can think of and say something like this? Not a lot.

This is why FuseODG is different. But we should not stop at simply rejecting negative campaigns. Let us take it further and create our own positive campaigns.For example, Fuse already has a movement called TINA (This is New Africa). Other artistes can team up with this movement and produce more positive and balanced projects to raise funds. That will be a good move.

Africa will develop through the inititative of individuals, not the government. All across the continent, educated young people are coming to the conclusion that many of the governments in charge are incompetent, corrupt, something worse, or a combination of the three. We simply have to take individual inititiative to progress.

For example, in my home country of Ghana, my friends and I got tired of the useless politics on the news and all our popular websites. So we launched Newaccra.comto be that one website that focusses on positivity. If it's not positive and it doesn't add value, you won't find it on Newaccra.com. That is just a tiny step, but it is a step. If we have many more people creating alternatives to what they don't like, we will make a lot more progress.

So, next time some Fuse ODG music comes on your radio, turn the volume up, way up. And if there's a Fuse ODG concert in a city near you, tell a friend, and go support a brother.

Most importantly, if you meet FuseODG somewhere, please buy him a big bowl of Fufu on my behalf. When I see him later, I will do same. For those who need to be told, Fufu is boiled yam , cassava and plaintain, pounded into a dough and served with a variety of fish or meat soups.

And oh, just before I go - Its Fuuuuuuuuuusee!
For more positive stories, excellent young people, success, entrepreneurship and personal development, visit: www.newaccra.com