Entrepreneurs, Innovation and Perspective
The hunter and the lion
With the recent passing of Ghanaian talent, innovator and inspiration Komla Dumor, I took a closer listen to the Ted Talk he gave about the importance of telling the African story. As Dumor’s speech comes to a close, he reflects on a particular line that offered him insight — one which I believe has come to define the importance of programs like Focus on Africa:
“Until the lion learns to write, the story will glorify the hunter.”
It comes back to the importance and power of expression. It’s only when we have the courage and the foresight to give a voice to our stories, and the maturity to recognize multiple points of view, that truth and the spread of knowledge stand a chance. This brings me back to a Ted Talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in which she speaks of the danger of only hearing, or telling, a story from a single perspective. The world is swimming with people who want to speak for others, who want to emphasize their own opinions, their own bias. If we’re closed off to the possibility of seeing a particular story from another point of view, or worse, if that point of view is never expressed, will we ever come to understand the full truth?
It’s easy to take the word of the hunter as fact. It’s easy to group dominant perspectives into a box and use them to solidify popular stereotypes. But if the lion, or the hunted, were to offer his own account of the story that actually reaches the eyes and ears of a greater audience, might our outlook be different?
Both issues need our attention — those who may not hold the dominant perspective need the courage to speak up, the inspiration to pick up a pen or microphone or paint brush and release what they’re feeling. And the world needs to listen. This needs to happen, however, in a way that goes beyond the often petty and self-serving practices found on social media. It needs to be expressed in a manner and outlet which serves to enlighten a broader audience. This is the only way we’re ever going to get beyond these preconceived perceptions we’re fed through the media.
For instance, if the US ever hopes to get past the image of poor, starving children in a remote African village as the pinnacle of life on this continent, we need to both open our minds to the possibility that this image is only part of the story, as well as listen to those voices who characterize it in a realistic and informed way. More writers, speakers and figures as well, need to lift their voices so they might hope to penetrate the veil that is our dominant media with a fraction of realism.
In a way, we engage in this practice daily in our courts of law. The judge and jury must give fair grounds to both sides of a dispute and hear them out “without bias” to come to a realistic conclusion. Why then, do we not practice this in all areas of our lives? Why do we not evaluate established prejudices and dispute tunnel vision with the same open mind? It’s because the opinions of the hunter are often the loudest, and without a trigger to inspire us otherwise, we let them drown out the rest.
What Komla Dumor did with Focus on Africa was to give a voice to the lion. He allowed for an open and insightful platform on which to discuss not just news relevant to Africans both at home and in the diaspora but a platform that tells these stories from an African’s point of view — something definitively missing from global media sources. More programs and platforms like this are undoubtedly necessary to quell the existing single-sided story that seems to dominate news reporting and editorials alike. If we hope to make continued progress, to inspire innovation and a more cooperative global economy in future generations, we need to begin to think in a more global manner.
Particularly as entrepreneurs, it is vital that we begin to question the single-sided perspectives we’ve been taught and seek out the story of the lion so the solutions and innovations we seek to create might better serve the needs and lifestyles of those we’re looking to reach, in a more realistic and informed way.
