Ama Biney Quotes

I think the 1960s of the national liberation struggles in Africa and Asia were an inspiring decade that I find particularly exciting. There was so much optimism, excitement and promise during this time in which the mass of humanity were challenging empire, colonialism and seeking to forge new nation states that sought to meet the aspirations of ordinary people in terms of employment, education, health needs and to take control of their economies.

One could say that reporting about famine and NGOs helping African people is a good thing, but there is a negative side of how humanitarian disasters are often portrayed: African people are always in need, they are dependent of the white, industrial society. I think this is ultimately harmful to Africa.

I think alternative media presents different analysis from a different and progressive ideological standpoint, They often try and go beyond the superficial analysis of the West and give a wider contextual, historical background. They try to inform the readers why things are the way they are in Africa.

I am very selective in what I watch on TV as there is so much rubbish to act as a new societal opium.

The Police Crime, Sentencing & Court Act 2022 is being pushed through and it seems the police will have powers to shut down protest in anticipation that such protests will inevitably be disruptive. Yet, the police no longer seems to have the confidence of many people on account of the recent alarming findings of Baroness Casey report into Metropolitan police.

It is very easy to point fingers at historical figures such as Adolf Hitler, Idi Amin, Siad Barre, Mobutu, Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, Margaret Thatcher, Sani Abacha and many other unsavoury figures that carried out anti-people policies, dictatorship, genocide and authoritarian rule across the globe.

We have to remember that many media houses in Africa inherited their journalist training programs from colonial rulers. And a lot of the press in several West-African countries do tend to be dependent on CNN, Reuters or BBC.

...there are smaller media houses in Africa that are more alternative. They can determine their own agenda and for example do local stories and are closer to the news. But they are often constrained by money.

As there is a current bandwagon of “decolonizing” everything i.e. the curriculum, the archive, museums etc, and using “decoloniality” and “decolonisation” as synonyms, I think it’s important to clarify what one means by these terms, in addition to how decolonisation is done?

Another inspiring development around the globe is Afro-Columbian woman Francia Marquez, who was elected as Vice President in Columbia in August 2022. Similar to President Obama’s election to office in 2008, her election to office was a significant historical moment for people of African descent, known as Afro-Latinx in the region.

It is deeply inspiring that young people around the world, such as the Ugandan, Vanessa Nakate, are taking up the cause of climate change, as it is their future that will be affected.

Perhaps it is with nostalgia that human beings look back in history as there is certainly a romanticisation of certain aspects of the past that erases the ugly deeds of human beings.

I find deeply troubling the repeal of the Roe V Wade anti-abortion legislation in many conservative US states in a country that purports to be the “the land of the free”, alongside attempts in this country to curb the right to protest that has long been fought for.

I started with African Studies as my first degree and on account of my interest in the history of the African diaspora studied and taught both African and Caribbean history.

I was one of the few African children in a white dominated school taught history by a white male tutor in the late 70s.