When my now wife attended an international conference of students in Uganda, the young African delegation denounced Western depictions of Africa as 'the violent continent'. Such one-dimensional caricature is easily lampooned in the above viral video by the NGO Mama Hope.
The seasoned Africa-watcher Laura Seay went further than attacking Hollywood, and took issue with Western media outlets, asking last year 'Why is there so much bad reporting on Africa?'
She answered, 'Many major Western media outlets assign one correspondent for the entire continent ... This is insane. Africa is a continent of 54 distinct states, all with multiple languages and ethnic groups and unique political dynamics. Nowhere else in the world — not even in undercovered Latin America — would one person be expected to report on so many complicated situations.'
I haven't seen any coverage of the al Shabaab terrorist attack on a Nairobi shopping mall that I would call bad. However I take her point. And I also take the point of the student delegates in Uganda. When was the last time Africa made our nightly news bulletins for a story that didn't involve guns?
In the case of the Westgate mall massacre though, news agencies aren't the only instigators of the wall to wall coverage. With the death toll climbing at the time of writing to 72, we are witnessing what Dr Laura Hammond calls 'performative violence'.
Last week most Australians had not heard of al Shabaab. Few outside of defence and diplomatic circles would recall our modest participation in the African Union push to undercut al Shabaab's power base within Somalia. But after a grisly four-day 'performance', complete with social media strategy, this has changed. And while Australians were not the intended audience, the attack was deliberate and carefully thought out with the media in mind.
It was a massacre made for media consumption.
Al Shabaab is only one of the many toxic legacies of Somalia's political instability. The pointy end of the Horn of Africa, Somalia has consistently ranked as the most failed state in the Fund for Peace's Failed State Index. Called the most lawless place on the planet, the chaos has been cruel to the civilian population.
By way of illustration, when my father turns 60 he will be nearly a decade older than the average life expectancy in Somalia. My newborn son was born into a country with an infant mortality rate 20 times better than Somalia. In 2011 alone a