ABSTRACT
This chapter explores what Americans seem to expect the Real Africa to be. The difference we prefer in our Real Africa seems to focus on the idea that Africa is natural while we are civilized. In the negative version Africa is a survival-of-the-fittest jungle with poverty, sickness, starvation, warfare, corruption, and an inability to rise above itself. Africa's woes need to be understood as a result of Africa's history rather than "Africa's nature," and, second, Africa has a population of more than 1.2 billion people, and not everyone living there is troubled. Africa has long been perceived by Westerners as a source of life-threatening diseases. Modern celebrity help for Africa began in earnest when Bob Geldof and other star musicians organized Band Aid and then Live Aid to raise funds for famine relief in Ethiopia. Another way to construct Real Africa as close to nature is to portray Africans as hypersexual.
