The July 2007 cover of Vanity Affair had 20 different covers with photos of celebrities shot by Annie Leibovitz. “These are incredible people of our time, involved in this effort to make Africa better, to get Africa self-sufficient, and to try to get rid of AIDS on the continent,” she said.

Celebrity campaigns to “save Africa” often play into stereotypes that perpetuate a single homogenous story about what it means to be “African.”

Viewers are confronted with Africa as “the dark continent,” writes James Michira in his 2002 essay, “Images of Africa in the Western Media” (PDF), a wild jungle full of exotic animals, famine, violence, conflict, disease, and political instability.

“These images are not all that Africa is about,” asserts Michira. Yet it is these unbalanced images that are used for celebrity-based campaigns.

In the media, stereotypical images of Africa are widely distributed when celebrity-based campaigns are given news coverage, while stories written about issues within the continent of Africa are ignored.

As Julie Hollar of Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), a U.S.-based media watch organization, noted back in 2007, “Following Bono to Africa or reporting on conflict diamonds via Leonardo DiCaprio is both easier and more ratings-friendly than sustaining bureaus and teams of reporters on the ground.”

And a celebrity face that presents a unified understanding of “Africa” and “African” helps generate profits. iPods, Starbucks coffee and Belvedere vodka are among the many products that benefit from this branding of Africa as part of Bono’s (RED) campaign, for example.

What the (RED) campaign and others ignore is that such celebrity advocacy has created misrepresentations which, according to Zimbabwean freelance journalist Innocent Madawo, “overemphasize its [Africa’s] political and socio-economic shortcomings, while playing down or ignoring its potential or even success stories.”

In other words, celebrity advocacy potentially does more harm than good when it comes to constructing representations of Africa.

William Easterly, author of  White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, puts it another way: “Could Africa be saving celebrity careers more than celebrities are saving Africa?“

It’s time that we acknowledge — and hold ourselves accountable to — the importance of context when reporting about Africa.

Images of exotic safari animals are often portrayed as "real" Africa, when I lived in South Africa, the only time I saw an elephant was in a game reserve. ©babasteve via flickr.

Binyavanga Wainaina, an award-winning editor and writer originally from Nakuru, Kenya, tackled this topic in his 2005 article,“HowtowriteaboutAfrica.” His piece didn’t provide the one-size-fits-all solution that some readers may have desired, however; he resorted to satire out of desperation over the mainstream’s constant misrepresentation of the continent on which he was born.

“Treat Africa as if it were one country,” he writes, tongue firmly planted in cheek. “It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving.”

Later in the piece, he advises: “Remember, any work you submit in which people look filthy and miserable will be referred to as the ‘real Africa,’ and you want that on your dust jacket. Do not feel queasy about this: you are trying to help them to get aid from the West.”

I find Wainaina’s blunt openness about his frustrations with mainstream representations refreshing, but only up to a point. For just as not all people in Africa are the same, not all stories written about Africa lack context and perpetuate stereotypes.

That being said, it should not be common practice to say that someone is going to or from “Africa” unless they are going to or from multiple countries on the continent of Africa. The more detailed the reporting, the more information provided to the readers, and the more informed and educated people can become.

Background, which explains the uniqueness and specifics of a nation, city, or group of people, is crucial.

“[C]ontextual background…including how the West contributed to the underdevelopment of Africa, are conspicuously missing from [most] Western media coverage of Africa,” argues academic and journalist Nana Bonsu-Amoako.

Understanding the history of global development and the politics within one or among several countries will produce better stories and fill the gap that Bonsu-Amoako discusses.

And as he rightly points out, a “reporting paradigm” needs to allow people within Africa to have a voice in telling their stories.