ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Siyanda Mohutsiwa - Writer
When her hashtag #IfAfricaWasABar went viral, Botswana writer Siyanda Mohutsiwa triggered a lighthearted but electrifying discussion of some serious African issues.

Why you should listen

Blogger, humorist and math student Siyanda Mohutsiwa explores African topics both weighty (reviving Pan­Africanism) and witty (“5 things NOT to say when trying to seduce an Afrikaner”). Her columns for African media outlets like the Mail & Guardian, Za News, and her own website Siyanda Writes have gained a loyal following. 

But when Mohutsiwa’s hashtag #IfAfricaWasABar exploded on Twitter, the viral thread (which pondered the hypothetical bar mannerisms of various African nations) became a platform for everyday Africans to unite in a playful dialogue on national differences, and helped turn Mohutsiwa into a social media star. 

More profile about the speaker
Siyanda Mohutsiwa | Speaker | TED.com
TED2016

Siyanda Mohutsiwa: How young Africans found a voice on Twitter

Filmed:
1,074,183 views

What can a young woman with an idea, an Internet connection and a bit of creativity achieve? That's all Siyanda Mohutsiwa needed to unite young African voices in a new way. Hear how Mohutsiwa and other young people across the continent are using social media to overcome borders and circumstance, accessing something they have long had to violently take: a voice.
- Writer
When her hashtag #IfAfricaWasABar went viral, Botswana writer Siyanda Mohutsiwa triggered a lighthearted but electrifying discussion of some serious African issues. Full bio

Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.

00:12
It began with one question:
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If Africa was a bar, what would
your country be drinking or doing?
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I kicked it off with a guess
about South Africa,
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00:26
which wasn't exactly
according to the rules
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because South Africa's not my country.
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But alluding to the country's
continual attempts
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to build a postracial society
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after being ravaged
for decades by apartheid,
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I tweeted, #ifafricawasabar South Africa
would be drinking all kinds of alcohol
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and begging them
to get along in its stomach.
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And then I waited.
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And then I had that funny feeling
where I wondered if I crossed the line.
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So, I sent out a few other tweets
about my own country
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and a few other African countries
I'm familiar with.
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And then I waited again,
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but this time
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I read through almost every tweet
I had ever tweeted
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to convince myself,
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no, to remind myself that I'm really funny
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and that if nobody gets it, that's fine.
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But luckily,
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I didn't have to do that for very long.
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Very soon, people were participating.
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In fact, by the end of that week in July,
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the hashtag #ifafricawasabar
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would have garnered around 60,000 tweets,
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lit up the continent
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and made its way to publications
all over the world.
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People were using the hashtag
to do many different things.
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To poke fun at their stereotypes:
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[#IfAfricaWasABar
Nigeria would be outside explaining
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that he will pay the entrance fee,
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all he needs is
the bouncer's account details.]
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(Laughter)
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To criticize government spending:
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[#ifafricawasabar South Africa would be
ordering bottles it can't pronounce
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running a tab it won't be able to pay]
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To make light of geopolitical tensions:
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[#IfAfricaWasABar
South Sudan would be the new guy
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with serious anger management issues.]
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To remind us that even in Africa
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02:12
there are some countries
we don't know exist:
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[#IfAfricaWasABar
Lesotho would be that person
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who nobody really knows
but is always in the pictures.]
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And also to make fun of the countries
that don't think that they're in Africa:
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[#IfAfricaWasABar Egypt, Libya,
Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco
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be like "What the hell
are we doing here?!!"]
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(Laughter)
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And to note the countries
that had made a big turnaround:
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[#ifAfricawasabar
Rwanda would be that girl
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that comes with no money and no transport
but leaves drunk, happy and rich]
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But most importantly,
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people were using the hashtag to connect.
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People were connecting
over their Africanness.
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So for one week in July,
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Twitter became a real African bar.
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And I was really thrilled,
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mainly because I realized
that Pan-Africanism could work,
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that we had before us,
between us, at our fingertips
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a platform that just needed a small spark
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to light in us a hunger for each other.
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My name is Siyanda Mohutsiwa,
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I'm 22 years old
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and I am Pan-Africanist by birth.
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Now, I say I'm Pan-Africanist by birth
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because my parents are
from two different African countries.
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My father's from a country
called Botswana in southern Africa.
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It's only slightly bigger than Germany.
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This year we celebrate
our 50th year of stable democracy.
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And it has some very progressive
social policies.
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My mother's country
is the Kingdom of Swaziland.
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It's a very, very small country,
also in southern Africa.
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It is Africa's last complete monarchy.
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So it's been ruled by a king
and a royal family
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in line with their tradition,
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for a very long time.
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On paper, these countries
seem very different.
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And when I was a kid,
I could see the difference.
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It rained a lot in one country,
it didn't rain quite as much in the other.
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But outside of that,
I didn't really realize
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why it mattered that my parents
were from two different places.
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But it would go on
to have a very peculiar effect on me.
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You see, I was born in one country
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and raised in the other.
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When we moved to Botswana,
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I was a toddler who spoke fluent SiSwati
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and nothing else.
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So I was being introduced to my new home,
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my new cultural identity,
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as a complete outsider,
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incapable of comprehending
anything that was being said to me
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by the family and country whose traditions
I was meant to move forward.
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But very soon, I would shed SiSwati.
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And when I would go back to Swaziland,
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I would be constantly confronted
by how very non-Swazi I was becoming.
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Add to that my entry
into Africa's private school system,
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whose entire purpose
is to beat the Africanness out of you,
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and I would have
a very peculiar adolescence.
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But I think that my interest
in ideas of identity was born here,
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in the strange intersection
of belonging to two places at once
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but not really belonging
to either one very well
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and belonging to this vast space
in between and around simultaneously.
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I became obsessed with the idea
of a shared African identity.
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Since then, I have continued
to read about politics
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and geography and identity
and what all those things mean.
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I've also held on to a deep curiosity
about African philosophies.
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When I began to read,
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I gravitated towards the works
of black intellectuals
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like Steve Biko and Frantz Fanon,
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who tackled complex ideas
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like decolonization
and black consciousness.
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And when I thought, at 14,
that I had digested these grand ideas,
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I moved on to the speeches
of iconic African statesmen
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like Burkina Faso's Thomas Sankara
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and Congo's Patrice Lumumba.
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I read every piece of African fiction
that I could get my hands on.
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So when Twitter came,
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I hopped on with the enthusiasm
of a teenage girl
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whose friends are super, super bored
of hearing about all this random stuff.
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The year was 2011
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and all over southern Africa
and the whole continent,
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affordable data packages
for smartphones and Internet surfing
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became much easier to get.
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So my generation, we were sending
messages to each other on this platform
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that just needed 140 characters
and a little bit of creativity.
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On long commutes to work,
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in lectures that some of us
should have been paying attention to,
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on our lunch breaks,
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we would communicate as much as we could
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about the everyday realities
of being young and African.
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But of course, this luxury
was not available to everybody.
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So this meant that if you were
a teenage girl in Botswana
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and you wanted
to have fun on the Internet,
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one, you had to tweet in English.
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Two, you had to follow more than just
the three other people you knew online.
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You had to follow South Africans,
Zimbabweans, Ghanaians, Nigerians.
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And suddenly, your whole world opened up.
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And my whole world did open up.
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I followed vibrant Africans
who were travelling around the continent,
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taking pictures of themselves
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and posting them
under the hashtag #myafrica.
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Because at that time,
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if you were to search Africa
on Twitter or on Google
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or any kind of social media,
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you would think that the entire continent
was just pictures of animals
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and white guys drinking cocktails
in hotel resorts.
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(Laughter)
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But Africans were using this platform
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to take some kind of ownership
of the tourism sectors.
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It was Africans taking selfies
on the beaches of Nigeria.
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It was Africans
in cocktail bars in Nairobi.
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And these were the same Africans
that I began to meet
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in my own travels around the continent.
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We would discuss African literature,
politics, economic policy.
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But almost invariably, every single time,
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we would end up discussing Twitter.
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And that's when I realized what this was.
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We were standing in the middle
of something amazing,
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because for the first time ever
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young Africans could discuss
the future of our continent in real time,
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without the restriction of borders,
finances and watchful governments.
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Because the little known truth is
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many Africans know a lot less
about other African countries
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than some Westerners
might know about Africa as a whole.
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This is by accident,
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but sometimes, it's by design.
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For example, in apartheid South Africa,
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black South Africans
were constantly being bombarded
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with this message that any country
ruled by black people
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was destined for failure.
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And this was done to convince them
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that they were much better off
under crushing white rule
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than they were living
in a black and free nation.
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Add to that Africa's colonial,
archaic education system,
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which has been unthinkingly
carried over from the 1920s --
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and at the age of 15,
I could name all the various causes
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of the wars that had happened
in Europe in the past 200 years,
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but I couldn't name the president
of my neighboring country.
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And to me, this doesn't make any sense
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because whether we like it or not,
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the fates of African people
are deeply intertwined.
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When disaster hits, when turmoil hits,
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we share the consequences.
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When Burundians flee political turmoil,
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they go to us,
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to other African countries.
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Africa has six of the world's
largest refugee centers.
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What was once a Burundian problem
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becomes an African problem.
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So to me, there are no Sudanese problems
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or South African problems
or Kenyan problems,
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only African problems
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because eventually, we share the turmoil.
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So if we share the problems,
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why aren't we doing a better job
of sharing the successes?
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10:33
How can we do that?
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Well, in the long term,
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we can shoot towards
increasing inter-African trade,
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10:38
removing borders
and putting pressure on leaders
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to fulfill regional agreements
they've already signed.
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But I think that the biggest way
for Africa to share its successes
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is to foster something
I like to call social Pan-Africanism.
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Now, political Pan-Africanism
already exists,
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so I'm not inventing anything
totally new here.
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But political Pan-Africanism
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is usually the African unity
of the political elite.
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And who does that benefit?
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Well, African leaders, almost exclusively.
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No, what I'm talking about
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is the Pan-Africanism
of the ordinary African.
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Young Africans like me,
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we are bursting with creative energy,
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11:22
with innovative ideas.
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11:25
But with bad governance
and shaky institutions,
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all of this potential could go to waste.
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On a continent where more
than a handful of leaders
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have been in power longer
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than the majority
of the populations has been alive,
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we are in desperate need of something new,
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something that works.
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And I think that thing
is social Pan-Africanism.
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My dream is that young Africans
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stop allowing borders and circumstance
to suffocate our innovation.
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My dream is that when a young African
comes up with something brilliant,
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they don't say, "Well,
this wouldn't work in my country,"
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and then give up.
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My dream is that young Africans
begin to realize
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that the entire continent
is our canvas, is our home.
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Using the Internet,
we can begin to think collaboratively,
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we can begin to innovate together.
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In Africa, we say,
"If you want to go fast, you go alone,
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but if you want to go far,
you go together."
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And I believe that social Pan-Africanism
is how we can go far together.
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And this is already happening.
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Access to these online networks
has given young Africans
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something we've always
had to violently take: a voice.
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We now have a platform.
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Before now, if you wanted
to hear from the youth in Africa,
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you waited for the 65-year-old
minister of youth --
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(Laughter)
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to wake up in the morning,
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take his heartburn medication
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and then tell you the plans
he has for your generation
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in 20 years time.
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Before now, if you wanted to be heard
by your possibly tyrannical government,
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you were pushed to protest,
suffer the consequences
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and have your fingers crossed
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that some Western paper somewhere
might make someone care.
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But now we have opportunities
to back each other up
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in ways we never could before.
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We support South African students
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who are marching against
ridiculously high tertiary fees.
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We support Zimbabwean women
who are marching to parliament.
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We support Angolan journalists
who are being illegally detained.
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13:43
For the first time ever,
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African pain and African aspiration
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has the ability to be witnessed
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by those who can empathize
with it the most:
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other Africans.
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I believe that with
a social Pan-Africanist thinking
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and using the Internet as a tool,
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we can begin to rescue each other,
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and ultimately, to rescue ourselves.
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Thank you.
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Siyanda Mohutsiwa - Writer
When her hashtag #IfAfricaWasABar went viral, Botswana writer Siyanda Mohutsiwa triggered a lighthearted but electrifying discussion of some serious African issues.

Why you should listen

Blogger, humorist and math student Siyanda Mohutsiwa explores African topics both weighty (reviving Pan­Africanism) and witty (“5 things NOT to say when trying to seduce an Afrikaner”). Her columns for African media outlets like the Mail & Guardian, Za News, and her own website Siyanda Writes have gained a loyal following. 

But when Mohutsiwa’s hashtag #IfAfricaWasABar exploded on Twitter, the viral thread (which pondered the hypothetical bar mannerisms of various African nations) became a platform for everyday Africans to unite in a playful dialogue on national differences, and helped turn Mohutsiwa into a social media star. 

More profile about the speaker
Siyanda Mohutsiwa | Speaker | TED.com