Africa: Beyond the Stereotypes

In a single day 95 photographers document a wildly diverse continent bursting with energy and promise

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  • Smithsonian magazine, December 2002, Subscribe
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Kelongwa Zambia Photograph by Themba Hadebe Greeting the day is 6-year-old Kazungu Kautingu whose father David Kautingu runs a rural health clinic that serves 4000 people and is equipped with little more than a refrigerator for vaccines and a few cots and mattresses on the floor.
Kelongwa, Zambia Photograph by Themba Hadebe Greeting the day is 6-year-old Kazungu Kautingu, whose father, David Kautingu, runs a rural health clinic that serves 4,000 people and is equipped with little more than a refrigerator for vaccines and a few cots and mattresses on the floor. (2002 Themba Hadebe from " A Day in the Life of Africa")

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Kelongwa, Zambia Photograph by Themba Hadebe Greeting the day is 6-year-old Kazungu Kautingu, whose father, David Kautingu, runs a rural health clinic that serves 4,000 people and is equipped with little more than a refrigerator for vaccines and a few cots and mattresses on the floor.

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Send 95 photojournalists around the African continent on the same day, and what do you get? Pictures that belie the clichéd expectations. A prosperous black family enjoys breakfast in a sparkling kitchen near Johannesburg, South Africa. Denim-clad girls giggle in Cape Verde. Mauritius shopkeepers stand at a counter of jewellike candies. A snowplow traverses Morocco’s white-topped Atlas Mountains. Africa, which is three times the size of the United States, contains 53 nations, 720 million people and more than 800 ethnic groups who speak nearly 1,000 languages. That diversity comes across in the 250 photographs taken on February 28, 2002, that appear in A Day in the Life of Africa, published by the Tides Foundation and Group Nine. Yes, the photographers encountered ragged poverty, fouled water, armed rebels. And AIDS. The disease has killed 12 million Africans, and some 25 million more are HIV-positive. (All publishing profits from the book will support AIDS education throughout Africa.) Mostly, the book portrays a hopeful, beautiful continent "vitally anxious," in Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu’s words, "for democracy and self-determination."


Send 95 photojournalists around the African continent on the same day, and what do you get? Pictures that belie the clichéd expectations. A prosperous black family enjoys breakfast in a sparkling kitchen near Johannesburg, South Africa. Denim-clad girls giggle in Cape Verde. Mauritius shopkeepers stand at a counter of jewellike candies. A snowplow traverses Morocco’s white-topped Atlas Mountains. Africa, which is three times the size of the United States, contains 53 nations, 720 million people and more than 800 ethnic groups who speak nearly 1,000 languages. That diversity comes across in the 250 photographs taken on February 28, 2002, that appear in A Day in the Life of Africa, published by the Tides Foundation and Group Nine. Yes, the photographers encountered ragged poverty, fouled water, armed rebels. And AIDS. The disease has killed 12 million Africans, and some 25 million more are HIV-positive. (All publishing profits from the book will support AIDS education throughout Africa.) Mostly, the book portrays a hopeful, beautiful continent "vitally anxious," in Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu’s words, "for democracy and self-determination."

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