By Pedro M. Otero Cabañas

A short time ago, I commented on the invisibility of Africa in the media almost all over the world.  Nothing has changed, maybe a few points for the worse.  And if the state of the continent is no one's business, the situation of the sub-Saharan nations, Black Africa is worse, rooted in the popular imagination, through novels and stories of the European colonizers.

Africa is today one of the poorest and worst managed continents. Its basic economy is encompassed by commerce, industry and natural resources.

In 2020, some 1.32 billion people lived in the 55 countries that comprise it. A high percentage of them live below the poverty line. The climate emergency in some areas worsens the precarious situation. Long droughts, floods and high temperatures manage to generate a devastating scenario. Discrimination and inequality remain entrenched in the region.

A factor that also affects the multifactorial crisis that many African nations are suffering is wars. These mainly affect the civilian population. Currently, more than 10 wars or armed conflicts prevail in the region. There are currently large-scale armed conflicts in Burkina Faso, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Myanmar, Nigeria and the Congo.

All this paste causes, logically, a permanent migration in search of new horizons of life, whose destination is, for the majority, Europe, although there is also a notable exodus within Africa itself, according to the International Organization for Migrations.

According to the source, in 2020 some 21 million African migrants lived in nations on the continent. At the same time, the number of women living in other regions of the world exceeded 19 and a half million in the same year.

Ethiopia, Kenya, Chad, Uganda, Cameroon and South Sudan are the African countries that receive the most refugees.

For their part, the two European countries with the largest number of sub-Saharan immigrants are the once two great metropolises: Great Britain, where about 1.2 million natives of that region live, and France, with just over a million.

In the destination country, migrants generally suffer, on a smaller scale but with the same intensity, a series of labor, cultural and social abuses, such as exploitation, forced labor, wage inequality, mistreatment, xenophobia, racism, discrimination and social insecurity. .

All these reasons are virtually ignored by the mainstream media and that is why Africa does not exist for a good part of the world.
Donato Ndongo, writer and journalist from Equatorial Guinea, said that the little that is still reported on Africa is done in a vague, stereotyped manner and with great ignorance of the reality of the countries.

According to this journalist, all of Africa's ills today have their origin in the unacceptable exploitation that did not cease with the independence of each nation, and that is often overlooked in the news.

Fictitious independences - he said - that created States without sovereignty, where stability took precedence instead of freedom and by governments that are a hindrance to coexistence and development.