00:01
This video a single story is referring to specifically africa seen from the viewpoint of a white individual so she says that if i had not grown up in nigeria and if all i knew about africa were from popular images i too would think africa was a place of beautiful landscapes landscapes, beautiful animals, and incomprehensible people fighting senseless wars, dying of poverty, and aids, unable to speak for themselves, awaiting to be saved by a kind white foreigner.
01:00
So basically, she's saying that the single story is the american idea of how or what africa is like.
01:18
So this differs a lot from how the speaker actually experienced it.
01:35
How is a single story created? so it is created when a culture or a country is only seen from the lens of someone who hasn't been there.
02:13
So in this case she's talking about africa and american students have a certain idea about what africa is like.
02:30
But because they haven't actually been there, she says that their idea is only a single story.
02:37
And their story would be different if they actually grew up there like she did.
02:41
So the consequences were that people got the wrong idea about what africa or being from africa was actually like.
02:59
She says that the single story of africa comes from western literature.
03:04
She cites a quote from the writing of london merchant john locke, who sailed to west africa in 1561...