#ThePowerofWe - Shaping Ghanaian and African perception #bad12


The picture above has been making the rounds in my Facebook circles. Suggestions that Google gives for a "Ghana is" search won't make Ghanaians happy. Folks have been asking me (as a resident Google guy) how this could happen. Google doesn't make this happen. People who are Googling make this happen. But why are they typing the above? And apart from why, why are so many people typing the above? Oh wait, Ghana's population and the population of those who will say great things about Ghana doesn't seem to be that big.

I mean really, what does Ghana have to do? Win the World Cup? Discover the cure for AIDS? Export many pastors to many countries? Because we sure don't want to make the headlines through war and tragedy. You would have thought eliminating the US from two consecutive World Cups would do something. Yeah, I just had to go there :-)

The Google search is happening because of what people perceive Ghana to be. We can help solve this problem. If you know anyone or have access to someone who is not Ghanaian.. tell them what Ghana really is. They will really know and they will stop typing rubbish in Google or they might type the good stuff in Google to see if it's true and ultimately affect the result. The power of we :-)

After I wrote the above paragraph as a comment on friend's Facebook post, I knew I had a blog entry. And yesterday was Blog Action Day around the "Power of We". Too bad I am a day late but better late than never. Too many of my thoughts have gotten stuck and lost in Twitter and micro blogs. I couldn't let this one stay in a social media post. So here is my blog post too on the subject.

You can make a difference. We can make a difference. Be bullish about the great things happening in Ghana. Shout out it from everywhere you can. Let your friends, acquaintances, colleagues, pen pals, followers and etc pick it up. They will have to listen to you because they know you know better. Don't worry about the numbers, they will only grow if we do something about it. Let we be about it. We need to build a critical mass of people who care about these things so much and will do something about it. In my small corner, me and some people are building one. Keep building yours. Learn about others. Gather others. The critical mass is building. More vim to us all.

Comments

Helen Bushnell said…
Doesn't Ghana have one of the largest middle middle classes in Africa? Isn't the average person there better off than the average person in most countries? That is my impression from here in the US.

By the way, I just got "Ghana is safe" and "Ghana is beautiful" from Google. It is when you add "a" that things go downhill.
Unknown said…
Well said man well said! It is up to us on the continent to make sure that our voices are heard and that we answer the questions asked with a more holistically representative view of our countries and peoples through us creating the majority of content and messages. Everything is so negatively skewed and a country like Ghana is more positive than negative in my experience...You guys do not deserve this!

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