Bill Gates Cites Everyday Africa as Top Reason to Be Hopeful About Africa’s Future

In his first blog post of 2017, philanthropist Bill Gates named Pulitzer Center education partner Everyday Africa as the top reason to be hopeful about Africa's future.

He writes:

"Everyday Africa is one of Melinda and my favorite Instagram profiles. It shows what the vast, culturally diverse continent of Africa is like beyond the lazy stereotypes. I'm not much of a photographer myself, but I'm a big admirer of people who can make one image tell a compelling story. These images, most of which are posted by African photographers, do so in beautiful, creative, and sometimes funny ways. 'Everyday' and 'normal' are usually something we associate with 'boring.' Not here! Please see for yourself."

In addition, The New York Times' LENS blog featured Everyday Africa contributor Andrew Esiebo in a piece on photographers and reporters who tell Africa's stories, as well as highlighted Everyday Africa's recent efforts on the continent:

"Everyday Africa recently teamed with World Press Photo and Blink to create an online database (https://blink.la/organizations/apjd) of working photojournalists on the continent, with the intent of connecting African photographers to international photo editors. Mr. Boering said that with the expansion of the database, he hoped editors and photographers would have the opportunity to create dialogue around potential story ideas and developing opportunities."

Everyday Africa, as they write on their website, is "a collection of images shot on mobile phones across the continent, is an attempt to re-direct focus toward a more accurate understanding of what the majority of Africans experience on a day-to-day basis: normal life. Conceived by Peter DiCampo and Austin Merrill, and featuring numerous contributing photographers, the project is a response to the common media portrayal of the African continent as a place consumed by war, poverty, and disease. As journalists who are native to Africa or have lived and worked on the continent for years at a time, we find the extreme is not nearly as prevalent as the familiar, the everyday." The Pulitzer Center supports education programming and website programming around the project.

For more information about Everyday Africa and their education partnership with the Pulitzer Center, please view their project page.