Jerry Springer and the Marlboro man in Africa: Globalisation and cultural eclecticism

Abstract

Despite its relative isolation from the global culture industry, telecommunications and mass communication centres and markets, Africa is buffeted by the winds of globalisation. Under World Bank and the IMF structural adjustment programs virtually all African countries privatised their telecommunications and mass media sectors, thus opening them up to Western multi‐national corporate investors. Though there might be an impression that African culture is being inundated and destroyed by American mass mediated culture, it is argued that Africans tend to select only certain aspects of Western cultural idioms, Africanise them and use them to promote African cultural values. Thus, it is argued, globalisation has had positive effects on certain aspects of African culture.