Are African Writers Trapped in a "Poverty Narrative" Cycle

Let’s talk about the elephant in the African literary room: the glorification of suffering. From Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The Danger of a Single Story to the latest Booker Prize nominee set in a village ravaged by war, it seems like African literature—at least the kind that gets global recognition—is locked into a cycle of trauma, war, famine, and corruption.

But here’s the question no one wants to ask out loud: are African writers writing about poverty because it’s real, or because it’s profitable?

If you’re an African writer trying to get published in the West, here’s the unofficial checklist: genocide? Check. Starving children? Check. Absent fathers and overburdened mothers? Check. Throw in some female genital mutilation, political corruption, and maybe an HIV diagnosis, and you’ve got yourself a manuscript that might make it past the slush pile.

It’s not that these things aren’t real. They are. But so are African joy, innovation, romance, tech revolutions, middle-class realities, and wildly diverse cultures. The problem is that the publishing gatekeepers—predominantly in the West—tend to reward one version of Africa: the broken one. Suffering sells. And that’s a problem.

Some will say writers are just telling their truths. Fair. But let’s not pretend the global literary market doesn’t nudge authors toward stories that confirm preconceived ideas of Africa as a continent in need of saving. The result? Writers self-censor joy and exaggerate pain because that’s what gets published, reviewed, and awarded.

Even celebrated African authors have hinted at this. “The West is interested in Africa only in terms of catastrophe,” said Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina in his satirical piece How to Write About Africa. He wasn’t joking—he was exposing a formula. So are we really free to write, or are we still colonized by the gaze of Western approval?

This cycle has consequences. It flattens African identity—reducing a billion people to recurring images of flies, dust, and despair. It stifles creative freedom, boxing writers into themes that limit artistic exploration. And worst of all, it shapes how Africans see themselves. When your stories are always about surviving instead of thriving, it impacts collective self-worth.

There’s a generation of young African writers now trying to break this mold. They’re writing sci-fi, romance, satire, and speculative fiction. But guess what? These stories often remain underground, celebrated locally but ignored by major international publishers. They’re seen as too “light,” too “modern,” or worse—too “inauthentic.” Because apparently, to be African is to be in pain.

The question isn’t whether African writers should stop writing about poverty. The question is: why are those the only stories that get rewarded? Until African publishers, readers, and gatekeepers actively invest in broadening the scope of African storytelling, the literary map will remain skewed.

And maybe, just maybe, African writers should start telling stories not because they’ll sell in New York or London, but because they’ll matter in Nairobi, Accra, or Johannesburg.

Africa has more than pain. It’s time the world reads all of it.