IPPAI and Casa África organise a round table with African journalists at the Complutense University.

Western media still reproduce some stereotypes, clichés and prejudices when referring to the African continent. For example, they tend to speak about Africa as monolithic and awful, when the reality is that this Africa does not exist, just as the Senegalese intellectual Boubacar Boris Diop confirms. Trends such as forgetting that it covers 54 different countries, is multi-ethnic and complex and removing the African voice that explains its own stories are two "sins" that should be eradicated from some media.

These are some the reasons that have propelled Casa África to publish If you speak about us…, a collective work in which eleven African journalists take part and hope to start a debate on the western media's practices when informing about the continent. The publication was presented yesterday, 13th December at the conference hall of the New Building of theInformation SciencesFaculty at the Complutense University of Madrid. Three Africans were in charge of presenting it and opening the debate on the Spanish media's good and bad practices in a ceremony that was jointly organised by Institute for Preventative Journalism and International Analysis (IPPAI) and Casa África. 

If you speak about us… forms part of the editorial line African notebooks, which Casa África launched in the middle of this year with  texts on African cinema and independences and that include reflections on the influence of BRIC countries on African economies or the film-maker Djibril Diop Mambéty.