Kigali will host renown Swedish Photographer Jens Assur’s exhibition “Africa is a Great Country”

{Photographer and film-maker Jens Assur depicts urban Africa and challenges western preconceptions with highly topical photographic works, in an art project with the ironic title Africa is a Great Country. The exhibition will be on show at CRD Studio (former Camp Kigali) 12-22 February, 2014. “We’re constantly being fed an image of how Africa is dying,” explains Assur. “I want to show how Africa is thriving.” }

Jens Assur, one of Sweden’s top award-winning photographers and film-makers, has visited twelve African cities, including Kigali with the aim of challenging the dominant western media reporting on Africa and presenting a completely different picture of the continent instead. An Africa that is progressing and developing at a record pace, with countries that top the list of the world’s fastest growing nations.

“I’ve chosen exciting cities where growth and development can be seen clearly. One example is Kigali in Rwanda, which is associated in most people’s minds with the genocide of 1994. Today, the city is almost like a cross between Beverly Hills and Switzerland – prosperous, orderly and green. Or Gaborone in Botswana, a country that conjures up images of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, with its red earth roads and its picturesque landscape. You could take a slice of the city and put it down in Los Angeles, and no-one would notice the difference.”

Embassy of Swede