Born and bred in Zimbabwe, Krystal Chindori-Chininga obtained first and second degrees in the United States of America; now currently works across the continent focusing on projects bordering on economic development of Africa. However, in spare time, she corrects misconceptions and stereotypes about Africa, through her social media platforms.
Biografrica, in usual fashion, featured Krystal on its weekly African Spotlight Series, to discuss some of her developmental projects over the years, xenophobia, the need for Africans to own Africa’s development journey, and begin the process of correcting stereotypes.
Motivation
“It is a hobby,” she says, stating that being a 9-5 person, this platform is a useful way to “help my community”. Her other main motivation for focusing on economic development is how much international development space does not live up to community support standards. “So many issues come up in that space but on top of that, there are so many local NGOs doing extraordinary amount of work towards community developments, but all we see are these huge pessimistic headlines about Africa. It is beneficial highlighting these organisations doing all the extraordinary work,” she stated.
Asked why she chose economic development as against every other form of development, Krystal thinks economic development is an umbrella cover for all, citing the example of the teacher who sacrifices for his students in the village as a gesture that has been making direct impact on communities for decades, way more than the hundred million dollar project implemented by the UN. Economic development, she says, covers education, energy, health, agriculture etc., and more interesting is the fact that Africa’s game plan for the next decades mostly comes under that umbrella.
Challenges and Backlash
Krystal’s biggest issue in the early stages of her content creation was time, as she had a 9-5 job and tried to make time for creativity. About backlash, “you always have people who try to look at your content from negative perspective, so you always get backlash.” Everyday media already have negative press about Africa, so she sees it as a point of duty to rectify how people think and talk about Africa, and project the good things that are really happening, and why it is important to do so.
How She Creates Interesting Reels
Krystal jokingly says she has no database of ideas because they come to mind from day to day experiences and work, especially as she currently works with different multinationals, implementing projects across the continent. For example, her background is in agriculture, but she has been working in the energy sector of late. It’s interesting that, “we really don’t know how much electrification varies across the continent; how some countries are really doing well in terms of electricity,” she laments. Krystal also gets content ideas from studies. With a bachelors and masters degree in Agriculture and International Development, she has been able to focus her work around African development, specifically pre-colonial African history. She, sometimes, pulls from some of the things they talked about while studying for her degrees.
The Impact of Her Storytelling in Changing the Narrative About Africa
Having travelled around the world and done a lot of international development work, Krystal believes changing the narrative really starts with individuals. She cited an example: John Taylor knows nothing about Africa, but he is on the board of a company that does a lot of investments in different African countries. If they do not have good information about Africa, then there won’t be that investments flow to the continent or no strong case can be made. So the point is, starting to make individuals think differently about the continent, and having a different perception.
Secondly, there is so much heaviness and pessimism among Africans. “There is almost a need for Africans to be optimistic about themselves, and have the sense of celebrating the small things and wins,” she said. The entertainment part of Krystal’s work is to create more light-hearted energy about “how we talk about International development.”
Spectacular Personal Experiences from 15 African Countries
Krystal told Biografrica that she travelled to Ghana most recently, and her favourite experience was how open the community is. She expressed delight in how the young people are so open to new ideas and thinking. She also noted that the Ghanaian creative industry is flourishing. “We don’t usually get that across the continent, because we are used to looking inwards and finding other people difficult to have conversations with, but in Ghana, this is different.”
Also, in Uganda, she marvelled at how entrepreneurial Ugandans are. She was surprised “people do not realise this and that it is not even a narrative about Uganda.” She stated that being an entrepreneur is in the lifeblood of a lot of sub-saharan Africans in general, but finds Ugandans very creative and innovative when it comes to projects that people take on. She finds this inspiring, and gets a feeling of optimism, especially in entrepreneurs who are not about “the world seems terrible and everything seems crashing down,” but about the next cool idea to implement. Krystal interprets this as a rare mindset of entrepreneurship that Ugandans enjoy.
Krystal did not meet the famous Ugandan Ghetto Kids, because she is shy and “not a phenomenon dancer,” she says, jokingly.
How She Navigates the Different Cultural Perspectives as a Zimbabwean
“Really can be difficult, because something could happen in Zimbabwe and there is no guarantee that the same thing applies to other African countries, as your instinct is more likely to make you talk about where you come from.”
What helped her cut through this challenge is being able to embrace diversity. Krystal says a look at statistics shows the diversity across the continent, for example, electricity distributions, where you find some countries do well more than others.
She noted that navigating different cultural contexts has made her realise everyone is different, and at the same time enable her recognise that “something” which is connective as an African.
There are other connective “things” that make her feel comfortable: people speak different languages, and most of the time the reactions she gets when they know she’s not from there is what gives her excitement and fascination about being a Zimbabwean and at the same time an African. Krystal stressed that she’s more than welcome to those countries as she has experienced throughout her travels.
How She Strives to Correct Stereotypes
Krystal believes the first important step is correcting the idea that there is nothing on the continent except poverty, and not only for the western world, but for Africans to see for themselves that we are not poor. “All these innovations and developments should be seen by Africans in order to motivate ourselves because many Africans generally believe African is broken and can never be fixed.”
Krystal also thinks the idea that Africa is dangerous is one of the most racist misconceptions rooted in colonial era, painting the picture that Africans are barbaric and uncivilised, and also that black people are less human and not smart. She notes that this misconception is extremely important to talk about with statistics and reflection on racist history because it is “especially harmful.”
In correcting these misconceptions, Krystal tries to be comically creative “even though the racist ones are quite hard to talk about.” She also expressed surprise at the huge number of people who reacted positively to her video that created awareness on Africa’s century-long history of producing great scientists.
On NGOs and African Development Work
Krystal’s work is based on a model in which she “shifts projects every six months to a year,” and has been involved in large multinationals — the World Bank, UNDP, USAID and other big development franchises, helping to deliver, design and manage developmental projects through local NGOs.
Some of the local NGOs have been a faith-based organisation in Tanzania, an environment-based one in Zimbabwe, and smaller grant-based organisations that only have 3-10 local employees trying to push equity issues. Because this varies, she has managed to work across a number of organisations over the years.
Asked if she has any project highlights, Krystal mentioned agriculture and energy sectors have been quite interesting. In the energy space, one South African organisation, African Women in Energy and Power (AWEaP), has really began to change the way she thinks about how important the energy sector is, especially knowing that one of the bottlenecks in terms of development is considered to be energy efficiency, regardless of the sector. It is difficult for all other aspects in the development value chain to materialise to full potential if electricity supply is not scalable. She also stressed how integral it is for women to be talked about in the energy sector, because “having women become part of the conversation is really important in order to avoid a sexist energy sector in another decade.”
Her Collaborations to Amplify What She Does to a Wider Audience
Even though Krystal has had conversations with different platforms, nothing has been formalised. But she finds herself amplifying some of the contents from other creatives and vice versa. Recently, she was involved in a roundtable talk organised by Africa No Filter. The talk featured different organisations brainstorming on how to change the narratives about Africa.
How She Measures the Impact of Her Content
From onset, Krystal was more about making a difference with her content as against doing it for the numbers. What is gratifying to her, at the moment, is the engagement with her content because she now gets a lot of messages about experiences from people, and she considers this a way to know she is making impact. She thinks she has better engagements than other platforms of the same size, and that’s something she is very proud of, as a content creator.
Perspective On Xenophobia
Krystal sees xenophobia as a concern. It is something that she grew up with and has been very tragic to her, personally. She termed this question, “such a really really difficult question.” In her opinion, “Africa should take the approach of thinking about ourselves as brothers and sisters and fight towards ultimate prosperity and progress.” She calls this a very difficult conversation in terms of how countries work, “because this happens all around the world as people migrate to countries that are doing well, and sometimes you get backlash from that country.”
To her, there is no good answer to the question, except that government can try to be more proactive in putting up policies that are supportive. For example, migrants to South Africa are really complementary because “they work a lot of jobs that a lot of South Africans don’t want to do.” She further suggested the government receiving those migrants, and knowing the statistics of how helpful they can be should put out a message to their population about why this is actually good to the economy. At the same time, the government should be good to the local people. “Overall, it is a difficult conversation,” she concluded.
Next Milestone
Krystal started her own consulting company in October 2022, and reckons people actually don’t know how big the international development industry is. “The UN, World Bank industry is a multi-billion dollar, if not trillion dollar, industry, and people don’t realise the volume of work and initiatives being driven, and how much of that is not being designed or managed by Africans themselves.” So, her organisation’s work is looking at development from Afro-centric perspective, providing consulting to those organisations from a perspective of making sure resources are being used effectively in a locally-designed way.
Asked if she would do business consulting for private individuals and businesses, she replied, “it is something that we will consider in the future.” She will also be doing consulting for NGOs in social impact work, helping them look at what is actually an impactful way to deliver projects, initiatives or campaigns in a sustainable manner; and looking at subjects as gender and equity issues being contextualised. She will also be helping organisations with corporate social responsibilities and social impact metrics.
Message to Africans Who Think Less of Themselves
First message: We come from a rich cultural pre-colonial history, and impactful civilisation that existed before our time. In those times, we had self-reliance, owned our philosophies, and medical practices. “When you imagine how rich those cultures were, that’s when you start to feel empowered.”
Second message: There are so many incredible things happening in the tech world. Tech revolution and business ideas coming from young people are really exciting, and thinking about the fact that most of the continent is young, you get the impression a lot of new ideas from young generation are going to play out in our economies, and different industries in years to come. That’s a lot to be excited about.
Third message: It is important to understand that it is our responsibility as a generation to think about economic peace, prosperity and what we want Africa to look like now that we are liberated. We should be able to use the information we have to create societies that look the way we want them to look. Biografrica buttressed that argument with a reminder that Africans are doing great things across the world, and at the helm of affairs in top corporations, globally.
Ghanaian Jollof Versus Nigerian Jollof
Krystal opted for Senegalese jollof, stating it is her personal preference, but Biografrica thought she was trying to be neutral.
A Little Game Based on Countries Visited
Hospitality – Uganda, as Uganda is a very friendly country.
Best food – Zimbabwe, but she really likes Kenyan food.
Night Life – “Definitely Ghana,” she says.
Tourism – Outside of Zimbabwe, she chose Tanzania.
You can connect with Krystal Chindori-Chininga on Instagram @Africana___