This TED Talk features cultural media builder Deo Ogunyemi, recorded live at TED Global 2017.

As a child growing up in Nigeria, books sparked my earliest imagination.

But films, films transported me to magical places with flying cars, to infinite space with whole

universes of worlds to discover. And my journey of discovery has led me to many places and possibilities,

all linked with ideas and imagination. A decade and a half ago,

I moved from working in law and technology in New York

to financing, producing and distributing films

in Nairobi, Lagos and Johannesburg.

I've been privileged to see firsthand

how in Africa film powerfully explores the marvelous and the

mundane, how it conveys infinite possibilities and fundamental truths. Afafuturist films like

Pumzi, Wainuri Khaihu's superb sci-fi flick, paint brilliant pictures of Africa's future, while Rungano

Nyonis I am not a witch, and Akiomoto Shor's Vaya, show us and catalog are present.

These filmmakers offer new and snapshots of Africa's imagined and lived reality,

in contrast to some of the images of Africa that come from outside, and the perspectives that accompany all of these images,

whether sympathetic or dismissive, shape or distort how people see Africa.

And the truth is, many people think Africa is screwed up.

Images play a big part of the reason why. Many tropes about Africa persist from pictures.

Pictures of famine in Ethiopia 30 years ago.

Pictures of the Biafran War half a century ago. But on a continent where the average age

is 17, these tragic events seem almost prehistoric. Their images are far removed from how people in Africa's many countries

see themselves and their neighbors.

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