My curiosity about the underrepresentation of Africa’s role in World War II is what drew me to the “History in Media” workshop at histoCON 2025. I wanted to understand how and why this history has been overlooked in media narratives. I came in expecting a discussion about how films and documentaries shape what we know about World War II. What I didn’t expect was how personal it would become.
We watched wartime newsreels, film clips, and archival footage. Most of it looked familiar. The usual white soldiers charging into battle, commanding officers giving orders, emotional victories. But as I watched, one question echoed in my mind: Where were the Africans?
My grandfather used to tell us vivid stories about his late brother, who served as a soldier in the Burma campaign during World War II. He fought alongside thousands of other men from the Gold Coast under the British command in harsh terrains far away from home. When the war ended, many of these veterans were resettled at what is now known as Burma Camp in Accra, Ghana. The camp itself exists because of that history. Its very name preserves the memory of West African soldiers who returned from fighting in Burma and East Asia. Growing up, hearing those stories around the family compound made the war feel close and personal, even though it was fought on distant soil. Yes in the archival footage I watched, they were either completely absent or relegated to the background.
This moment changed how I think about history. It made me realize that media doesn’t just reflect the past but it actively shapes memory. When African soldiers are excluded from documentaries and films, it doesn’t just become an oversight. It becomes a pattern of erasure, rooted in editorial choices, access to archives, and the priorities of those who control what gets seen.
Days after the workshop, I chose to depict the Burma campaign with Ghanaian troops on a storyboard. But I couldn’t find enough usable footage to build the story. The sources focused entirely on white officers. African soldiers if visible at all were never central, never named. This made me feel as though I was trying to tell a story I couldn’t even see.
The workshop at histoCON 2025 introduced us to terms like “visual framing”, which is how editors and filmmakers guide viewers’ attention and also, “editorial bias”, which is how stories are told, which ones are simplified, and which ones are left out altogether. These concepts weren’t just theoretical. I saw them play out right there in front of me.
And I felt something else, too: RESPONSIBILITY. One line from a workshop facilitator stuck with me: “Don’t just tell stories about the margins. Tell them from the margins.” That felt like a challenge and a call to action. As a young African media storyteller, I started to ask what it would look like to retell these stories from the margins, not just about them. That means making space for African voices, not only in African history but in global history. It means recognizing the power of memory and the damage of invisibility. To ask critical questions like: “who is holding the camera?”, “who is funding the film?”, “whose voice is driving the narrative?”.
In Ghana, our schools do teach African and Ghanaian history in WWII, but the framing often shifts the agency away from Africans. Even when local contributions are mentioned, the narrative still tends to exalt European figures, leaving Africans in supporting roles rather than the centre of their own story. For instance, in World War II chapters, the focus usually falls on Churchill, Roosevelt, or Hitler, while African regiments are mentioned briefly, if at all. This leaves students with the impression that Black people were always in the background of history, while Europeans drove the story forward. The structure of the curriculum itself sometimes unintentionally makes Africans second to the white man’s narrative, even on our own soil.
When we think of World War II, we often think of Europe, the U.S., and the major powers. But it was a world war and many who fought have yet to be seen, heard, or remembered. histoCON reminded me that if we don’t tell these stories ourselves, they may never be told at all, or, someone else will but often without “us”.
This publication does not represent an expression of opinion by the Federal Agency for Civic Education. The author is responsible for the content.