Basyukta Basuprava

Most Black people staying abroad are familiar will have heard the rants of "Go back to Africa," at least once in their lifetime. This racist slur has been used time and again in the West to remind people of African origin that they don’t belong to White lands. Recently, the ‘Go Back to Africa’ campaign came into the limelight which turned all this tide of hate into their favour.

Black & Abroad's "Go back to Africa" campaign had won a Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions festival. This innovative campaign works around redefining the narrative around racist slurs like ‘Go back to Africa’ and ‘Leave our country’ in a positive light instead of how it is made sense of around the world.

What #GoBackToAfrica does is whenever there is a hate comment or tweet with ‘Go back to Africa’ in it, the AI will delete the hate speech and just keep the Go Back to Africa phase, which will then be assigned to promote the images of African countries. This is a unique attempt to flip the phrase on its head and use it for promoting tourism in African countries and highlighting their beautiful culture.

The platform will also use Google lens to collect Black travellers and their pictures while travelling or trying cuisines in African countries to change perceptions that Africa is a poverty-stricken or war-ravaged continent and not visited by Whites alone.

So the campaign has built an elaborate artificial intelligent set up that converts hate into tourism promotions and combat years of hate against Black people. It changes the narrative of Go Back to Africa from a racial slur to a beautiful reminder that it is time to Go back to beauty and heritage.

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