One-third of all African stories in news outlets domiciled on the continent are sourced from foreign news services, a new report from Africa No Filter released Monday, January 25 has shown.
The report, titled “How African Media Covers Africa”, highlights the fact that stories about Africa written by Africans continue to be told through the same persistent and negative stereotypes and frames of poverty, disease, conflict, poor leadership and corruption.
The research surveyed 38 African editors and analyzed content from 60 African news outlets in 15 countries between September and October 2020. The countries surveyed were Botswana, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe, DRC, Egypt, Tunisia, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal. In addition, four facilitated focus groups were held with 25 editors of African media, as well as editors of Pan African outlets and international correspondents.
“Media is incredibly influential in setting the agenda and determining narratives about Africa,” says Moky Makura, executive director at Africa No Filter.
“The research clearly shows that despite years of independence, Africans still don’t hold the pen when it comes to writing our stories. More importantly, we continue to promote the narratives about Africa being broken, dependent and lacking agency through the stories we share in our media about each other. We need to take back the pen.”
Makura added that “ironically, 50% of editors surveyed thought their coverage of other African countries didn’t contain stereotypes. It shows clearly that we have some work to do in educating ourselves about the role we play in perpetuating outdated stereotypes about ourselves.
Narrative matters and it has implications beyond just storytelling, it impacts investment in Africa, on youth and opportunities people see in their countries, on migration, creativity and innovation.”
Results from the new report also confirmed challenges and experiences that are common knowledge within the industry: advertising revenue and newsrooms are shrinking, influencing the kind of news that Africans read, and that news is largely negative and conflict-filled.
Key findings from the report show that the sources for news gathering on African countries are problematic, the resulting content continues to feed old stereotypes, and that often, the quality of local journalism doesn’t allow for nuanced and contextualized storytelling that is critical for telling stories about the 54 countries in Africa.
63% of outlets surveyed don’t have correspondents in other countries in Africa and one-third (1/3) of all coverage on Africa was from non-African sources, with AFP and BBC accounting for a quarter of all stories found in African outlets about other African countries. African news agencies contributed minimally.
81% of the stories analyzed were classified as “hard news,” meaning conflicts and crises driven by events, and they were also largely political in nature. Then, 13% of the news focused specifically on political violence, civil unrest, and armed conflict.
South Africa, followed by Egypt were the countries with the most diverse coverage that was not necessarily linked to news events, inferring that those two countries are probably the ‘best known’ on the continent.
In response to this report, Africa No Filter is launching the continent’s first and only news agency that will focus on stories of creativity, innovation, arts, culture, and human interest to fill the gap in the market.
Africa No Filter is a not-for-profit that was set up last year (2020) to help shift harmful and stereotypical narratives about Africa through research, advocacy and grant-making to storytellers.
It is funded by the Ford Foundation, Bloomberg, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Luminate, Open Society Foundation, Comic Relief, the Hilton Foundation and the British Council.
