By Enock Sithole
Grab a local newspaper or tune into a news bulleting on radio or television, looking for news from other African countries, originating from a newsroom on the continent, chances are you will draw a blank.
When South African television bulletins lead with the latest U.S. election drama while ignoring a deadly flood in Mozambique, it raises a nagging question: whose news matters?
Across the continent, critics are warning that African journalists and media outlets are devoting more space to Western stories than to critical developments unfolding in neighbouring African countries.
This pattern is not new. Scholars and industry watchers have long argued that Africa’s media landscape is disproportionately shaped by Western news agendas. The dominance of syndicated wire copy from agencies like Reuters, Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Associated Press (AP) often ensures that international stories, usually framed through Western lenses, crowd out African-led reporting.
“African media tend (networks) to consume Western perspectives more than they consume each other’s,” notes Professor Herman Wasserman, chair of Department of Journalism at Stellenbosch University, in South Africa. “It reinforces the problem of Western dominance in global news flows,” he argued.
Another critic, Mandla Radebe, who is an associate professor at the University of Johannesburg, called out the South African media saying it showed Western bias in its framing of the war in Ukraine, emphasising reliance on Western sources and adopting frames from those sources.
Also, J. Siguru Wahutu, an Assistant Professor of Sociology & African Studies at Yale University, in the United States of America, wrote that African news organisations often reproduce knowledge from wire agencies and privilege those narratives.
For example, during the 2023 Niger coup, many African newspapers ran Reuters or AFP wire copy rather than dispatching their own reporters to Niamey. While the copy was factually correct, it often presented events in terms of Western concerns about French influence and migration flows, sidelining regional dynamics such as the dynamics within the Economic Community of West African States’ (ECOWAS).
Western journalists, whose stories and used by African media outlets, tend to practice parachute journalism. This is where reporters “drop in” to cover a crisis and leave quickly, with little context, yet they produce news reports purporting to be authoritative about the issues they have covered. African journalists, ironically, sometimes mirror the same approach by adopting Western frames and sources instead of investing and putting their perspectives of the local communities, context and dynamics.
The Al Jazeera Institute has criticised parachute journalism as “a flawed model that strips complexity from stories and perpetuates stereotypes”. When African journalists imitate it, the result is that stories of continental importance are flattened into quick, borrowed reports, said the Institute.
Editors say part of the problem is audience pressure. “International news carries prestige,” admitted a Nairobi-based editor who sought anonymity. “Stories about the U.S. or UK elections are seen as more ‘serious’ than what’s happening next door in Tanzania.” That pursuit of prestige often means replicating Western priorities rather than building African narratives.
The journalism education and economics factors
Behind the newsroom choices lie deeper structural issues. Journalism education across much of Africa remains underfunded and uneven.
UNESCO has repeatedly flagged shortages of equipment, outdated curricula, and a lack of practical cross-border training opportunities. Journalism training in several of the continent’s schools does not teach specialisations in international journalism.
Economic challenges compound the problem. Dispatching a reporter from Nairobi to Kinshasa or from Johannesburg to Lusaka is costly. Newsrooms already struggling with shrinking advertising revenue, rarely prioritise such investments. It is far cheaper to lift a syndicated package from AFP, AP or BBC.
However, this can no longer be acceptable as an excuse in a scenario of technological advancements that would enable media houses to hire stringers and freelancers in several countries instead of having to send their own staff. Smart mobile phones have proven to be good enough to gather, produce and broadcast news. They could be used effectively at minimal cost.
Political risk is another deterrent. In Burkina Faso, the junta suspended the BBC and Voice of America in 2023 after critical coverage. In Niger, journalists face restrictions and harassment, making regional reporting even more dangerous. In such contexts, editors may prefer the relative “safety” of covering U.S. politics or European climate protests than navigating the minefield of national or regional politics.
Costs of looking away
The consequences of this reporting imbalance are profound. Citizens remain uninformed about issues that directly affect them — from health crises to regional trade policies.
In 2022, while much African media covered the war in Ukraine in great detail, relatively little attention was paid to cholera outbreaks in Malawi and Cameroon, despite their devastating regional implications.
It also erodes accountability. Governments and companies are less scrutinised when journalists shy away from national or regional investigations. As one Ghanaian media analyst put it: “When your main news is about Trump, not your neighbour’s corruption scandal, (corrupt) leaders breathe easier.”
A 2023 analysis of media coverage of Africa by the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) found that biased narratives are a significant economic burden, costing the continent billions of dollars annually in mispriced financial risk and deterred investment. These stereotypical portrayals lead to higher borrowing costs and reduce foreign investment, with some estimates suggesting Africa loses up to $75 billion per year due to inflated borrowing costs alone.
“Negative stereotypes in international media cost Africa £3.2billion a year – report,” reads a headline in a Guardian article on October 17, 2024, reporting on a study by Africa Practice & Africa No Filter which estimates that negative stereotypes in global media are costing Africa up to £3.2 billion annually in inflated interest payments on sovereign debt. The Guardian
The Africa Practice & Africa No Filter report itself, which discussed “the economic consequences of such biased reporting by examining the relationship between media bias in election coverage and its impact on financial flows’, indicated that “the media’s portrayal of Africa has long been dominated by persistent stereotypes”.
The report adds: “Our findings show that African countries receive increased media attention during general elections, with a disproportionate focus on negative issues such as violence and election fraud. This emphasis is more pronounced compared to (the) coverage of non-African countries with similar political risk conditions, resulting in higher negative sentiment and bias scores for African nations. Notably, the term “violence” is highly associated with Africa in media coverage, particularly in election-related headlines.”
It concludes that “these biased narratives have real-world consequences, as they inflate perceptions of risk, leading to unjustifiably high borrowing costs – even for African countries with decent credit ratings. Moreover, they provide cover for lending institutions to justify extending unfair loan terms to African states”.
The report speculated that it was reasonable to assume that the other important drivers of development, such as tourism, foreign direct investment and development aid, are similarly impacted by risk sentiment, which is heavily shaped by global media narratives.
Signs of change
There are efforts to reverse the trend. The African Investigative Publishing Collective (AIPC) has pioneered collaborative, cross-border investigations into issues like illegal logging and mining. Organisations such as the Pan African Media Alliance for Climate Change (PAMACC) promote solutions-based journalism that highlights African resilience and innovation.
Donor-backed training programmes are also trying to bridge skills gaps. UNESCO’s STREAM initiative, launched in 2021, promotes updated curricula, digital tools, and regional reporting fellowships. However, such initiatives remain limited in scale and reach.
Critics argue that African journalism needs a deliberate shift toward a continental perspective. That means training journalists to see African stories as interconnected, resourcing newsrooms to build cross-border beats and protecting media from political interference.
“Until African media start telling African stories for African audiences, we’ll always be looking at ourselves through someone else’s lens,” South African journalist Khadija Patel was quoted as saying.
The challenge is formidable: structural underfunding, political risk and the pull of Western prestige won’t vanish overnight. But the stakes are clear: without a stronger commitment to intra-African reporting, the peoples of the continent risk being better informed about Washington and Paris than about its own neighbours.