E veryday the African and global media publish articles about Africa, based on events that have taken place on our continent. In time, these stories begin to define who and what we are. In due course, as we come to believe the resultant image of ourselves, we also begin to act the part.
For some years now, our continent has been engaged in a sustained effort to change the lives of our people for the better. The 30 July democratic elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the great rally at the Union Buildings in Pretoria on 9 August to promote the emancipation of women, stand out as but two examples both of the good news emanating from Africa, and what our continent is doing to redefine itself.
It is in this context that many on our continent and elsewhere in the world have, once again, as reflected in the reports we cite below, raised the issue of consistent and seemingly compulsive negative reporting about Africa.
On 23 May 2005, one of our newspapers, "The Mercury", carried the following story:
"Nairobi - Rwanda's president has accused Western media of portraying Africa as a continent racked by poverty, war and disease, and he has challenged Africans to change that image. 'One of the reasons Africa is unable to attract enough foreign direct investment, which we need for our development, is the constant negative reporting,' President Paul Kagame said in an address to the International Press Institute World Congress on Sunday.
"Kagame said it was a common belief on the continent that the international press gave Africa only negative coverage and ignored positive developments on the continent...
"He said in his own country, the international media had portrayed the 1994 genocide as the result of primitive tribal killings, rather than an organised campaign perpetrated by the former government. 'Constant reference by the media to tribal killings, civil war, anarchy and chaos obscured and minimised the genocide that was taking place and the complicity and indifference of some powers,' he said. 'As a result, the UN member states were not called upon to recognise the genocide that was under way and did not feel compelled to take the appropriate action.'"
More than a year later, on 9 August 2006, "The (Nairobi) East African Standard" carried an article by Eliud Miring'uh under the headline "Western Reporting On Africa Under Criticism". It read in part:
"African and Western journalists differed sharply at a media managers meeting in Nairobi yesterday over the way the Western media reports on Africa. Whereas African journalists criticised the Western media for presenting Africa in bad light, their Western counterparts vigorously defended their position saying they cannot ignore the continent's problems, which they described as 'harsh realities'.
"Some of the over 90 delegates from 25 African countries said that whereas the Western media was quick to file negative reports from Africa, it was slow in reporting on positive developments. The sentiments were expressed shortly after presentations made by Lionel Barber, the Financial Times editor, and Ms Amanda Farnsworth, the daytime news editor of BBC Television news.
"'The Western media is not even (handed) because there is some hypocrisy in the reporting of African issues,' charged Mr Godwin Agbroko, the editorial board chairman of This Day of Nigeria. He said the Western media are not interested in the historical aspects that shaped realities in Africa such as colonialism and are only keen to view the continent from their own perspective...
"Earlier, Barber said events in Africa have changed in the recent past and the continent was attracting sizeable attention from the rest of the world. 'Africa is no longer the forgotten continent because positive events have taken place and is commanding interest from the rest of the world,' he said. Barber defended the notion that Western media were hostile to Africa, saying they cannot ignore issues such as corruption, conflict, and dictatorship as practiced by political leaders... A delegate from Zambia wondered why major news agencies such as BBC, CNN, AFP, and Reuters were quick to report on negative issues and slow to report positive developments in the continent."
On 7 August 2006, came the news from Accra that:
"Ghana would host the African International Media summit from September 18 to September 20 to discuss ways of re-branding Africa for a brighter future and enhanced development...
"Dr Messan Mawugbe, Chief Executive Officer of Centre for Media Analysis said there had to be a conscious and determined effort to tackle the major factors contributing to the negative impressions of the Continent and to present it in a more positive light. Dr Mawugbe was speaking at a press conference to give an insight into the summit that has the theme: 'Re-branding Africa as Laudable Dialogue for a North-South Cooperation and Human Advancement in this 21st Century'...
"Stakeholders in the media industry, government officials and observers from relevant international media organisations would attend the Summit to be sponsored by the African Communications Agency, the African Union and African Development Bank, among other sponsors. Dr Mawugbe said in spite of establishing a new Africa through initiatives like New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), many issues negatively affected the image of Africa, which were mostly portrayed by the international media.
"He said though the Continent could not be divorced from issues like wars, fledgling democracies, health epidemics and environmental hazards, the media had a role to portray these in a proper light through adequate dissemination and management of information. An analysis of stories from news agencies on Africa published in the Graphic and Ghanaian Times showed that out of the 543 stories published from May to July 2006; 13 percent came from Ghana News Agency, 64 percent from the BBC with the remaining 23 percent from other agencies, he said.
"Dr Erieka Bennett, Vice Chairperson of African Communications Agency, said the media were the singular major organ that would guarantee that Africa's current rebirth and development efforts manifested into a positive image for the Continent."
In an article published on 17 June 2005, Chris Thomson said: "In the mid 1980s when I was at university, my university used a song, 'Hearing Only Bad News From Radio Africa', to introduce a weekly show that featured the music of Africa. The song was a slow reggae one that lamented, among other catastrophes, the apartheid regime in the south and the famine in the north. It reflected the fact that, back then, the news from Africa was indeed overwhelmingly bad. Now, five years into a new century, when things have changed in several of the continent's 53 independent nations, the Western media seems still to be depicting Africa in a predominantly negative way...
"A group called the TransAfrica Forum (December, 2000) ...survey(ed) two of the most esteemed newspapers in the U.S.A. - the New York Times and Washington Post - over a sample 3 weeks worth of days drawn from the period March to August 2000. Their study showed there were some serious problems with the way the two newspapers reported on Africa. The vast majority of news stories fell within only three categories - AIDS, development and conflict. The study found no reports on regional economic or political cooperation in Africa, nor one article on the private sector. In its conclusion, the study said, 'one would have expected the New York Times and the Washington Post to make an effort to inform American citizens and policymakers in a much more balanced, detailed, and fair manner.' The authors added, 'failure to address this issue will contribute to an increase in Afro-pessimism in America.'...
"A more recent survey of African coverage (Boston University, 2005) found little mention of the fewer civil wars, economic growth or increased access to education on the continent. The survey studied coverage of Africa between 1994 and 2004 in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, US News and World Report. Disasters in Somalia, Rwanda and West Africa dominated, while transitions to democracy in Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Namibia, Mozambique and elsewhere were ignored.
"How did this problem become so entrenched? Aside from the obvious answer -generations of colonial exploitation - a group called Earthlink (2005) reports most media organisations don't even bother to base a reporter in Africa. When they do, it is often a single person intended to cover the entire continent. Postings are not perceived as important as European or some Asian locations...According to Earthlink, editors on the other hand claim the lack of coverage is a response to audience lack of interest in Africa, and that western readers don't care about what happens in Africa. Other observers, say Earthlink, believe the lack of reporters and editors of colour means newsrooms full of white, middle class, middle-aged men don't find Africa interesting and therefore devote few resources to covering the continent. Still others suggest the news media tend to follow the agenda of their home governments. If western politicians don't make Africa a priority in foreign policy, then the media will see no reason to cover it...
"So what to do about the problem? If there's one thing on which most African commentators agree, it's that Africans must take responsibility themselves for how their continent is portrayed. Chido Nwangwu (1997), who founded and publishes the first African owned U.S.-based professional newspaper to be published on the internet, says flamboyantly: 'for far too long, a majority of Africans have been indifferent to misrepresentations about who they are. They have remained 'objects' of the ill-informed caricatures of a once glorious heritage disfigured by colonial and post-colonial predators.'"
Chris Thomson goes on to report that Former African Heads Of State met in a Presidential Roundtable at Boston University in May 2005. Having discussed the negative Western reporting on Africa, they resolved, among others, that:
"African countries, and institutions ... need to develop a set of strategies to counter the negative media portrayal of Africa, including developing:
(i) alternative mediums through which to tell Africa's story;
(ii) a multimedia campaign to counter Africa's negative image in the western press, and
(iii) a strategy for engaging major media outlets in order to encourage more fair and balanced coverage of the continent."
Speaking at the "Agenda-Setting Conference: Mass Media and Public Opinion" in Bonn, on 22 September 2004, Tony Trew of our Government Communication and Information System (GCIS), said: "The commitment of industrialised nations to NEPAD is based on an understanding that developing and industrialised countries have a common interest in the global peace and security which is dependent on Africa and the South lifting themselves from underdevelopment and poverty. It is surely also in the interests of the global media and communications community that information and communications equity should be achieved. The North cannot have a well-informed public that is provided limited and distorted information about the rest of the world with whose destiny their own is bound."
However, the 8 August 2006 edition of the "Financial Times" published an article by Gideon Rachman entitled "Death, double standards and the battle for moral high ground", discussing the quality of media reporting about the conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere. Referring to the matter of double standards, Rachman wrote: "Partly, it is to do with a European and American fear that they will suffer from the blowback of war in the Middle East. The (DRC) Congolese and their neighbours can kill each other for years without anyone in London and New York feeling threatened.
Abraham McLaughlin of "The Christian Science Monitor" put this matter somewhat differently on 26 May 2005 in an article entitled, "Africans ask: 'Why isn't anyone telling the good news?' " He wrote: "One thing blocking a fuller perception of Africa's progress may be implicit racism, argues Charles Stith, former US ambassador to Tanzania, now at Boston University. There's a historic framework, he says, 'that by definition sees Africa ... and Africans as inferior and negative,' and makes most stories about the continent negative. By contrast, he says, 'China has problems, but we see and hear other things about China. Russia has problems, yet we see and read other things about Russia.' That same standard, he says, should apply to Africa."
Perhaps the time has come that, as Chris Thomson said, we, as Africans, take responsibility for how our continent is portrayed. We should therefore respond to Chido Nwangwu's cry from the heart that, "for far too long, a majority of Africans have been indifferent to misrepresentations about who they are. They have remained 'objects' of the ill-informed caricatures of a once glorious heritage disfigured by colonial and post-colonial predators."
