AES countries in pursuit of media sovereignty

The Alliance of Sahel States, comprising Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have taken a bold step towards attaining media sovereignty. Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso, Assimi Goïta of Mali and Abdourahamane Tchiani of Niger have outlined plans to launch a joint web-based television on September 16, 2024. The date of the launching marks exactly one year when the AES was launched.

Over the years and centuries, western media have constituted themselves as the gatekeepers of global information that portrayed Africa negatively and hopelessly. Currently, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have taken a bold step to break their countries from the chains of western media stereotyping and negative reporting.

The decision by the AES countries to take control of their information and narratives is in line with the spirit of New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO).  In the 70s and 80s, the campaign for NWICO was championed by developing countries to correct the western dominance of news, in which they bombarded African homes with negative news about the continent. Through the control of information, western media imposed mental slavery on Africans and Africans in the diaspora.

The conception of AES television comes on the heels of the decision of the three countries to shut down the operations of major western broadcast media, including BBC, VOA and France 24 in their countries. These western media have been accused of trading misinformation about the AES countries and the rest of Africa.

Paradigm shift

The launch of the television signifies a paradigm shift in Africa’s media landscape. It is also a groundbreaking strategy for the people of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, as it provides a platform for uncensored information flow among the three countries. Furthermore, it aims to provide unbiased coverage of the economic, social and cultural challenges confronting the people, as well as their aspirations for a better future. It is also to foster a greater understanding of the significance of political and economic cooperation among them.

Most importantly, the web-television is a direct response by the AES leaders to western media, whose speciality is peddling misleading narratives. It offers an alternative to the dominant western media narratives that have historically shaped global perspectives of Africa. The new media is expected to promote the voices and concerns of their people and to counter biased western media reporting. It symbolizes a significant shift in how information will be produced and communicated among the three countries.

Western media propaganda

In a recent speech after rebel attacks in Burkina Faso, Captain Ibrahim Traore stated that the western media had an agenda to manipulate public opinion against the revolutions of the AES countries. “The reports they churn out about Africa is shameful.”

The youth of Burkina Faso should be wary of the agenda of western media and should stop listening to them.” According to him, these western narratives have historically depicted Africa as passive recipients, instead of active participants in the global economy. He argued that the agenda is to scare investors from the three countries.

Besides, Captain Traore lamented that whereas western media and journalists are patriotic and project their countries positively, African media and journalists often sell their conscience to western powers. According to him, African media and journalists regularly, publish false news that upholds western narratives of a hopeless continent. This false negative news portrays Africa as a continent mired in poverty, disease, conflict and corruption.” No more manipulation of the African minds by western media”, he warned.

How African Media Covers Africa

A recent report by “Africa No Filters” found that one-third of news reports on Africa in African media are sourced from western media. The report titled “How African Media Cover Africa”, reviewed media from 15 countries, including Ghana.

Editors and journalists of selected media were surveyed for their opinions on how African media covers other African countries. The publications were drawn from all regions: North, Southern, West, Central and East Africa. In total, 56 most influential media in the countries were surveyed.

The study captured industry-wide challenges confronting African media such as declining advertisements, shrinking newsrooms and a decline in the quality of news. It underscores the problem African media face in investigating and reporting independent reports about Africa.

Furthermore, the study found that coverage of African countries was poor in terms of overall numbers. In addition, there were also variances in terms of the levels of detailed, contextualised coverage. Coverage also tended to involve a small number of countries, thus sidelining many countries in the dominant African media.

Not only do conflicts, politics, crime, and protests tend to dominate African media reporting of Africa, but they are also considered more newsworthy by editors.  Strangely, some editors and journalists acknowledged that their reports on the continent tend to affirm western stereotypes of Africa. Quite expected, news quoted from western media tends to be overwhelmingly negative about Africa.

These are the same negative stories Africans cull from western media. From experience, some African media and journalists tend to even undermine their countries more than the western media had intended. Our journalists even want to be more European than the Europeans by mimicking their voices and dressing.

Scarce resources

The editors and journalists cited scarce resources as the biggest challenge to cover Africa extensively (92%of the editors surveyed). Consequently, hard news stories such as politics, elections, and crisis in Africa dominate African media news pages. Participants confessed that they primarily rely on wire news agencies such as Reuters and AP to source African news.

This is due to various reasons such as financial constraints on hiring and retaining foreign correspondents. Most participants said their publications could not afford to send out journalists to other African countries or assign journalists on the ground due to budget limitations.

Besides, editors and journalists also recognised the need for more balanced coverage. However, the available funding dictated that they use stories by western agencies, which confirmed the expectations of western audiences to portray Africa negatively, such as famine and crisis.

In fact, news from western media accounts for almost half (43%) of the stories about African countries, according to the report.  Regrettably, only 19 percent of the agency stories in the sample size were from agencies based in Africa. This means that it is often non-Africans who set the agenda or offer perspectives on African affairs and events.

In addition, the digital revolution, which is empowering newspaper readers to use online as alternative sources of news. This trend has destabilised many African newsrooms. This shift has made monetising the media more challenging than the traditional advertising-driven platforms. In addition, a reduction in the number of newsrooms, which started before and after COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on the media industry, especially print newspapers in Africa, where readership is on the decline.

Challenges and solutions

A key point raised during interviews with editors and journalists concerned the difficulty in finding freelance talents outside the main centres of Johannesburg, Lagos and Nairobi. This has further reduced African media coverage.  The difficulties African media face naturally compels them to fall on western media sources which paints Africa as a devastated continent which needs life support from the west.

Similarly, a key strategy to overturn western media dominance could be creating more awareness of the poor coverage. Furthermore, African journalists must commit to publishing better stories about the continent, rather than toeing the line of western media. This meant that while newsrooms took the difficult decision to reduce staff, they also cut print pages, thus sacrificing African stories.

To address the lack of resources, stakeholders need to invest in media capacity development. Furthermore, networks of editors and journalists could pool stories and multimedia tools for use in different publications to cover more countries.

Capacity building

Despite the constraints facing journalism and media industry in Africa, participants advocated that the industry needs to value its workers. In many countries in Africa, if not all journalists are the most underpaid, despite the huge responsibility on them as the watchdogs and mirror of society.

The participants added that it would be important to equip freelance journalists on the continent, especially those in smaller countries that do not dominate Africa news pages like Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa do.

The editors and journalists suggested that to elevate the standard of journalism in Africa, excellent an unbiased journalists should be identified and rewarded.  They pointed out that the continent needs to create its own unique awards to reward outstanding journalism in the country, rather than depending on western institution to recognize and reward good journalism.

Another suggestion to improve the capacity of African media and journalism is to build capacity in multimedia, video and photographs to illustrate Africa stories.

Africa telling her own story

Finally, a key strategy to support African storytelling would be to create repositories for stories and multimedia resources that could be freely distributed among journalists. This could help prevent or reverse negative stereotypes of the continent as the media would have a wider range of stories to tell.

Perhaps, the desire to reverse the negative stereotypes about Africa justifies the launching of an independent web-television by Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.  In fact, media sovereignty is as significant, if not more significant than political independence. In this era, Africans should not allow western media to continue to contrary information about Africa. In that regard, I salute the  leaders of the AES countries for piloting this vision to rewrite Africa’s history by African media and journalists. It is not going to be easy, but it is worth their sweat and blood.