By Oswald MUTUYEYEZU
For decades, Africa has too often been seen through the same narrow lens: war, poverty, disease, corruption and crisis. These stories matter, but when they become the default portrait of an entire continent, they leave much of Africa’s reality—and many of its own voices—out of the picture.
For African journalists and media organizations, this is more than a question of representation. It is a question of journalism: who sets the agenda, whose knowledge is trusted, and whose voices ultimately shape the story?
Research into African media coverage suggests that the problem is not confined to international news organizations. A 2021 study commissioned by Africa No Filter, How African Media Covers Africa, examined 308 stories published by influential African media in 15 countries. It found that coverage of African countries was often concentrated around a relatively narrow range of events, particularly elections, politics, crime, conflict and protests.
The study also revealed significant gaps in how Africa reports on itself. While news agencies accounted for 43% of stories about African countries, only 19% of those reports came from agencies based on the continent. This means that a substantial share of the news shaping perceptions of Africa is still produced outside Africa, raising an important question: who controls the narrative, and whose perspectives are being heard?
This imbalance matters because when African newsrooms depend heavily on coverage produced elsewhere, they can end up reproducing narratives shaped by external news agendas and perspectives. As Africa No Filter’s journalism handbook argues, journalists can challenge this pattern by seeking African experts and people with lived experience, adding context beyond the immediate headline, and reporting on communities with greater care and respect.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame has made a similar argument about the importance of African ownership of the continent’s story. Speaking at the 2012 African Economic Conference in Kigali, he emphasized that “All together we have the responsibility to redefine Africa’s story into a successful one, a continent of hope, prosperity and dignity.”
Speaking on the sidelines of the 2012 East African Community–East African Business Council Media Summit which was held in Kigali, the Rwandan leader also raised concerns about the influence of international media on the regional news agenda and called on African media to tell the “true story” of their societies. His remarks underscore a broader point: reclaiming Africa’s narrative is not about ignoring its problems, but about ensuring that Africans have a central role in defining how those realities are reported, understood and contextualized.
Beyond the familiar crisis narrative
The challenge, however, is not simply to tell more stories about Africa. It is to change how those stories are framed and who is given authority to tell them. J. Siguru Wahutu’s research on Kenyan news organizations, for example, examines how reliance on Western wire services can privilege narratives produced by those organizations, sometimes at the expense of locally available actors and perspectives. As Wahutu argues, African journalism has at times “outsourced the labor of news construction about the continent” to actors outside Africa.
This question of narrative ownership is also reflected in wider debates about authenticity. Femi Odugbemi’s discussion of “authenticity and the African story” highlights the importance of considering who represents Africa, how those representations are constructed and how they are understood. Recent scholarship on African journalism similarly points to the need to examine how African stories are constructed at a time when international media organizations continue to exercise considerable influence across the continent.
The struggle to build pan-African media
The history of pan-African news initiatives also shows how difficult it can be to build independent continental media structures. Institutions such as the Pan-African News Agency (PANA) were established in part to strengthen African news production and give the continent greater ownership of its narrative. Yet political influence, financial constraints and changes in the media environment have limited the ability of such institutions to consistently fulfil that ambition.
For African journalism, therefore, reclaiming the narrative does not mean rejecting international media, foreign correspondents or global expertise. It means ensuring that international perspectives do not automatically become the dominant frame. African journalists should be able to draw on international sources while grounding their reporting in local evidence, knowledge and lived experience.
This is particularly important when covering major events and sensitive histories. Reporting on Rwanda’s 1994 genocide and its aftermath, for example, requires international perspectives but cannot be fully understood without listening to Rwandan survivors, communities, historians, researchers, journalists and institutions that have lived with and studied its consequences. Similarly, reporting conflict in Sudan should include the experiences and analysis of Sudanese journalists, researchers and affected communities rather than relying predominantly on international officials and foreign correspondents.
The same principle applies beyond conflict. A story about public health in Rwanda can be strengthened by combining international scientific expertise with the knowledge of Rwandan health workers, researchers and communities. Reporting climate change in the Sahel should go beyond statistics about drought and rainfall to examine how farmers, pastoralists, women, young people and local scientists are experiencing and responding to changing conditions. In the Congo Basin, reporting on deforestation becomes more complete when global conservation concerns are considered alongside the perspectives of forest communities, Indigenous peoples, researchers, governments and local organizations whose lives and livelihoods are directly connected to the forest.
The lesson is not to avoid difficult stories about war, poverty, corruption, disease or environmental destruction. Authentic journalism should confront these realities. But it should also provide the context, complexity and human voices that prevent a crisis from becoming the only story.
Ultimately, when African journalists build stories from the ground up, challenge inherited stereotypes, and place local voices alongside international expertise, they do more than reclaim the narrative. They produce journalism that is richer, more credible and more representative of the continent they cover.
The future of African journalism, therefore, should not be about choosing between African and international perspectives. It should be about ensuring that African voices are no longer treated as supplementary to the story, but as central to defining it.
Oswald MUTUYEYEZU
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