Africa Bright Spots Remain Despite Negative Headlines

If you are like me I am sure you’ve been won­der­ing what is going on with recent news from the African con­ti­nent.  For exam­ple — I met a gen­tle­man who I’ll refer to sim­ply as a friend — at a restau­rant in Auro­ra, Col­orado on Jan­u­ary 16.  After a brief con­ver­sa­tion, he quick­ly asked me what the hell was going on in Kenya.

I pre­sumed my friend knew some­thing about the African con­ti­nent because he was eager to dis­cuss the sub­ject after we had spo­ken for just a few min­utes. I iden­ti­fied myself using my busi­ness card which I usu­al­ly keep in my wal­let. The card bears my affil­i­a­tions with Africa Agen­da.

My friend lat­er told me he is retired from the Unit­ed States Navy. Before he retired, he added, he had been deployed as a ser­vice mem­ber to sev­er­al coun­tries in East­ern Africa.

These coun­tries includ­ed Kenya, the scene of a Jan­u­ary 15 ter­ror­ist inci­dent. This is why this friend want­ed to talk about what he heard on the news that was tak­ing place in the coun­try. He told me he was trou­bled by what was going on there.

Accord­ing to Nation­al Pub­lic Radio (NPR News) the ter­ror­ist attack at a lux­u­ry hotel in Nairo­bi, Kenya result­ed in many deaths, includ­ing an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen.  The assailants have been iden­ti­fied by the Kenyan gov­ern­ment as mil­i­tants from Al Shabaab ter­ror­ist group.

Mean­while, in Zim­bab­we, anoth­er grab­bing head­line sto­ry is tak­ing place.

There is a nation­wide protest against an increase in fuel prices, engi­neered by the gov­ern­ment of Pres­i­dent Emer­son Mnan­gang­wa, which has led to an inter­net black­out in the coun­try.  The events have led to a crack­down by the gov­ern­ment on pro­test­ers, with oth­ers being dragged to court for incit­ing instability.

The events from Kenya and Zim­bab­we have sud­den­ly become the biggest Africa news sto­ries at the start of 2019. They are big sto­ries because of the increased focus and atten­tion paid to them by the news media.

While a recent regime change and peace­ful trans­fer of pow­er in Zim­bab­we was praised by some in the media that act of democ­ra­cy may still not be enough to erase all of the “bad faith” the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty has in Zim­bab­we and its people.

“What good can come out of Zim­bab­we?” the ques­tion goes.

In Zim­bab­we, a coun­try whose cir­cum­stances don’t mir­ror that of Kenya, the atten­tion to what is going on there has to be looked at from a dif­fer­ent perspective.

The mat­ter with Zim­bab­we is that while change has tak­en place at some lev­el, it may be years before this pec­u­lates into our psy­che and for that mat­ter the psy­che of peo­ple in our newsrooms.

True or not, Zim­bab­we is still bleed­ing. “If it bleeds, it leads,” the say­ing goes in news­rooms all around us.

Whether there is enough weight to give the Kenya inci­dent the splash that it is get­ting is anoth­er sto­ry entire­ly.  But we’ve seen news man­agers turn every neg­a­tive sto­ry from the African con­ti­nent into a “Block­buster” scoop as if there was noth­ing else in town to talk about. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the same news man­agers have refused to talk about all the “shenani­gans” of cur­rent U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump because…you guess the rest.

The excuse I hear about this is that “we are not an opin­ion channel.”

What’s my response to this? Bulls#*#t!

Let me add one caveat to this. I see this most­ly with so-called local news in America.

I say all of this against the back­drop of reports which con­tra­dict the increased neg­a­tive image that local media in the U.S. con­tin­ues to paint about the African continent.

A good exam­ple of this con­tra­dic­tion, and a recent one for that mat­ter, is a head­line from the Chica­go Tribune’s Arthur I. Cyr bold­ly ask­ing read­ers’ to “Look  beyond the media scare sto­ries.”  What a statement!

The trig­ger to this is the writer’s own dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the man­ner of pre­sen­ta­tion of the news by media in the U.S. — news that is too focused on what’s wrong, against the bet­ter judge­ment of all the orga­ni­za­tions that are say­ing otherwise.

One of the bright spots the writer cites is the African con­ti­nent, using reports from the much-respect­ed Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion and the World Bank.  Cyr states:

“The influ­en­tial, respect­ed Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., cur­rent­ly is devot­ing help­ful in-depth focus to Africa devel­op­ment. The “Africa Growth Ini­tia­tive” is a valu­able con­tin­u­ing source of research information.

Rein­forc­ing and direct­ly relat­ed to the arti­cle by Greg Ip, the World Bank has just issued the “Doing Busi­ness 2019” report. The doc­u­ment eval­u­ates trends in start­ing a new busi­ness, secur­ing cred­it, qual­i­ty of gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion, absence of cor­rup­tion and relat­ed mat­ters. Sub-Saha­ran Africa is rat­ed high­est in terms of pos­i­tive reforms over the past fif­teen years.”

On the ques­tion of a “rut” in opti­mism, I believe the writer is cor­rect, right on point, that jour­nal­ists spend too much of their time try­ing to please their read­ers with neg­a­tive sto­ries that may not be in the best inter­est of their audi­ences. If there is a “rut in opti­mism” what’s the alternative?

News man­agers and pub­lish­ers, the ones who hold the keys to the cas­tle, must encour­age writ­ers and their audi­ences to seek sto­ries that point them the oth­er way. At the very least – to alter­na­tive sources of news.

On the same ques­tion of a “rut of opti­mism” that often turns read­ers off, Cyr states:

“Shared opin­ions are not nec­es­sar­i­ly entire­ly accu­rate opin­ions, but there is strength in num­bers, and the results of in-depth research bol­ster the views.”

This “strength in num­bers” basi­cal­ly is an admis­sion of the fact that over­whelm­ing the sta­tis­tics don’t lie. Yet we see news direc­tors in Amer­i­ca inun­dat­ing us with neg­a­tive news about the African continent.