MAKING THE CASE: Where Is the African News?

Today the South African news channels celebrated Africa Day, but how African are they?

It seems like, to the local news channels, "Africa" is just an accessory; eNews Channel AFRICA, AFRICAN News Network 7 and  The South African Broadcast Commission News Channel (who refers to themselves as "Africa's News Leader).

Yet when it comes to Africa, the news channels that pride themselves on an apparent African identity are more than willing to talk about Africa, yet they have no reporters on the ground in the rest of the continent.


When it comes to 'telling African' stories, the domestic news channels are more than able to do so, but they depend on news reports from foreign news agencies like the Associated Press or Reuters for video material and in depth details of the news. They are not able to find African news themselves. In fact if it were not for western news organisations there would be no African news on South African television


eNCA had an amazing African news division, eNCA Africa, that was under the helm of Chris Maroleng for quite a while. It was made up of African based reporters telling African stories, there was a daily three hour "Africa Edition" programme providing African news bulletins, there was both a West and East African bureau (which was led by the excellent Robyn Kriel) and also the weekly Africa 360 news magazine programme.

All that is gone: Chris Maroleng left the organisation to work at MTN, "Africa Edition" was quietly ended, the West and East African bureaus were shut down with Robyn Kriel becoming the CNN's East African Correspondent (the first person to ever hold that title at the American-based news organisation) and Africa 360 getting canned as well. Why? eNCA's managing director of news, Patrick Conroy, is quoted as saying, "here was essentially no operational need for the TV news feed any longer." This sentiment was echoed by eNCA's parent company stating it was at the time shutting down its unprofitable ventures.


SABC News just this past Friday went live on DStv's Rest of Africa platform (because for some reason there is DStv South Africa and DStv Rest of Africa). This was celebrated at a gala event attended by President Zuma who said it was time for Africans tot ell African stories, something we have heard too often before. While covering the event, co anchor Ayanda-Allie Paine also curiously referred to the SABC News Channel as the SABC African News Channel, which could hint that the SABC is joining the fad of including "Africa" in the name without it meaning much. There is rumours that the channel is planning on launching an African news bulletin or news magazine soon, though nothing is confirmed yet.



The only South African news channel that currently has a daily African news bulletin is ANN7 with "Africa Tonight" which is hosted by Gladys Sithole. Though it is a daily African news bulletin, it cannot achieve much without the channel actually having any reporters based outside of South Africa. This means that Africa Tonight ends up being a daily chat show about African current affairs along with African news sourced from, again, western news agency like the Associated Press. Occasionally it will feature the odd Skype call to someone outside of South African to discuss an African news topic.

Nigerian-based Arise News had more accredited media covering the South African State of the Nation Address this year that South African-based ANN7. How many reporters do you expect the South African news channels to have at the Nigerian equivalent of the SONA Address? Nought is the answer.

Even Chinese news channel CCTV has a daily one hour African news programme

What is even worse is that American-based news organisations are doing even better at coring African news than the South African news channels that boast about their "Africanness." For example, the aforementioned Robyn Kriel at CNN. One could then argue that CNN should have someone in Africa considering they have an international network as well (they have multiple reporters covering the continent) and thus should cover Africa. But then CBS News, a news brand exclusively available on American television, puts the South African news channels to shame. CBS News has African Correspondent Debora Patta going to places in Africa to tell stories not told by channels that are based in Africa and getting high quality exclusive visuals, something the South African news channels do not usually make an effort to get. Even financial news channel, Bloomberg, has a decent presence in the Africa that exists beyond the borders of Africa.

For this month of May, however, all the South African news channels have been creating the illusion that they are premiere African news destinations by covering things like the Pan African Parliament and having in studio discussions with guests from across the continent. But the thing is these people are in South Africa, and so is the Pan African Parliament. There was not much effort for the local news channels to get to these African stories.


It is rather disappointing that the South African news channels get to flaunt the "African" accessory as they choose without actually bringing something to the African news table that they did not get from a different news organisation. I really hope that there will come a time when Africans no longer have to depend on western news organisations like the AP to tell African stories. This becomes especially more important now that the African story becomes more important than ever before and needs to be told.