Changing the narrative on African migrations
From 5–7 April, the Global Editors Network was part of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation’s flagship event, the Ibrahim Governance Weekend (IGW), which gathers prominent African political and business leaders, representatives from civil societies and Africa’s international partners. During the conference in Abidjan, GEN hosted a hackathon with the goal to develop innovative journalism prototypes to support the way we report about African migrations, which coincided with this year’s topic of the IGW, African youth: jobs or migration.
At the IGW, 8 cross-disciplinary teams of three — a journalist, a developer, and a designer — from African newsrooms based in Côte d’Ivoire, Burundi, DR Congo, Nigeria, and Senegal gathered over 3 days to develop prototypes and to tackle challenges like how can newsrooms approach the topic of migration in new and innovative ways? How can the latest technology help to better shape the narrative? How can newsrooms better understand and serve the needs of reporting about African migrations and what tools can be useful to highlight this reporting?
GEN sat down with the team from Sahara Reporters, an online community of international reporters dedicated to features and news reports from an African perspective, who won the Mo Ibrahim Foundation Editors Lab with their innovative prototype, “Africana”, and with Adebola Williams, a pioneer at the intersection of media, democracy, and social change, and CEO of REDAfrica, and we talked about how to fight misinformation on migration reporting and how the shift of technology affects the way we perceive and report about African migrations.
Akinfolarin Oluwaseun, Director of Sahara Reporters’ Media Foundation’s Civic Media Lab
GEN: Congratulations on winning the Mo Ibrahim Foundation Editors Lab! Your prototype “Africana” scored the highest in all four judging criteria — editorial quality, design, development, and implementation — and intends to fight misinformation about African migration. Can you tell us more about your idea? Where did you get your inspiration from?
Akinfolarin Oluwaseun: The project “Africana” is designed to help fight the myth and misinformation of African migration. Much of what we know about African migration is based on various misconceptions and it is cemented in our consciousness by the sorry images of mother and child clinging to the edge of a sinking boat in the middle of the mediterranean sea. I always had this guilt that Africa was on a mass exodus to Europe until I saw the data. Europe and Asia contribute 64.7% to the total global migration annually while Africa contributes only 14.1%. However, from the media perception, it seems there’s an African exodus going on. I came into the hackathon with a bias and guilt for causing the global migration and left with a conviction that the truth about the migration had to be told.
This idea is for African migrant data to piggyback on stories of African migrant achievement. Through the “Africana” website, stories of African migrant achievement will be sourced for partner newsrooms.
Sahara Reporters is encouraging citizen journalists to report about corruption and serves as an outlet for objective reporting of accurate news. Throughout the IGW, many pointed out how negative the narrative of African migration is, even though Africans are the lowest number on migrating outside its own continent. How do you explain this? And is the ultimate goal of “Africana” to balance out the negative narrative?
First of all, we have to note that migration is a natural phenomenon. We all migrated out of Africa at some point and we will keep moving back and forth for security, opportunity and sometimes love. However, the media has unwittingly contributed to the bias people have against African migration because of the gruesome images of people struggling to cross the desert to Europe. These stories inform our understanding of migration as a whole. Ask yourself despite the fact that 64.7% of global migration is between Europe and Asia, where are pictures of Europeans or Asians on leaky boats in the middle of the sea. Also, African migrants suffer from the problem of being the “other”, when they get to their destination they stand out but when there is an economic downturn or things go wrong the “other” is the first to be blamed. Yes, “Africana” will balance out the negative narrative by providing newsrooms with an opportunity to access the stories of the contribution of the African migrant communities. While “Africana” will publish news on its platform, it reckons that helping other newsrooms access the data and people behind African migrant achievement will increase the positive reportage around this group.
What is Sahara Reporters’/Civic Media Lab’s role in reporting about African migration? It often seems like mostly news outlets from outside of Africa report about African migration, do you think that’s the case?
“Africana”’s web application will help create access to the data and people behind the achievement of the African migrant. Our work is to create the supply of leads, access to the people, access to data of sub-groups, access to sources from their home country etc.
Yes, news outlets outside Africa report more on African migration because it has become an issue with them. 70% of African migration is within Africa and there is no fuss about it because it is not much of an issue with us. I also think it is the fear that has been built into the journalists outside Africa themselves, our hope is that a visit to “Africana” will change their perspective about migration.
Africa’s youth is on the rise, and its trajectory is going to determine the future. They focus on opportunity creation instead of opportunity expectation — how does the use of technology and access to information play into this and what are the dangers to it?
Technology is the driver of the opportunity created for the African youth. The danger for African youth is to become mere consumers of technology and not creators of it. As the dependence on technology increases there would be an increasing need for ownership. Access to information necessarily does not have to be a bad thing, it is the use of that information that matters and the intensity of the use of technology is solving African problems. Until we are technology creators African youth cannot be effective problem solvers and this century of the youth is the first time the world will depend on its youth to save it.
Coming back to your prototype “Africana”: The website will be a source for newsrooms and journalists to get reliable data on migration, what are your main goals and hopes for “Africana” to support the way we report about African migration?
Our major goal is to provide ample and reliable data around migration to help journalists tell a more balanced story. Also, we hope that when we create easier access to the people behind African migrant achievement, there would be an increased reportage and the stories of achievement and the data behind it and the fear of “the African migrant” will be reduced.
Adebola Williams, CEO of RED
GEN: Can you share your thoughts on how to use media differently to change the narrative on African migrations and shift it into a more positive one?
Adebola Williams: The media remains, arguably, the most important segment of any society. There is an underlying power in determining the flow of information — what citizens should believe, share, accept and act upon. Even in the era of fake news, at a time when journalism is in a struggle to survive, the media still remains powerful.
With such power comes the need to appear impartial; where journalists want to establish trust for the audience by emphasizing the ‘viewlessness’ of the story. In this case, I would call that lazy journalism, because what you have, at the end, is a ‘View from Nowhere’. The issue of African migration requires hard work, commitment to the issue and a natural desire to actually tell the audience what is truly happening. People are dying and the fatalities are high. But this is happening all over the world.
When we face the facts and look at the numbers, the media has a responsibility to tell the audience that Africans are not flooding Europe. To counter xenophobia, racism and migrants’ fears, people need to know the truth — that most Africans who migrate are ambitious and capable persons who intend to build better lives for themselves. Like Mo Ibrahim said, migration is not a disease. We understand that there is a crisis in many parts of the African continent, but migration to Europe is not one.
The topic of African migrations is little perceived from an African perspective. Instead, it is full of misconceptions, but finding the sources responsible becomes obliterate when the topic continues to be represented from the global North or the Western context. Why is it that we call people moving from South to North “migrants” and people moving from North to South “expats”?
It’s all about the perception and bias; the idea is that those leaving the South for North are migrants seeking for ways to ‘escape’. On the other hand, those who might make the uncomplicated journey to the South are depicted as expatriates and hardworking citizens going to work in a foreign country. Firstly, audiences rely on journalists to distil complex facts, filter through information and present consumable stories, but ignore, either intentional or otherwise, that these journalists might also come with personal bias or beliefs.
Secondly, the lexicon used in human migration basically places the white person above the African, where the use of the word ‘expats’ now depends on the country of origin, the economic status and the social class. So, when top professionals in Africa are going to work in Europe, they are not considered expats but immigrants. But anyone can be an immigrant — African, Asian, European, North & South American — no matter the part of the world or what of the economic ladder you exist.
As consumers of media, we are responsible for the content we read, hear, and watch, so what role do we readers play in the portrait of African migration?
In two different studies conducted by two researchers in 2010 (here and here), they both explained that South African tabloids such as The Daily Sun, The Voice, Daily News and Sunday Sun consistently promoted sensationalism, anti-immigrant sentiment and even gave unlimited freedom to xenophobic reporters, which according to one of them, Professor Herman Wasserman, meant that they constantly tapped into widespread xenophobic attitudes among local communities, and then sensationally repeated and amplified them.
But this is the same everywhere, so what we have created is an echo chamber where people look for news and stories that reaffirm what they believe or want to believe. To get true, factual stories supported with evidence, the audience will need to deliberately search for opposing views on human migration, look for means to place faces to migration stories and arrive at their own conclusion. We need to seek more education on immigration rather than succumb to stories that try to contribute to panic, sensationalism and inhumane excitement.
Smartphones and its global connection have transformed the lives of hundreds of millions and allow them accessing information quickly. Journalists today have a multitude of ways to get their work to the audience, do you think digital journalism by using the availability of tech like smartphones is the next step of reporting in Africa?
I sincerely believe that the massive rise of smartphones and digital technology could be a blessing for journalism in Africa. Digital journalism is all about power, access and responsibility. With the blossoming of digital tools and platforms, news organisations have been provided with a plethora of new opportunities in information sourcing and delivery, including the responsibility of making sure that the audience has access to an educated, well-rounded and robust storytelling to allow them to make their own decisions.
Live video platforms such as Periscope, Facebook, Instagram, and others have become a boom for news reporting, opening up a range of high-traffic avenues for delivering information to consumers. Innovation in media reporting is widespread, as platforms can now employ the use of interactive formats with videos, slideshows, podcasts, map mashups, VR-modules, and others, which completely redefine the experience of the end user. More than the use of smartphones, this is the next step of reporting in Africa.
You’re not only co-founder of RED but you also co-founded EnoughisEnough (EiE), one of Nigeria’s foremost civic participation groups and a voice for young people on politics. How are you using media as a tool to spread your message of empowering young Africans and to access knowledge?
As the parent company, the RED brand is a combination of various inspiring and ground-breaking companies with the intent to use media experiences in inspiring the African youth to understand their responsibilities, rise up and take action. When you understand that youth in Africa constitute close to 21% of the global population, you realise that it is important that we become the solution to our continent’s challenges, and begin to access knowledge, ideas and actions that will create the Africa that we all dream of.
For example, our Media, PR and Empowerment division, Red Media Africa, is all about helping organisations leverage on inspiration, empowerment and action in order to connect with audiences, enhance bottom-lines, and lead in their industries. We also have our Development division, The Future Project, a social enterprise set-up with a strong, practical commitment to human and capital development in Africa. Currently, it is the largest home-grown network of policy-makers, business people, and other stakeholders in Africa.
Under The Future Project, we have one of the biggest youth events in Africa, The Future Awards Africa — an annual awards event that is dedicated to celebrating young people between the ages of 18 and 31, who have made outstanding achievement in the year under consideration.
Then we have Content division, Y!/YNaija.com, which also includes the television arm, Y! TV, where we tell inspired African stories to audiences with a focus on trending issues and ideas for young Africans.
Interview with Sahara Reporters and Adebola Williams by Alexandra Peng.
Akinfolarin Oluwaseun is the Director of Sahara Reporters’ Media Foundation’s Civic Media Lab, a centre which intersects data, journalism, technology and design to help deepen democratic participation in Nigeria. Sahara Reporters is a groundbreaking news website that encourages citizen journalists to report ongoing corruption and government malfeasance in Africa.
Adebola Williams is a pioneer at the intersection of media, democracy and social change. He is Co-Founder and CEO of RED, which owns Africa’s largest portfolio of youth media brands that engage millions of youths on the continent, including Red Media Africa, StateCraft Inc, The Future Awards Africa, and YNaija.com. Adebola co-founded EnoughisEnough (EiE), one of Nigeria’s foremost civic participation groups and a voice for young people on politics.
