confidentially speaking
The Africa Confidential Blog
Western state media retreats from Africa as social media booms
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The United States' administration’s decision to slash government funding to media organisations such as Voice of America, like the shuttering of USAID, continues an established trend in the west. US and European media houses have beaten a retreat from Africa over the past decade. The BBC’s Africa Service was badly hit by budget cuts in 2023 after the broadcaster’s licence fee was frozen. With hundreds of millions of listeners in Africa and Asia, VoA and the BBC were exemplars of soft diplomatic power.
Shifting geopolitics alignments are shaped by a struggle between the US, China, Europe and Russia – as well as the middle powers such as the Gulf States, Turkey and Brazil. Africa is often at the heart of the rivalry – supplying green transition minerals or targeted by new policies on defence, security and migration control.
The exit of western media has been partly filled by China. State-controlled Xinhua News Agency established its African headquarters in Nairobi in 2006, now the organisation’s largest base outside Beijing.
Most Africans get news via audio and video on social media sites – 77% of Kenyans, according to a Reuters study last year. That means more influence for Donald Trump’s ‘tech bros’: advisor Elon Musk owns X, while Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta owns Facebook and Instagram. It also leaves state-backed rivals such as Radio France Internationale, Deutsche Welle and Al Jazeera struggling to compete.