Promoting the Image of Africa through Media:

The Role of African Leaders (Case Study of Nigeria)

Chizirim Favour Zeph-Ojiako & Blessing Winny Anakwuba

http://dx.doi./org/10.4314/ujah.v20i3.5

Abstract
Media is the mirror through which people see the outside world.
Media is information and information, they say, is power. The role
of media in the obnoxious depiction of Africa and its people, which
is mainly business-oriented, cannot be overemphasized.
Innumerable negative reports and exaggerated stories have been
intellectually presented, discussed and debated on both local and
international media platforms with very wide or large audiences.
This has affected Africans, especially how they are perceived and
treated in the outside world and this has in turn caused emotional
and psychological distress for Africans. What worsen the situation
is the nonchalance of African leaders in taking adequate measures
to put a stop to this stereotypical and Afro-pessimistic media
exposure. This is why this study after examining the role of the
Western media in stereotyping Africa through the Agenda-setting
theory, and the sad experiences of Nigerians and other Africans in
the diaspora gathered through interview, suggested roles that her
leaders can play in promoting and rebranding the image of Africa
and Nigeria in particular, in order to restore her glory before it
descends into new lows. This paper therefore, presents the extent
of this unfortunate portrayal of Africa to the rest of the world, how
deep this has affected Africa and Africans negatively, the reasons
for this negative connotations with Africa, and why the time is now
not only for Africa to show to the world its profound histories and
beautiful stories impeccably but also to strategically control the

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access and activities of researchers/ tourists/ media outlets in

sensitive places within the continent. Also, how the African leaders
can regain its image positively by promoting the real Africa to the
world through Media.

Introduction
Media is a way in which people from different backgrounds and
ethnicities communicate information to the rest of the world.
Media is a vital source of communication. This is why media either
it is printed, electronic or the web, according to Gauva and Nity
(2017) is the only medium, which helps in making people
informed. News is the most significant characteristic of media
which is of paramount importance to one’s social life. In this light,
the Business dictionary (2019) described media as any
communication channels through which news, entertainment,
education, data, or promotional messages are disseminated. Media
are communication outlets or tools used to store and deliver
information or data.
Media is the eye through which the society sees beyond its
immediate surrounding and this function of the media has been
massively exploited by the Western Media in painting an age-long
derogatory picture of Africa as a nation bedeviled with war,
starvation, disease, corruption and economic holocaust, forgetting
the many victories and successes recorded so far. Heavy media,
often known as corporate or traditional media, has done a
considerable damage to both Africa and its people. Inaccurate and
gross generalizations of African realities can be easily qualified as
crude stereotyping and downright essentializations (Mami, 2017).
Poncian (2015) (as cited in Oguh, 2015), observed that during the
19th and 20th centuries, the European colonial powers created and
disseminated negative images about Africa in order to justify their

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activities and domination of Africa. This they had done only to

capture the attention of audiences and for some unexplained
economic benefits. This was supported by Moeller (1999) who
blames American media outlets for promoting crises and disasters
using “formulaic reporting”, sensationalism and references to
American cultural icons in order to capture and hold the attention
of audiences. She stated that the operating principle behind much
of the news business is to appeal to an audience especially a large
audience with large demographics for advertisers.
Some perpetrators of these acts claim that this media
representation of Africa is to gain public compassion which will
appeal to humanitarian organizations to send aids. Compassion can
be defined as an empathetic and altruistic feeling for the pains and
misfortune that another is experiencing as a result of the improper
working of the society in which they found themselves. According
to Nussbaum (as cited in Hoijer, 2003), compassion is a painful
emotion occasioned by the awareness of another person’s
undeserved misfortune. She regards compassion as a complex
emotion including such cognitive beliefs that the suffering of the
other is serious, and that the suffering person does not deserve the
pain. This makes the suffering person an innocent victim of some
gruesome acts or circumstances. This simply means that
compassion is both an affective and a cognitive reaction. Also
according to Sznaider (as cited in Hoijer, 2003), public compassion
originates in an abstract, theoretical and rational idea of humanity,
not in religious charity. It is closely connected with the ideas of the
enlightenment and the humanitarian movements that arose in the
eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, such as movements to
abolish slavery, child labour, and so on.
Sznaider defines two perspectives on public compassion:
one related to democratization processes in which equality is

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central, and the other related to the market society, in which an

extending exchange of goods and services unintentionally also
extends the moral concern for strangers. He also discusses the
Marxist critique according to which compassion is “nothing other
than the narcissistic desires of an exploitative bourgeoise to feel
good about itself” (Sznaider, 1998). We certainly may or may not
agree with Sznaider in his view on other issues, but his notion
about the connection between public compassion and
democratization processes is more reasonable. This totally
corroborates Sharma’s idea on humanitarian aids, Sharma (2017),
noted that to be the target group of humanitarian communication is
not necessarily experienced much differently from being the target
group of any other kind of advertisement. This he said is not so
surprising since humanitarian organizations operates today much
like brands and speak to us as consumers just like any other brand
will do and the fact that the humanitarian enterprise has become
big business implies that it is increasingly difficult not to
experience such enterprise as business as usual. He continued that
while the modern version of humanitarianism, which emerged in
the late 18th century alongside the American Declaration of
Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man,
has typically understood itself as something that is universal, a
common focus in recent critiques of compassion, sympathy, and
pity is the processes of politicization that seem central to the moral
and affective practices of humanitarianism.
One major critique of the “politics” of compassion
maintains that compassion is, in its very structure, an asymmetrical
feeling that is typically directed downwards in social and
geopolitical hierarchies. Thus these hierarchies may be reproduced
once such hierarchies uphold the continuous forming of subjects
and objects of compassion (Sharma, 2017).This is typical of the

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African experience, humanitarian organizations have done this to

continue to announce and maintain their narcissistic presence in
Africa even when the Western negative media representation of
Africa has been met with what Moeller (1999) called Compassion
fatigue. Thus, Oguh (2015) argued that Western media’s viewpoint
on Africa has outlived its usefulness.
In the following, compassion has to do with perceiving the
suffering and the needs of distant others through media images and
reports. Global compassion is then a moral sensibility or concern
for remote strangers from different continents, cultures and
societies. The discourse of global compassion takes place in the
intersection between politics, humanitarian organizations, the
media, and the audience/citizens (Hoijer, 2003). Since these media
stereotyping of Africa have been met with compassion fatigue and
enough profit has been made from the business intensions of the
Western media, it is high time the western media channeled its
energy to some other areas so that Africa can move on as it dusts
off the stench of several years of negative exposition. These
necessitated the need for this qualitative study, enhanced through
responses gathered from interviews with Africans in the diaspora,
and proffering solutions which the African leaders and Africans
also can join hands together to implement for a better Africa.

Theoretical Framework
This study is examined using the agenda setting theory which was
propounded by Max McCombs and Donald Shaw in a study on the
1968 American presidential election, but the beginning of agenda
setting theory can be traced as far as 1922, when Walter Lippmann
expressed his concern on the vital role that mass media can play in
influencing the setting of certain image on the public’s mind even
though he never used the term agenda setting theory (Zain, 2014).

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This theory describes the potency of the news media in influencing

the importance people placed on the topics of the public agenda.
According to the Communication theory (n.d.), the media focuses
on how people should think about the nature of the issues. Thus,
sensationalization of news reports may happen to bring in the
interest of the audience. In fact, media wants to grab attention and
implant thoughts in people’s minds about some serious issues, that
is why media turn certain issues viral. It asserted that the main
concept associated with this theory is gate keeping. Gate keeping is
in charge of and has control of the selection of content discussed in
the media and it is assumed that the public cares mostly about the
product of media gate keeping. The news media decides ‘what’
events to broadcast and show through the media ‘gates’ on the
basis of ‘newsworthiness’. This is what the media has exploited
thus imprinting certain images in the minds of audience and
viewers about Africa and because media audiences do not just
receive information passively but are actively involved, often
unconsciously in making sense of the message within their
personal and social contexts and this has caused stereotypical
perception of Africa and Africans in general which has not augured
well with the continent. Indeed, the popular stereotypes of Africa
in Western media have essentially turned the continent into a one
story issue which resulted in the paucity of positive stories about
Africa except stories of war, danger, darkness, violence, poverty,
disease, and hopelessness. Michira (2002) also stated that Africa is
often portrayed as a homogenous entity comprising uncivilized and
heathen peoples who are culturally, intellectually, politically, and
technically backward or inferior.

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Some stereotypical Experiences of Africans

Africa as a continent has been failed by media within and outside
the continent. To most people outside the continent, Africa is a
desert with plenty animals and few humans who live in extreme
poverty. This without an iota of doubt explains why Africans
abroad including the co-researcher are often asked appalling
questions, and also receiving unjust and unfair treatments all over
the world.
During the co-researcher’s studies in China, she witnessed
different sorts of feelings and treatments from the Chinese people
because she is African. Some of the Chinese people exhibit gross
and despicable reaction towards Africans when they are sited
close to them on public buses, trains, airplanes, markets, parks and
so on; they cover their noses, some would prefer to stand rather
than sit close to an African just for the fear of contracting diseases.
Other times, the brave ones would ask such questions as; what
does a zebra look like? You do not have houses in Africa right,
only huts?
One African student studying in the northern part of China
bitterly narrated her ordeal to the researcher how a young Chinese
boy boldly approached her to ask her whether or not she could eat
Chinese sand? She was lost. How can one possibly eat any sand let
alone Chinese sand? She asked herself. As he saw the outright
bewilderment and unhidden confusion on her face, he quickly
apologized for his somewhat ignorance with further explanation
that they usually see African children on CGTN (a popular Chinese
broadcasting television network) eating sand because they lacked
food and water. She went on complaining about how she almost
developed high blood pressure and self-hate at the first few months
of her arrival in China until she eventually got used to these
reactions after some consolation from her friends who had been in

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the country before her. One cannot blame the Chinese people in
this scenario for their ignorance towards Africa because they were
expressing what the media fed them.
Another African student studying in the southern part of
China interviewed for the cause of this research also lamented on
how he usually hear Chinese people (kids included) call him
黑鬼heigui (black devil). At first, when he newly arrived China, he
did not notice the name was addressed to him, after a few months
as he moved around to more places he noticed some kids pointed at
him while saying 黑鬼heigui, that was when he realized he was the
‘black devil’. He was so curious to understand why a fellow human
being would refer to him as a devil, a Chinese friend explained to
him how Africa is full of thieves, kidnappers, thugs and all other
sorts of criminals, therefore, to an average Chinese it is not safe to
be around an African because they are devils as depicted on media
outlets. He complained that his greatest annoyance was how these
Chinese who have never travelled outside their hometowns would
ignorantly have a strong common belief about a whole continent
without a visit. He further explained that after the explanation from
a Chinese about the reason for calling Africans ‘black devils’, he
did a research on how Chinese see Africans, that was when he
came across the application called 抖音 (douyin), an application for
creating short videos. According to him, he saw horrible videos
and images that made him shed tears, hundreds of appalling
images shared by Chinese that have visited Africa which made him
ask himself a lot of questions such as; how African government
can allow foreigners not only Chinese to go to sensitive places and
take sensitive pictures to show to the rest of the world. It is not
hidden that some people in some parts of the African continent still
move around naked, it is the job of the government of such
countries to protect their nakedness by making strict rules guiding

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them such as prohibition of foreigners from visiting such places,

even if they do, phones and cameras should be restricted. To name
a few, he complained about the most disgusting video of all, which
was a video of a Chinese man that visited one of those African
countries and was allowed to abuse two teenage girls by grabbing
their breasts while posing for the camera, he uploaded those
horrible pictures on the application called Douyin for the whole
world to see with the caption, “This is Africa”. ‘How can anyone
after watching such despicable post respect anyone from such
continent?’ he asked. He continued that this made him realize how
the world sees Africa and how bad the media has reshaped her
image.
During an interview with a Ghanaian studying in the UK,
she admitted that because she is African, everyone assumed she
was on a scholarship or a daughter of a politician because they
believe that Africans are too poor to study abroad let alone study in
one of the most prestigious institutions in the UK.
In addition, another Nigerian male studying in Germany
also lamented that whenever he introduces himself to some new
friends or classmates as a Nigerian, he often gets questions such as
‘hope your family is okay because of Boko Haram’? Have the
Chibok girls been released? Are you here on asylum to get away
from Boko Haram? Many constantly reminded him of how he
made the right choice by leaving Nigeria because it is an unsafe
place to be; as if Nigeria is the most dangerous place in the world.
These and many more are the daily experiences of Africans in the
outside world.

The Way Forward for Africa

With the colossal wreck or damage the misrepresentation of Africa
has created towards this lovely continent and its people, and the

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direct or indirect negative socio-economic impacts, giant steps

must be taken to restore the image of this graciously endowed
continent before we descend into new lows. Long time exposure to
denaturalizing and stereotypical contents about Africa by the
media industry deliberately demeans and ridicules one’s sense of
being as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie quoted in her TEDx talk in
2009, that stories can break the dignity of a people. She also added
that “Africa is a continent full of catastrophes, there are immense
ones and depressing ones, but there are other stories that are not
about catastrophes. And it is very important, it is just as important
to talk about them.” Therefore, it is high time Africa and her
leaders rose from its slumber and took the bull by the horn by re-
writing her stories by herself and not continuing to allow the Afro-
pessimistic Western media to continue with its one-sided story.
Some ways by which this herculean task can be done are discussed
below.

Social Media
Social media has not only been used as a means of socializing and
connecting with people but has also acted as a strong force of
influence on any matter of concern round the world. It has yielded
maximum results in pursuing causes that have bettered the lives of
the masses, to put the government of the day on track in various
climes, to fight injustices, etc. Thus Africans can use the same
weapon to demean, mortify and annihilate completely the negative
pictures that Western media has painted of Africa over the
centuries. Africans have been known to be internet and social
media savvy because the number of Africans who use the internet
has increased from 4,514,400 in 2000 to 453, 329, 534 in 2017,
giving Africa an internet penetration of 35.2% and African social

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media users have also increased that at the end of 2017 about
177,005,700 were on Facebook (Mkono, 2018).
Africa can take the world by storm if every social media
user utilizes every opportunity to paint a different “beautiful”
picture of Africa especially bloggers, entertainers and well known
social media influencers. Mkono (2018) corroborates this by
stating that social media presents a powerful platform for creating
multiple stories about Africa and that by embracing the
accessibility of modern technology, African bloggers and
commentators are using Facebook, Youtube and other platforms to
undermine longstanding “Afro-pessimistic” stereotypes, the
backward continent characterized by strife and poverty. Also, by
giving ordinary people the space to share their everyday
experiences, African bloggers are capturing positive “human
moments”. These moments of joy, play, celebration, love and
human interaction, create new narratives of Africa.
The social media should be replete with diverse and
multiple pictures of the uniqueness and the beauty of the African
continent; the everyday playful and smiling African child, the
edifices, roads, thriving agricultural setting, beautiful green
pasture, the classy and luxury lifestyle of Africa and the kindness
and humanity displayed every day. This, to a large extent will
reduce the dangers of a single story as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
put it at her TEDx talk where she emphasized that multiple stories
are important stressing that “ the single story creates stereotypes,
and that the problem with stereotypes is not that they are not
untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become
the only story” she said. Also, that ‘Stories can break the dignity of
a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity’ (Adichie,
2009). This function can be perfectly done using the social media
as according to Mkono (2018), social media presents a powerful

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platform for creating more plural stories about Africa even though
the Afro-positive turn should not be about whitewashing and
romanticizing Africa but should be about challenging the simplistic
nature of Afro-pessimism, through introducing multiple and
complex images about the continent and its people. The federal
government of Nigeria can sponsor jingles and orientation
programs that can educate bloggers and citizens alike on the right
content for this venture.

Hash Tags
Over the years, especially in this era of internet and social media,
many causes have been brought to limelight, fought for and won
by using captivating and simple “Catch-phrases” or words which
relate to the issue being championed, these words are called hash
tags, written with the character # attached to it. Merriam Webster
dictionary defined a hash tag as a word or phrase preceded by the
symbol # that classifies or categorizes the accompanying text (such
as a tweet).
According to Merriam-webster.com, social media has made
the hash tag a ubiquitous part of internet culture, starting with
Twitter and expanding to other sites. For instance, even a layman
understands the phrase “Bring Back our Girls” (BBOG) which was
used and still a common phrase on the media concerning the
abducted Chibok school girls. “Yes, we can”, America can be great
again”, “Sex for grades”, these are few of the catch-phrases that
are very popular both in Africa and in the rest of the world. Thus,
such catch-phrases can be coined towards Rebranding African
nations and letting the world see the beauty of the African
continent. This is because McDonald (2017) stated that hash tags
help to increase one’s social media presence as they make one’s
content viewable by anyone who has interest in that hashtag as it

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goes beyond just one’s followers, furthermore, they also help to

build a brand for a business or for someone by engaging with
customers and joining the conversation about what is trending.
And if one participates in high-traffic conversation by discovering
the biggest trending topics, one is more likely to gain great
visibility and the more visibility one gets, the more likely such one
is able to create a larger audience and a larger audience
exponentially increases the likelihood of fresh leads for business.
Thus hash tags are very effective tools that can be used to re-write
the place Africa occupies in the Western media and in the minds of
people around the globe. For instance, the phrase ‘Nigeria; Good
people, Great nation’ was introduced in 2009 by the then minister
of information and culture, Prof. Dora Akunyili, for the rebranding
project of Nigeria which painted a beautiful picture of Nigeria as a
beautiful nation with hardworking citizens. Such jingles and catch
phrases help to rebrand and re-orientate the outside world about
Africa (Muozoba, 2009).

Government Regulation and Control

The United States of America which is considered one of the most
developed and powerful countries in the world witnesses gun
violence every day. According to Brady (2019), every day, about
310 people are shot in the United States, among which 100 people
are shot and killed. A lot of people have also died in knife attacks
in the UK yet none of these countries have been marked/branded
‘unsafe’, and one barely sees or reads such on the news. For
instance, Hoijer (2003) noted that in the recent Afghanistan War,
American authorities mounted pressure on the media to refrain
from reporting about civilian casualties and sufferings in order not
to adversely affect the public support for the bombings. The
chairman of CNN instructed the staff that if such news were going

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to be broadcast they should balance the reporting of victims in

Afghanistan with reminders to the audience of the victims of the
terror attack on World Trade Centre and the Pentagon (Ottosen,
2002). As indicated by a study of New York Times also, the press
seemed to have followed the recommendations, Björnemyr &
Wahlqvist, (as cited in Hoijer, 2003).This clearly shows that other
parts of the world have regulations and control for what is
published or broadcast but Africans on the other hand (especially
the leaders) wash their dirty linen in public view mostly for
personal reasons. People so much believe what they see in the
news, they only know what you show them. China for instance,
despite its massive economic growth still have 30.4 million people
living in poverty according to Forbes (n.d.), most of the poor in
China live in the country side. Their farmland may be semi-desert
and homes carved into a mountainside instead of along city streets.
United States anti-poverty nonprofit organization the Borgen
Project says on its blog as quoted by Jennings (2018), “Tall glass-
and-steel skyscrapers loom over gritty, crumbling slums.” National
level booms in infrastructure development may have missed the
villages where impoverished Chinese live. Schools lack the
technology or qualified teachers expected in urban classrooms, and
business owners see little point in locating factories in places
where infrastructure lags”. None of these are shown to the rest of
the world because of some government regulations on media.
Therefore, it is pertinent for African leaders to put some measure
of restriction on what or not the media can have access to and
broadcast for the world to see.

Recommendations
Promoting the image of a nation or country lies solely in the hands
of its leaders. A leader not only leads but also guides, influences,

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protects and promotes the interest of its people. This is why

Gamelearn (2016) says that a leader must be at the forefront to lead
and guide his/her people until the desired goal is reached. A leader
protects its territory which he/she leads, by promoting its image to
the world.
Before China became popular to the world through its
advanced engagement and expertise in technology, China was
already known to the rest of the world by promoting an integral
part of her culture through media which is martial arts. This
aroused the interests of people to visit China to witness this
amazing display of strength which is not only energetic and lively
but also quite entertaining. Until the co-researcher visited China,
she always thought that all Chinese people were physically strong
and good in martial arts because that was the image the Chinese
government and its media painted of the country to the rest of
world, which had a great positive impact on how the rest of the
world see China. In other words, what you show the world is what
they will know. Therefore, African leaders can restore the image of
Africa to the world by promoting its beautiful nature for the rest of
the world to see and appreciate. There are gazillion of things to be
proud of in Africa. To name a few; Nigeria is famous for its
diverse cultural heritage and natural tourist sites which when
properly promoted and exhibited for the world to see will attract
positive vibes to Africa; tourism, foreign direct investment and
great partnerships. Ghana previously known as the “Gold of Coast”
is fascinating with rich historical background, because of its wealth
in natural resources, especially gold. Ghana is also known as a
country with outstanding economy. In the recent years, Ghana has
attained rising human capital development and rapid economic
growth. It has been named one of the fastest growing economies in
the entire Africa and ranked among the top ten countries in the

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world with a rapidly growing economy (Uwa, 2018). Kigali in

Rwanda, on the other hand, has been known to be one of the
cleanest cities in the world and an emerging technology hub
(burdie.com, 2019). In addition to these, African leaders should
create and air programs on television and social media to celebrate
and promote incredibly talented Africans such as William
Kamkwamba, a Malawian teenager who at the age of 14 taught
himself how to build a windmill out of junk and bring power to his
village. He then went on to build a second, larger windmill to
power irrigation pumps. He did all these from books he read from
the library (TED, 2017). Onoride Reginald Aziza the Nigerian
student who bagged 3 first class degrees including one from
Cambridge University at the age of 23, Dokosi (2019), and the last
but not the least is a young man in Anambra state who built a
power generating set that is hydro-powered from junk also. The
world should know about these African geniuses.

Conclusion
Over the decades, many negative stories have been told about
Africa through diverse media; stories of war, crimes, hunger,
diseases, violence etc, but hardly does one hear her good and
inspiring stories. This has led to the very degrading and unfair
treatments meted to Africans everywhere in the world; from travel
bans, embarrassing suspicions, isolations, unwarranted arrests, and
in some cases, loss of lives, etc, these in turn result to
psychological and emotional trauma, depression, self-pity, low self
esteem and so on. This vicious cycle continues. What makes it
unfortunate is that African leaders do little or nothing to change the
narrative for Africa, even in some cases when loss of lives is
involved forgetting that none is without some dirty linen except
that you choose whether to air them in public view.

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This paper therefore, presents the extent of this unfortunate

media portrayal of Africa to the rest of the world, how deep this
has affected Africa and Africans negatively, the reasons for these
negative Afro-pessimism, and why the time is now not only for
Africa to show to the world its profound histories and beautiful
stories impeccably but also to strategically control the access and
activities of researchers/ tourists/ media outlets in sensitive places
within the continent. Lastly, how the African leaders can regain
our image positively by promoting the real and beautiful Africa to
the world through Media.

Chizirim Favour Zeph-Ojiako

Department of Chinese Studies
Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka
ojiakoiruoma@yahoo.com
&
Blessing Winny Anakwuba
Ekwueme Centre for
Multidisciplinary Research
Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka
anakwubawinny@gmail.com

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Role of African Leaders (Case Study of Nigeria)

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