Despite decades of conflict, death and tragedy, coverage of issues in Africa has often been ignored, oversimplified, or excessively focused on limited aspects. Deeper analysis, background and context has often been lacking, so despite what seems like constant images of starving children in famines, news of billions in aid to Africa from generous donor countries, the background context and analysis is often missing.

Whether aid makes the situation worse, or why there is famine and hunger in Africa when African nations are exporting crops to other parts of the world are rarely asked by the mainstream.

Africa Hardly Attracts Media Attention Despite Pressing Concerns

Recent years have seen many regions of Africa involved in war and internal or external conflict, from the seven or so countries directly involved in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to the Sierra Leone crisis and the war in Ethiopia/Eritrea and the various other civil wars.

Virgil Hawkins, author of Stealth Conflicts; How the World’s Worst Violence Is Ignored (Ashgate, October 2008), provides a useful map representing conflict death tolls between 1990 and 2007 where the square area of continents/regions corresponds to their proportion of conflict death tolls: Source: Virgil Hawkins, New World Maps, Stealth Conflicts, December 30, 2008

In addition to the conflict deaths, there have been over 9 million refugees and internally displaced people. While refugee numbers in recent years have declined, the number of internally displaced has risen: Source: UNHCR, accessed November 30, 2009

If this scale of destruction and fighting was in Europe, then people would be calling it World War III with the entire world rushing to report, provide aid, mediate and otherwise try to diffuse the situation.

Yet here, as mentioned in the media section of this web site, and noted by Virgil Hawkins , the western mainstream media does practically nothing to raise this awareness (or, perhaps it is not deemed important enough to report extensively about).

Occasional coverage is provided, but not anywhere near the volume like we had seen during the build up and the ensuing crisis in Kosovo, or Iraq, or Palestine/Israel, each of which were serious conflicts, but in terms of deaths and displaced, were often far less than many conflicts in Africa.

Hawkins did a year long study (see above new world maps link) on some major western media outlets in 2000 to see what percentage of their media focus fell where. Disappointingly, and unsurprisingly perhaps, Africa did not even figure in 10% of the coverage. In a separate article breaking down the conflict deaths since the end of the Cold War, Hawkins notes over 9 million of these deaths occurred in Africa, and adds: It quickly becomes obvious that conflicts that have dominated the agendas of actors in a position to respond (policymakers, the media, the public and academia) are often relatively small in scale compared to many of those that have consistently failed to attract attention. Virgil Hawkins, Conflict Death Tolls, Stealth Conflicts, November 23, 2008

More coverage about issues concerning Africa can be found on the Internet than the traditional mainstream media outlets, but even then it is not as easy to find the information. Side Note(Since originally making this point in 1999, additional web sites from African organizations have emerged providing a lot of information, about news, cultures, and so on about all aspects of Africa. Even the popular press in the West are providing more information on African news, although these are often very brief and without the much needed perspectives and backgrounds from political, historical, socioeconomic angles etc.)

According to research from media organization Media Tenor, from 1 January 2002 until 30 June 2003, September 11 has turned the watch back to the pre-1990’s, virtually eliminating all events and issues that are not related to either the United States or its coalition partners—especially when reporting on conflicts.… conflicts and wars played the most important role in all analysed television stations in Britain, Germany and the United States. But subtracting from this coverage Iraq and Afghanistan, only 0.2% (n=507) of all reports (N=23587) focused on conflicts in Africa. Wars without the involvement of the Western nations, do not seem newsworthy enough to appear on international TV news agendas, and the little coverage given only focuses on the brutality of the conflict and not on possible solutions.

And citing Hawkins again: The death toll from conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is literally one thousand times greater than that in Israel-Palestine, yet it is the latter that is the object of far greater media coverage … [and where] the intricacies and nuances of the conflict, political situation and peace process are almost obsessively analyzed and presented.… [African] conflicts are frequently brushed off and dismissed as being chaotic, or worthy of some vague pity or humanitarian concern, but rarely of any in-depth political analysis. But even [when there is coverage of conflicts in] Africa, the death toll has little to do with the levels of coverage. Darfur made a rare appearance on the radar of Western concern in 2004 … at a time when the known death toll from conflict there was still 80 times smaller than that in the DRC. Similarly, political violence in early 2007 in Zimbabwe resulting in one death and a number of arrests and beatings of political leaders became the object of relatively high levels of attention and indignation in the Western media. At almost exactly the same time, political protest in Guinea was put down by government forces that fired indiscriminately into crowds of protesters resulting in a total of 130 deaths and numerous arrests. Also at the same time, street battles between government and opposition forces in the capital of the DRC resulted in between 400 and 600 deaths, and resulted in the exile of the opposition leader. Yet this violence in Guinea and the DRC was virtually ignored by the Western media. Virgil Hawkins, What’s death got to do with it?, Stealth Conflicts, December 12, 2008

But why is it important whether or not media outlets in countries such as those in the West provide coverage of African and other conflicts that do not appear to involve them?

Background such as the colonial as well as post-World War II history, social and political context, international economic issues and much more are all perspectives needed to help people in the western nations and elsewhere to really begin to understand the present situations and issues in appropriate context. Simplistic views (at their simplest and crudest, they are even racist, intentional or not) offer little understanding of the complexities of causes, let alone a platform from which to form ideas on how to move forward.

In international affairs, influential nations, such as many from western countries all have direct and indirect influences around the world, so it is important for such issues to be presented broadly and to see issues such as those in Africa with this context in mind.

From a somewhat self-interest perspective (which, after all, most countries prioritize on, in international affairs), things happening far away have an impact on us. For example, J. Brian Atwood, former head of the US foreign aid agency, USAID commented that failed states (which included a number of African countries suffering from conflict) threaten our nation. They cost us too much. They create diseases that impact on us. They destabilize other nations. They stymie economic growth and they deny us economic opportunity in the largest new marketplace — the developing world. (quoted from Esman and Herring, editors, Carrots, Sticks, and Ethnic Conflict; Rethinking Development Assistance , (University of Michigan Press, 2001), Chapter 3 USAID and Ethnic Conflict: An Epiphany? by Heather S. McHugh, p. 54.)

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