African news organisations face a growing institutional challenge, media practitioners argued this week: how to build cooperative reporting structures across the continent capable of challenging entrenched patterns in international coverage and fostering a sense of shared purpose among African audiences.
The call came during a panel discussion held on Moscow on Monday, on the sidelines of the ongoing Russia-Africa Summit. The session, titled “Africa Must Unite, Africa Is Not a Country: How Can Media Bring Together Diverse Parts of the Continent?”, was hosted by RT International television news presenter Rory Suchet and drew media practitioners from across the continent.
Panellists framed the issue as one of editorial mandate and responsibility. Namibian media expert Peter Denk told the discussion that international coverage of Africa remained dominated by reports on conflict, poverty, disease and political instability, with positive developments and the everyday experiences of ordinary people frequently overlooked. He referenced a 2024 study by Africa No Filter and the University of Cape Town that examined how international media organisations cover the continent.
“There was also no reflection on the ordinary person in the street,” Denk said, citing the study.
In his view, the responsibility for correcting that imbalance rests substantially with African newsrooms themselves. African media organisations, he argued, needed to work together to showcase the continent’s diversity and ensure that progress made by individual countries received greater international attention. He pointed to the diversity represented on the panel as evidence of the resource available.
“Just from our panel here, it’s so diverse from North Africa up to Southern Africa. That diversity is so rich, and we should be able to harness and harvest that,” he said.
Denk cited Namibia’s independence in 1990 and its subsequent peaceful political transition as examples of developments that deserved greater coverage, arguing that such stories could help counter one-dimensional portrayals of Africa.
Tanzania-based media practitioner Sebastian Maganda approached the question of shared responsibility from a philosophical direction, invoking Julius Nyerere, Tanzania’s founding president. Continental unity, Maganda said, required African countries to recognise that challenges and opportunities in one nation could have implications for the rest of the continent, and that Africans should regard them as shared responsibilities.
“If it’s an African challenge, it has to do with you. If it’s an African opportunity, it’s the same thing,” he said.
Maganda identified language differences as one of the major obstacles to media cooperation, given the continent’s diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. News organisations, he said, needed to build partnerships gradually, developing content that remained relevant to local audiences while enabling stories to reach people in other African countries.
Kenyan panellist Agnes Nguna argued that any effort to foster continental unity through journalism should begin with communities and the issues affecting their daily lives, rather than with an abstract continental project.
“For us, we just don’t start with unity, we start with local stories,” she said. “Unity is what happens when you tell enough local stories well enough so that people start recognising themselves in it.”
Reporting in languages understood by audiences, she added, was essential to building trust and ensuring that communities could relate to stories about wider African developments.
Meanwhile, the discussion carries implications for Zimbabwean media, particularly in strengthening regional coverage and fostering partnerships with news organisations across the continent. Zimbabwean newsrooms could broaden their coverage of cross-border trade, agriculture, cultural exchanges and regional economic cooperation, demonstrating how developments in other African countries affect local communities.
Taken together, the panellists’ contributions underscored the case for moving beyond isolated, country-specific coverage towards collaborative journalism that connects local experiences with broader continental issues. They stressed that accurate reporting, inclusive storytelling and greater cooperation among African news organisations were essential to helping audiences appreciate the continent’s diversity while recognising its shared interests. Whether newsrooms across the continent can translate Monday’s calls into durable partnerships remains the open question.