Moscow played host to a sizeable slice of Africa’s media last week. From 26 to 29 October, the Russia-Africa Media Forum brought more than 200 broadcasters, editors, regulators, ministers and content creators from 46 African countries to the National Centre RUSSIA.
It was organised by RT, working with the Sputnik and TASS news agencies, and ran on the margins of the third Russia-Africa Summit.
According to the organisers, the forum’s goal was to revisit the role of media in developing and uniting Africa, and in shaping how the continent is seen abroad. Away from the main panels, RT, as host, met media executives and regulators and signed several partnership agreements with them. The week closed on 29 October with descendants of Africa’s liberation leaders on stage for a session titled “Forging Independence: Lessons from the Founders of African Nations”.
The organisers were clear about how they wanted all of this to be read. For them, it was about ownership. “We need these African narratives to be claimed, and if needed reclaimed,” Svyatoslav Shchegolev, head of RT Africa, told Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) News.
That message had support from the very top.
Speaking at the plenary of the Russia-Africa Economic and Humanitarian Forum on 28 October, President Vladimir Putin asked Russian news agencies and TV channels to open more bureaus and step up their coverage across Africa, and called for more African correspondents based in Russia. “It is vital to move towards creating a common media environment where Russian and African audiences can have free access to objective and truthful information about the events in our countries and the world,” he said.
The summit declaration went a step further and gave the media a point of its own. It backs media representative offices, journalist training, information exchange and joint media projects, and proposes a permanent high-level dialogue that takes in information security.
None of this happens in a vacuum. African newsrooms are no strangers to offers of free content, training and exchange deals. The BBC, France 24, DW and China’s CGTN have all courted African broadcasters over the years, and plenty of stations, short of money and foreign correspondents, have taken them up. Russia is now making a louder bid for the same space, and with the President’s name behind it, this is clearly not a passing interest.
So what does it all mean for Africa’s broadcasters? In my view, the honest answer is that it depends on the terms, and we have not seen those yet. Who sets the editorial line on shared content? How will that content be labelled for audiences? And will these partnerships widen the range of sources African newsrooms draw on, or quietly narrow it? Those answers will decide what Moscow’s week of talk is actually worth. We will be following them closely in this series.
Tomorrow: Africa’s broadcasters sign up with RT, and what the agreements signed in Moscow mean for their newsrooms.
Click on the video here to see the highlights.
