Confucius Institutes (CIs) were once known only for teaching Mandarin language and culture classes but the organization’s mission has evolved recently to now include “training” sessions for African journalists on how to cover China.
CIs are now part of a robust Chinese toolkit that Beijing uses to try and frame media narratives in Africa on certain international issues related to human rights, sovereignty, and its escalating feud with the United States among others.
Emeka Umejei is a longtime scholar of Chinese media engagement in Africa who previously taught at Wits University in South Africa, the American University of Nigeria, and is now with the Centre for Analysis for Authoritarian Influence in Africa. He joins Eric & Cobus from Johannesburg to discuss the latest trends in China’s efforts to influence African media.
Show Notes:
- Foreign Policy: In Africa, China Is the News by Aubry Hruby
- AidData: Influencing the Narrative: How the Chinese government mobilizes students and media to burnish its image by Samantha Custer, Mihir Prakash, Jonathan A. Solis, Rodney Knight, and Joyce Jiahui Lin
- The China-Global South Project: The Chinese Future of African Television by Angela Lewis
About Emeka Umejei:
Emeka Umejei is a media scholar whose research focuses on Chinese media and Chinese digital infrastructure in Africa. He has taught at institutions across the continent, including the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, the American University of Nigeria, and the University of Ghana. He has also held research positions at the University of Duisburg-Essen and the University of Tubingen in Germany. His book Chinese Media in Africa: Perception, Performance, and Paradox (2020) received wide acclaim. Prior to entering academia, Umejei served as an investigative journalist for several years, writing for leading newspapers in Nigeria, including the Independent and Leadership. He also served as an African correspondent for U.S.-based media outfit LNG Publications.
Transcript:
Eric Olander: Hello, and welcome to another edition of the China in Africa Podcast, a proud member of the Sinica Podcast Network. I’m Eric Olander, as always, I’m joined by China Global South’s Managing Editor, Cobus van Staden, in Johannesburg. A very good afternoon to you, Cobus.
Cobus van Staden: Good afternoon.
Eric: Cobus, today we’re going to talk about Chinese media in Africa and the building of narratives. Now, this is an interesting topic and one that came up a lot in my discussions in New York and Washington. There’s a lot of interest here in the West about what China’s doing in the media space, in particular, to try again in shape some of the narratives around the Belt & Road, around China, on human rights, the great power competition, and the techniques and tactics that they’re using. Now, this came up in the news a couple of times in the past couple of weeks that we’ve seen in our daily coverage.
In Latin America, there was a report that came out from a cyber intelligence firm in Washington that identified a number of Twitter accounts that were masquerading as legitimate news sources, but were really actually part of an information campaign by the Chinese state media apparatus. Now, these Twitter accounts were quite amateur. There was really not many people following them, so they didn’t really have a big impact in the target countries. I think there was Brazil, there was Chile, and I think maybe even Panama. But it really does show that under the surface, there’s a lot of activity going on to shape public opinion. And this is something that’s not only being done by the Chinese.
Today, we’re going to talk about what the Chinese are doing in Africa, but this is a game that’s being done by many, many countries, and it’s just part of the broader competition. In recent years, we have talked about a number of different techniques that the Chinese use to influence the discourse in Africa. There are these journalism junkets where they will send journalists to China to get training. There’s now trainings that are happening in Africa. There’s groups that are working with the Confucius Institutes in Ghana and Tanzania to train journalists and media workers there. Also, at the same time, the Chinese engage in something called content sharing agreements, where they will provide Xinhua and People’s Daily content free of charge to African news publications.
The Chinese also have a very aggressive paid media strategy where embassies in countries, not just in Africa, but around the world, will have contracts with local newspapers and magazines, and their ambassadors, and various Chinese officials will publish articles that are much the same way that corporations use advertorial. So again, nothing that’s really that pioneering. And the Chinese are also very active on Twitter and social media as well. So, Cobus, these are not new techniques, but ones that are very important and we’re also seeing a lot of activity in them today.
Cobus: Yes, it does seem to be an uptick in activity. I think, as China is feeling more besieged at home, it is engaging in a lot of diplomacy, a lot of formal diplomacy, and then more and more media diplomacy. What I always want to ask, though, because many people have been covering this rollout since the early 2010s, people have been covering this rollout, and I feel like I’ve read many of those reports. Those reports frequently tend to take the very presence of Chinese state media in certain markets or the very existence of certain accounts or certain kind of content agreements, and so on, as evidence of influence building, or that influence building is actually happening. That those messages aren’t simply sitting in the media, but that they’re actually connecting. And I think that connection, I always want to interrogate more.
Eric: Well, we’re going to look into that today. Also, a little bit of caution. You talked about some of these papers and some of the scholars who have done this. This is a highly technical field. This is a field that is very, very specialized. So, I always am dubious when I read work and I listen to speeches from say, traditional political scientist, social scientists who do not have an expertise in media, who don’t understand the data and the metrics of social media and the technical details of how it works, and also the way that media is consumed in Africa. And to your point, Cobus, when we talk about the way that media is consumed in Africa, there’s new research that came out, about a week or two ago, that showed how TikTok is devouring the continent.
That in Kenya in particular, TikTok now is emerging as the primary source of news for a number of different segments of the population. This is a trend that academics who are not specialized in the space often mistake. So, that’s why today we are so thrilled to have back on our show, it’s been a long time, I think a couple of years since we’ve had Emeka Umejei join us. He is a media scholar whose research focuses on Chinese media engagement and Chinese digital infrastructure in Africa. We’ve had Emeka on the show a couple of years ago, but if you follow this topic closely, Emeka is the guy that comes up over and over again as one of the leading experts.
And again, he’s one of these specialists who knows so much more about this topic than those who say are in political science and not specialized in it. He has taught at a number of African universities, including the University of Witwatersrand, Wits University in South Africa, the American University of Nigeria, and the University of Ghana. He is now at the Center for Analysis for Authoritarian Influence in Africa, based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Emeka, it’s great to have you back on the show again.
Emeka Umejei: Yeah, thank you so much. It’s a nice time to be back here. This is my third time on this show. What a great show, right?
Eric: It really is great to have you back. And again, let’s talk about the… Before we get into the details of what the Chinese are doing right now and what’s changed in the past couple of years since we’ve talked to you about Chinese media activity and engagement in Africa, let’s kind of just do a little bit of scene-setting here. The best way that I like to define the way this works is that there’s something called above-the-line media and below-the-line media. The above-the-line media is all of those media that we all see. So that is CGTN, China Radio International, CCTV, China Daily, the newspaper. These are the traditional media outlets. There is a lot of evidence that’s been done based on research from you and from a number of other scholars that the traction for those media channels in Africa is terrible, largely non-existent.
African media consumers aren’t really that interested in this type of traditional stale propaganda, and it’s not very effective. The below-the-line media, this is the stuff that we’re not seeing, this is the content-sharing agreements. And what those content-sharing agreements are is when, again, Xinhua goes to any number of African publications, provides them free access to it. Now, those stories may not appear in the newspaper, but they’re automatic feeds that come onto their website, and those websites are often then scraped by social media and published into their social media feeds. And a lot of people don’t know where the content comes from, but it has a subtle Chinese narrative to it.
This is proven to be extraordinarily effective in many respects in terms of outreach. And so I’d love to get your sense of the lay of the land. Introduce us to where we are today to the different techniques, tactics, as I’ve kind of laid them out, but I’d like you to kind of say, am I wrong? Are there new things? What’s the trends? Where are we today? Before we go into the specifics.
Emeka: Well, thank you Eric for that wonderful question. You are not far from where we are actually. As you categorize them, the above-the-line media have not actually done very well in Africa. Even though they’re still there, but they have not met that goal that everybody had anticipated they were going to meet. But in recent times, there’ve been some form of ramping up of the below-the-line media networks because the content-sharing agreement is very, very varied. It is varied actually. You have content-sharing agreement between Xinhua and these organizations and local media organizations in Africa. Then you also have content-sharing agreements between local Chinese missions and local media organizations. So, most times, a particular media organization in Africa could sign up a contention agreement with Xinhua, but it inherently becomes a content-sharing agreement with the local Chinese mission in a particular African country.
So, you see this model play up often across the African continent, everywhere. I mean, not just in Africa. You also find this thing in Latin America too. Then you also have the Belt & Road News network, which is expanding. The Belt & Road News network comprised about, as of the last count, is about 111 media organizations from… I think 111 media organization from around the world, and then you have many of them from Africa. Why we are concerned about the African scene is because of the inability to mitigate Chinese influence. The biggest problem of this whole below-the-line media structure is independent journalism in Africa. It’s a very, very disturbing trend because I mean, there are instances, a particular instance, I think that was Standard Media, Standard newspaper of Kenya, they had this fortnightly insertion with the local Chinese mission in Kenya, and then they went and they did an investigative reporting project on the Standard Gauge Railway, and the local Chinese mission in Kenya were not happy, and they terminated that partnership.
So, it tells you that if you criticize Chinese engagement, for instance, if you report negatively on Chinese economic and political engagements in Africa, you will lose this partnership. So, it makes it problematic for independent media and investigative journalism in Africa. I mean, this is why it’s problematic. Why I agree that this is not new, but I mean, what’s new is that you have local missions getting involved in this, and then using that as an opportunity to also compromise independent journalism, strong independent media in Africa. So, that’s where it becomes problematic. Yeah, we also have the fellowship media.
Eric: Let me just see if I understand what you’re saying because we’ve heard this a number of cases, not just in Africa, but also in other parts of the world, including the Middle East, where the Chinese embassy or the Chinese consulate will have a contract with a local media company for, say, a few hundred thousand dollars a year for them to place columns and content into that publication. Then, if that news organization wants to do an investigative report or to publish content that may be critical of China, the Chinese mission then uses that contract as leverage to say, “Well, if you publish this, we’ll pull our business.” And then the local editor goes, “You know what? I don’t want to lose the business because it’s very, very difficult right now to run a newsroom given the advertising drop-off. So, therefore, I will accommodate the Chinese.” Is that what you’re saying?
Emeka: Yeah, that is what happens. But this time it’s not a clear-cut contract, as in you say, okay, we’re going to give you… It is just that we have a partnership. We’ll give you insertion, they’ll pay it. We’ll give you special insertion, we’ll pay for it. But if you have that partnership with us and you go and report critically on Chinese economic and political engagement in your country, then we have to terminate it. That’s what happens actually.
Cobus: Emeka, so if we can kind of unpack that a little bit further, so you mentioned kind of negative reporting about Chinese engagement. Would that negative reporting be, specifically about, for example, critical reporting about specific Chinese projects? Or would that pressure be more specifically around issues like internal Chinese issues or related to Hong Kong’s status or Xinjiang status, for example? Like, where does the weight fall in terms of this kind of pressure?
Emeka: It’s not very specific, but I gave you the instance of the Standard newspaper in Kenya, they did a critical investigative reporting on the Standard Gauge Railway in Kenya, and that resulted in determination of that partnership. So, it could be anything that negatively touches on Chinese economic and political engagements in the local context. I mean, it’s like you have to know where you get your food from. If we’re giving you insertion, you don’t have to criticize us in any way. You have to do, I mean, reporting that favor us. That’s what it is. So, you find, if you also go around the African continent, some of the work that I’ve done recent times, you find out that some of these media organizations vary that have this partnership with, you look at Chinese mission or even Xinhua.
When there’s an event that tends to portray Chinese economic and political government negatively, they’re going to do too much of propaganda. You see very raw propaganda, like you see, in some instances, you see some of these publishers writing op-eds in support of the Chinese narrative. You see several op-eds being sponsored… You would know, I mean, you would know how these are sanctioned official narrative of the Chinese government in local organizations. These instances tend to compromise independent journalism. That’s why, as a media scholar in Africa, it becomes very problematic. Nobody says that you shouldn’t have a partnership, but when the partnership becomes problematic for independent media in Africa, I mean, that’s something to be concerned about.
But unfortunately, there’s not much concern. It’s rarely coming from the political actors to policy-makers in Africa. Nobody tend to get concerned about that. I don’t know. But that’s what it is, though.
Eric: So, we’ve talked about the content-sharing agreements. They’re very popular. They’re quite pervasive across the continent. We’ve also talked about these embassy relationships and these partnerships with the local publications, and then there’s the journalism training initiatives. And of all of the different programs that the Chinese use, I would argue that the journalism training initiatives have been among the most successful and most effective. And what they do is they basically bring journalists and news editors over to China for these week-long, two-week-long junkets where they introduce them to Chinese culture, they show them around to sites, and then they also give them their take on world affairs. And a lot of these journalists come back incredibly enthusiastic about what they’ve seen. Can you talk to us a little bit more about the journalism training initiatives and these junkets?
Emeka: Like you rightly mention, I mean, it is the most successful, we here call it Chinese influence operation in Africa. It’s been very, very successful. And it’s very, very concerning because this whole media fellowship as part of diplomatic milieu started during the Cold World era. It was started by the Soviets actually, and then the West took over. But in recent time, the Chinese people, they have built on, they have expanded it, redefined it, and I mean, they’re making a lot of impact using these Chinese media exchanges. So, when you talk about Chinese media exchange, they’re mostly like, they’re in three categories.
You have the very, very short ones, which last for like maybe one, two, three, four days to maybe four months. Then you have those that last 10 months. There’s one that’s called the 10 months Journalism fellowship, which is like the most effective one among them.
Then there’s also this scholarship for, I mean, for journalists from Africa. Now, you find out that, because I’ve interviewed people from around Africa who did the 10 months journalism fellowship. I wasn’t interviewing people around Africa who did the short-term fellowship. So, I mean, so I had to do analysis based on the short-term and the long-term fellowship, and those who had also undergone the master’s program in China.
I mean, what you would notice is that, because I mean, for instance, take the 10 months journal fellowship program. I mean, somebody says, well, they get paid good money. As of the last count, as of 2019, they get $1,000 per month. The visa process is very, very smooth. They don’t have visa denial, so it’s very attractive. Then they go to China. They’re not going to spend the money. I mean, the Chinese government is going to pay the rent for them for the 10 months. Apart from that, they’re also going to travel around China, and it’s going to be sponsored by the Chinese government. So, most people return back home to Africa having saved some good money. Some of them build houses, some of them buy new cars.
So, there’s this thing that continues to tell them, oh, this is what China has done for us. Because I mean, you see most of them, they become, once they return to Africa, they become advocates for Chinese economic and political engagements in Africa. They tell you, “Oh, no, no, no, no.” you can’t even say anything bad about China before this set of journalism. I mean, our consign are in two folds. One, I’ll give you an instance. In 2000… was that 2019 or thereabout, or 2021? Let me see, when did this happen? The Liberian government was part of countries that condemned Chinese persecution of Uyghurs, right? So, the Liberian government was part of the people that wrote condemning Chinese government for persecuting those people.
Look how a Liberian journalist, who took it upon himself to criticize his country. He said, well, it is a very… that the PRC is a very strategic partner to Liberia. China has adhered to international norm of not getting involved in any county’s internal matters. So, instead, they have gotten involved with what is considered a software diplomacy. So, he was advising the Liberian government to stay away from China’s internal matter, but that guy was a former fellow who participated in 10 months Chinese as a fellowship. I mean, so it tells you the kind of layout, that people who have participated in this program, even when they return to Africa, because of the funding, the exposure, which is considered very attractive, I think, as far as I’m concerned, it is now the most attractive journalism fellowship to African journalists, so it’s very, very attractive.
That’s number one. Then number two, so you find out that it also compromise independent journalism. But I was saying that in the next two decades, we will have more senior journalists, editors, who have been trained in China than those who have been trained elsewhere. And I’m not saying anything would happen, but that tells you that, I mean, the future of independent media that holds leadership to account is also, maybe in crisis. So, we need to be concerned about this whole thing. But unfortunately, unfortunately, like I keep on saying, number one, I don’t blame journalists who go on Chinese training because that is what is available, that you have nothing else coming from elsewhere.
In some other instances, African journalists have also been given fellowship and they get denied visa. But if China give them fellowship, they get easy access to China, and most of them return back home. So, these, and other things, makes it more attractive for African journalist. I mean, the question is how do we mitigate this? And I said the only way we can mitigate is by monitoring opportunities. Yeah.
Eric: Yeah. Cobus, this question of the visa issue is one that you’ve brought up over and over again, that there is a crisis of opportunity for Africans in so many realms, not just in journalism, but also in academia, tourism, in business as well, that they’re effectively denied entry into so many other countries, and China does make it easy. So in some ways, it’s an easy win for the Chinese, just on the visa side.
Cobus: Yeah. I mean, I’m sure a lot of African journalists want to study at Columbia School of Journalism. Do they get in? Nope. Can they get a visa? Nope. Emeka, one of the issues that I find, like occasionally that strikes me sometimes about the research, like some of these reports that I mentioned that cover Chinese media presence in Africa is that there seems to be a bit of a conflation of the 2010s and the current era. So, a lot of people start by mentioning the big Xinhua expansions in Nairobi in 2012, and essentially call it a day, right? I was wondering if you could give us like a temperature check of how things look in relation to the scholarships, in relation to the presence of Chinese journalists in Africa, and so on, in the post-COVID era. How many journalists are actually getting access to China right now, and to which extent have these junket programs been fully restarted in the post-COVID era? And do you see any kind of changes in approach from before the pandemic?
Emeka: Well, yeah, during the pandemic, it was… I mean, I think that was in 20… they stopped in 20… I mean, I think 2019, 20 20. But they have just had the first batch of people who went for six-months fellowship. They just came back. This was from 2022 to 2023. So, they started taking new people again. Even during COVID, it was also happening online. So, it was not stopped, even though, I mean, people were not going to China, but it was being done virtually. But as from late 2022, the first batch went, but they did six months, and they just returned. They’ve just continued. Yeah, I mean, so they’re not letting go. The Chinese, they’re in this for a long haul.
I mean, that’s why we have to, like I keep on mentioning, in the next two decades, we’ll have many journalists from Africa who have been trained in China, and that is problematic for independent journalism whether I would like it or not. That’s something we must have to point out. Yeah.
Eric: I want to step back a little bit and try and put what the Chinese are doing into a larger context. Because as I mentioned at the top of the show, they’re by no means alone in trying to use media to shape their narrative. Propaganda has been around since the dawn of time. And again, it’s interesting when we talk about the word propaganda, in the West, that’s largely considered to be a bad word. But in China, actually, propaganda, and in Vietnam where I live, is not actually a negative word. It’s just a very matter-of-fact, neutral value word, where it is information with a purpose. That’s how a very baseline definition of propaganda. So, if we think of what the Chinese are doing in a context, let’s take the United States, and even Europe to some extent, and I just want to try and, again, put what the Chinese are doing in some sort of context, not to excuse, justify, rationalize whatever they’re doing, but also to say, well, this is part of state-craft in the 21st century.
The United States itself has its own state broadcasters, the Voice of America, the Broadcasting Board of Governors. France has Radio France Internationale, France [inaudible 0:21:49], all of the major countries have their state broadcasters. The United States also does initiatives where it brings journalists over to the United States to do trainings, much like what the Chinese do. The United States also funds initiatives like things from the International Republican Institute and the National Endowment for Democracy, and I think you were a NED Fellow in previous time, in previous work that you’ve done. How is what the National Endowment for Democracy does different than what the Chinese are doing just with a different ideological lens?
Emeka: Now, you see, first of all, we must agree that, I mean, we are all advancing towards… We all want Africa to, I mean, advance democratically. I mean, in order to advance democracy, we need a media that holds leadership to account. Because I mean, I’ll give you an instance. What one of the journalists in the fellowship told me, but I’ll come back to your questions, right? He said, “Well, one of the things that people seem to forget is that China and Nigeria are in two different levels of development.” Even a Chinese journalist who is in China will have something to celebrate about the Chinese government, maybe building speed trades and all that, and some of those massive structures, but you don’t see the same thing about Nigeria.
So, we have to understand that this is Africa. I mean, maybe, this is Nigeria, we’re talking about advancing democracy. This is South Africa, it’s about [inaudible 0:23:05] democracy. So, we did a journalism that holds leadership accountable. And if you go to China, that’s not the kind of journalism they’re telling you to practice. In China, they’re telling you about positive reporting, which does not hold leadership accountable. So, when you return back to Nigeria, you become some form of a lapdog instead of a watchdog. So, this is what we must have to take into cognizant. So, what NED does is to empower you, I mean, to understand ingredients that upholds the democracy in every country. That’s what NED does. And I mean, during the training, there was exposure. It exposes you to understand democratic culture, what freedom of information, freedom of the press, why they’re important to sustain a thriving democracy.
But this is not what China is. So, if we are African countries and say we are a democracy, maybe in Nigeria and South Africa, we should ensure that the media is free because the media in China is a different ballgame. It’s not free. And like I mentioned, the level of development in China is very, very different from those in Africa. So, if African countries decide to import a Chinese model of journalism to Africa, it’ll not do well to both development and to democracy. Then we have leaders who just do as they like, and then the people who suffer in the long run. So, this is why it’s very, very important that we take that into cognizant. Yeah.
Cobus: Just returning briefly to the junkets, in your experience in speaking with people who’ve done this kind of media training in China, do you conclusively find, A, are they conclusively taking a pro-China stance in stories where China comes up? And then in stories where China doesn’t come up, does that training affect their reporting in any way at all?
Emeka: Well, what we found was that in certain aspects, like, I mean, if you see journalists from Sierra Leone, Liberia, they’re more likely to appropriate positive report in the field. Like, well, this is good. I mean, there are instance of journalism where we have just realized that watchdog journalism has not done any good to Africa. We need to blend the watchdog journalism and positive reporting and development report so that Africa will be able to highlight what is happening in Africa. In those instances, it could happen. But when it comes to China, it’s a different ballgame entirely. I mean, what I’m trying to say is that as of this moment, it might not be very, very visible, but they’re there. They’re just minute people. A fraction of those who go to China, come back, saying, “Okay, we want to become positive reporters. We don’t want to report critically on government because we don’t think that that helps the government to be well.”
You find that. But what we are, what we are concerned about is that what happens in two decades time, where you have more than maybe 10,000 journalists trained in China? what happens with the media scene in Africa? What happens to journalism that holds leadership? I can’t tell you, but this is why we are concerned. This thing is like water [inaudible 0:25:51] trickling, over time it builds up. For now, we have a fraction of those who say, “No, I’ve gone to China. I believe that it’s positive reporting that I would do.” But you find that most of them in some of these countries, they’re there. But because of, like I said, the contrasting reality between development in China and Africa, that tend to also make journalistic, well, if the government is not doing much, there’s nothing to celebrate.
So, what do we celebrate? In some instance, I told you about a journalist who told me that, he said, “There’s nothing to celebrate here. It’s been problematic all this way.” So, this is where the problem comes in.
Eric: When you talk about journalists and watchdogs, I’m assuming that you’re talking about traditional media, newspapers, radio, television, things like that. But again, we’re talking about a continent where the median age is 19.4 years old. In countries like Nigeria, the median age is 17 or 18 years old, and this is a continent, and this is a demographic in a population that’s getting most of its information, I don’t always want to call it news, but information from social media, specifically from video-based social media more and more. Now that bandwidth is getting better.
And I’m wondering, so if the Chinese have been very effective at co-opting, influencing, I don’t know what the word is, traditional media, how effective are they in this new era where, again, TikTok, which is a Chinese brand, TikTok, Instagram reels, YouTube shots, that seems to be the driver of more and more of the narratives, particularly among teenagers, which Africa is filled with teenagers. So, how effective or do you see them adapting to this new era?
Emeka: Yeah, I mean, I recently published a work on Opera News Hub, which is like a social media platform also that uses AI to gate-keep media content.
Eric: And Opera, just for those who are not familiar, it used to be a Norwegian browser, and then it was bought over by a Chinese company, and now it’s the number two mobile browser in Africa, and it’s particularly popular in West Africa.
Emeka: Yeah, I mean, it started in Nigeria, I mean, in 2019, but it’s now in six countries around Africa. And then, I mean, what I found from that work was that you found a lot of misinformation. The platform says, “Well, we’re going to do this,” but in the long run is not doing that. Oh, we make sure we don’t promote clickbait, click-baiting. But that’s what it does. So, I mean, people, even content creators who work for that platform, say, “Well, I mean, we find it so difficult, even when we contribute content, they claim that the AI, the algorithm gate-keeps content, but that is not being done.” So, it’s just sensationalism. Even though, I mean, when you look at the publishing policy of the platform compared to the content that it is produced on…you see, I mean, a contradiction. So, it promotes misinformation, it promotes click-baiting, and all that. So it tells you that-
Eric: But just to be fair here, Opera is a private company. It’s not the Chinese state, and it’s doing no more or no less than what Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram are doing, in that they’re not checking information anymore either. In fact, all of them are more or less just throwing up their hands saying, F-it, we can’t do fact-checking anymore. So, it doesn’t feel like Opera is any different as a private entity than what the U.S.-based platforms are doing.
Emeka: Well, you may say they’re not different, but they are. Why? Because I mean, corporate governance structures, I mean, if, for instance, civil society will always hold, I mean, Facebook, they have tried to bring up fact-checking committee support and all that in their own small way anyway, but we have not seen any of that with Opera. And I don’t think anything in that regard is going to happen. Even as I speak to you, I mean, most of the government in Africa, they don’t seem to care anyway. I mean, even though most of the government tend to talk about, you know, we’re fighting misinformation, but nobody seemed to care. Nobody seems, okay, this is a platform we should keep a close watch on and fund, ensure that what it does is in tune.
No, but it does that. Even the same thing for big techs. So, it’s also problematic. But I think that if, because this is Africa, I mean, if we had civil society organizations holding Opera to account, they would do better, but that hasn’t happened. So, they’re just riding roughshod everywhere. Nobody don’t really care. Nobody cares. So that’s why it’s problematic.
Cobus: And Emeka, to be sure, if we make a distinction between different kinds of disinformation, there’s this disinformation in relation to China and Chinese-related stuff, interrelated topics, be they Chinese domestic issues or Chinese projects. But what we also saw in the past, in other forms of disinformation, for example, Russian disinformation groups targeting internal political processes within countries, obviously most famously 2016 within the U.S., but like in African countries too. Do you see any evidence of Chinese entities moving in that direction where they’re targeting or they’re using or deploying disinformation in fields that have nothing to do with China particularly?
Emeka: I wouldn’t say I have any clear evidence of that happening around. I mean, because remember, prior to the 2023 presidential election in Nigeria, I mean, when the ruling, All Progressive Council was doing its primary, a particular newspaper in Nigeria wrote a story that the Chinese government was supporting a particular candidate for the ticket of the All Progressive Congress. The Chinese High Commission in Nigeria came out and said there was nothing like that. I mean, in that regards, I have not seen. The only thing you could see was in Sierra Leone in 2016 during the election when they said there were some Chinese who wore the t-shirt of the then ruling APC. I mean, that was what it was. So, I don’t have any clear evidence in that regard that they are.
But you never can say because these things are quite early. I mean, one of the things that we have to be conscious about is that some of these Chinese platform are yet to gain hegemony in the media space in most African countries. So, what you would ask yourself, when they gain hegemony, what would happen? And so, in that case, you never can tell.
Eric: Well, TikTok already has hegemony, not only in Africa, but in the U.S. and elsewhere too. So, we kind of have a view of what it looks like. The key question is we don’t have an insight into what TikTok does with our data, and the ByteDance Company does with the data and whatnot, and the role of the Communist Party and others. But then again, we don’t know that much about what Facebook and Google do with our data either. So, I’m not entirely sure, as a consumer, there’s a lot of difference between TikTok and Facebook. Again, you’ve talked about how civil society groups have tried to pressure Facebook, but they’ve been wholly unsuccessful. They’ve pushed back. I mean, we know what Facebook does based on the Facebook papers, the revelations from leaks on the inside, and it’s depressing as hell.
So, I see your point, Emeka, but I’m not entirely sure that it’s that much better here in the U.S. either, even though we’d like to think it is, but in many ways, I don’t know if it is. Now, there’s certainly a political tint that a lot of the Chinese propaganda goes through and their engagement in Africa, but at the end of the day, for the end user, it’s kind of the same, which is depressing a little bit as you pointed out.
Emeka:
Well, maybe we’ll do more research on that to see what comes out of it.
Eric: Again, it just proves the research you’re doing is so important, and having more discussions like this is critical to better understanding it. You mentioned that you have just finished a manuscript for a book, you’re trying to get it published next year. Maybe you can just tease us a little bit and tell us what are some of the themes that you’re raising in the book so that we can look forward to that next year?
Emeka: We’re looking at the Chinese media exchanges under content-sharing sharing agreements, looking at the various instances where those agreements have been applied, and then how it’s been used to influence certain narrative in certain places in Africa. Then I also looked at the Belt & Road News Network and all that. Yeah.
Eric: Fantastic. Well, Emeka, thank you so much for taking the time to join us and to update us on the latest that’s going on in this important trend that’s poorly understood, as you pointed out, and we’re really looking forward to reading your book next year, so hopefully you can get it published soon. Emeka Umejei is a media scholar who focuses on Chinese media engagements and Chinese digital infrastructure in Africa. He’s now at the Center for Analysis for Authoritarian influence in Africa, based in Johannesburg. Emeka, you are active on Twitter. If people want to follow what you’re reading and writing, where can they find you?
Emeka: Yeah, sure. @EmekaUmejei is there.
Eric: Excellent. I’ll put a link to that in the show notes. Emeka, thanks so much for joining us today.
Emeka: Thank you so much. I’m grateful.
Eric: Cobus, it’s always exciting to have Emeka back on the show again because he does shed light on what is a very poorly understood topic in most African societies. And I would say even in the West, this question of propaganda is one that is. Again, shaped, in many parts, by the scholars who you’ve talked about, who really aren’t qualified to be writing about it because they don’t have the expertise in how technical media has become. And so I thought the point that you made that so much of it is anchored in thinking from 10 years ago and not reflective of the dynamic media market that we face today. And the fact is that television, radio, newspaper, as it is in the U.S. is the same in Africa, where nobody but the old people are paying attention to that. And it’s social media, it’s viral content, it’s TikTok in particular where all of this is happening.
I’m curious to see if the Chinese are as effective in the TikTok realm as they’ve been in the traditional media realm, but based on how effective they’ve been in the journalism junkets and in the content-sharing agreements. And also, we didn’t mention with Emeka, and it’s too bad because it’s one of his areas of specialty, is this question of infrastructure building where the Chinese are building media infrastructure around Africa to help state broadcasters to improve their digital signals, improve distribution, get equipment, cars, news equipment, and all of this. That too helps them to ensure positive coverage. So they’ve been very effective over these past 10 years. And it’ll be interesting to see going forward in this new realm how they’re going to adapt.
Cobus: Yeah, Africa is also such an interesting media market in that I definitely agree with Emeka that in trolling through African news sources, one does get this kind of sponsored content, placed content. You do get people who’ve clearly been on junkets and are now reporting on the great advancements in China. That is certainly part of the mix. But at the same, time, there’s also a lot of China threat narratives in the African press. Some warranted and some seemingly kind of wildly inflated. We’ve covered for a long time that the Nigerian debt management offices had, repeatedly, had to kind of debunk stories about Chinese loans leading to kind of asset seizures when Chinese loans are, in the first place, that’s not how Chinese loans work, but also that Chinese loans make up a very small percentage of Nigeria’s total debt.
And that in the process, those China threat narratives sometimes then derail quite necessary national conversations about the debt mix, for example. In that sense, it’s an interesting kind of conundrum because, on the one hand, there is unwarranted positive reporting, boosterish reporting on China that is a reality in parts of African media market. On the other hand, there is a lot of kind of… some of the China threat narratives need some debunking, too, because they end up not really helping anyone and not really reflecting reality. In that sense, it’s an interesting kind of mixed bag. And there, I really take Emeka’s point that what really is that issue is Africa’s ability to report on itself and to report on its own issues and that that might be eroded in the process.
Eric: Yeah. And it also speaks to the power of U.S. and European-led narratives. Particularly in Francophone countries, so many of the narratives still originate in Paris and Brussels. And in Anglophone countries, a lot of the narratives emanate from the United States. And then Lusophone countries, the Portuguese and Brazilian narratives are very strong. So, I think to your point about really boosting the quality of journalism and the strengthening journalism in Africa, for people to tell their own stories, I think is really interesting. We’re going to have an upcoming episode on the Standard Gauge Railway in Kenya. And what was so interesting in this is that there was a new multi-part documentary series by Africa Uncensored in Kenya about the Standard Gauge Railway and the fiasco that led to the current debt crisis.
And what’s so interesting is that in the Kenyan telling of this history now, in this story by Kenyan journalists, the Chinese role is actually quite diminished relative to the role of corruption and incompetence by Kenyan leaders. And I think that speaks to how an African voice is very different in terms of placing priorities than the Chinese or the Western priorities that they have and the narratives that they’re trying to dispel onto the continent as well. I just really want to come back to this point of context that whenever we talk about the Chinese in terms of climate change, media influence, debt, and all these other issues, that it’s really important to put them in context.
Some people will say, “Well, you’re trying to do whataboutism.” It’s not whataboutism. It’s in order to see how they are relative to others. And let’s be sure that the United States is also engaged in this very similar type of activity that is, again, they have journalism training initiatives, they bring journalists over to the United States, the State Department does it. I was in media companies in the U.S. when we had African journalists from State Department-sponsored trips, come spend time with us at CNN and at my TV station in Los Angeles for the very same reason that the Chinese are doing their junkets, where they want to expose them to their worldview, they want them to adopt their style of journalism.
And I have a feeling in the future, we’re going to start seeing content-sharing agreements from the West. We also see all sorts of propaganda coming out of Voice of America. And again, I just think that this is part of modern statecraft rather than something that is highly exceptional. And what the Chinese do is very effective, but in so many ways, it’s actually not that novel.
Cobus: Yeah, I agree. A lot of the Chinese media outreach mechanisms that we saw, and that includes also even like education-related kind of outreach, like Confucius Institutes, most of those were based on Western models. They didn’t invent a wheel there. They essentially took what other people were doing, adapted it to their needs, and called it a day. Yeah, I agree that all of these outside powers are doing it. I think what one realizes, what is important to realize, I think, is that when one is in the African media space that these outside influences are important, and they’re really important to track, but I don’t think that they necessarily dominate African discourse. I think both the U.S. and China are relatively far away from many African public’s main concerns, and they tend to be very focused on their own countries and their own countries’ issues.
And of course, their own countries have complicated. Those issues aren’t necessarily easily separated from China and the U.S. and Europe. Particularly in Africa, those outside powers have a hand in some of these issues that are controversial. But it’s so also important to take note that in many cases, both China and the U.S. are the kind of side story. And it’s really important to focus on this process of Africa telling its own story.
Eric: Cobus, that is the ultimate context that you’re providing here. And that couldn’t be more true that when you look in the South African media, for example, where you are, the international narratives, I mean, they’re prominent today because you guys have the BRICS summit coming up, but in a normal month, it is consumed by domestic politics, as it is everywhere. So, I think that is such a key point and a great point that we got in at the end of the show that this is not even just that they’re small players. In many respects, that the U.S., China, and the Europeans are fringe players because so much of the topics, again, are local. And also, you look at a country like the DRC, the media is so fragmented. I mean, there are dozens of outlets coming from so many different perspectives. So, it’s even hard within a country or region of a country, a subset, at a subnational level, to pick out a consistent theme in the media.
I think that’s such a great point to put that in context, that really at the end of the day, most news is local news and that’s the most popular, and that’s not different anywhere in the world. Let’s leave the conversation there. This is a fun topic for us. Both Cobus and I, we’re media professionals. We’ve followed this story for a very long time. We wanted to bring it back onto your attention simply because, again, it’s a topic of conversation in many parts of the world, especially in Washington. They have this word Cobus that we hear all the time, malign Chinese influence. I always love that — malign Chinese influence. I never really heard the word malign as much as I have in the past three years, but that’s oftentimes associated with media using the tactics and techniques that Emeka has outlined and will hopefully outline in his book.
We just want to make the point that while the U.S. considers it malign, obviously that is subject to interpretation. The tactics and techniques that they use the Chinese are not unique or novel, but nonetheless, they have proven to be quite effective at shaping their narrative in places like Africa. So, let’s leave the conversation there. Lots of information about journalism and propaganda on our website at chinaglobalsouth.com. So, if this is a topic that you’re interested, you’re going to want to sign up for a subscription, and your subscription also helps the journalism that we’re doing every single day. And we talk about journalism, we are truly independent journalism at its best.
We have nine editors around the world. We are 100% independent in our coverage of this issue. And we’d love for you to try out and see the work that we’re doing every single day. Go to chinaglobalsouth.com/subscribe and you’ll get 30 days for free just to try it out. Cobus and I will be back again next week with another edition of the show. Until then, I’m Eric Olander, for Cobus van Staden in Johannesburg, thank you so much for listening.
Outro: The discussion continues online. Tag us on Twitter @ChinaGSProject and visit us at chinaglobalsouth.com. If you speak French, check out our full coverage at projetafriquechine.com and AfrikChine on Twitter. That’s Afrik with a K. And you’ll also find links to our sites and social media channels in Arabic.
