The Business in Africa: Narrative Report
Africa No Filter;AKAS (2022), 56 pp.
"The report found seven significant frames to stories about business in Africa:
1 More negative coverage: International media are more likely to negatively frame issues that impact on business in Africa while African media are twice as likely to reference corruption in their coverage of business in Africa compared to international media.
2 Foreign powers scramble for Africa: 70% of international coverage about business in Africa is dominated by references to foreign powers like China, the USA, Russia, France and the UK.
3Africa is two countries: Business in Africa coverage focuses on South Africa and Nigeria while business stars like Mauritius, Botswana, the Seychelles and Namibia get little coverage and research attention.
4. Silencing creativity, amplifying technology: Despite Nollywood being the world’s second-largest film industry and the growing influence of musical influences like AfroBeats and AmaPiano, creative businesses were only featured in 1% of all articles across African and global media.
5. Youth and women are underrepresented: Africa claims the top three spots in the Mastercard Index for the highest concentration of women business owners in the world. It also has the youngest population globally. However, youth and women are underrepresented. In fact, online news coverage of young people has declined since 2017, falling from 12.5% of articles referencing young people in 2017 to 8.1% in 2021.
6. Government, policy and regulations dominate: Around 54.5% of business news in 2021 was framed through government action and policies. Additionally, African media focused more on themes related to government than on those related to entrepreneurship. Yet, African countries make up six of the top 10 countries whose populations were most likely to search for the topic of entrepreneurship in 2021.
7. Missing Free Trade Area and investment: It makes up 1% of news and academic research, yet the agreement is expected to lift 30 million Africans out of extreme poverty and boost the incomes of nearly 68 million others. It’s also projected to boost Africa’s income by $450 billion by 2035 and increase Africa’s exports by $560 billion, mostly in manufacturing." (Executive summary, pages-5-6)
1 More negative coverage: International media are more likely to negatively frame issues that impact on business in Africa while African media are twice as likely to reference corruption in their coverage of business in Africa compared to international media.
2 Foreign powers scramble for Africa: 70% of international coverage about business in Africa is dominated by references to foreign powers like China, the USA, Russia, France and the UK.
3Africa is two countries: Business in Africa coverage focuses on South Africa and Nigeria while business stars like Mauritius, Botswana, the Seychelles and Namibia get little coverage and research attention.
4. Silencing creativity, amplifying technology: Despite Nollywood being the world’s second-largest film industry and the growing influence of musical influences like AfroBeats and AmaPiano, creative businesses were only featured in 1% of all articles across African and global media.
5. Youth and women are underrepresented: Africa claims the top three spots in the Mastercard Index for the highest concentration of women business owners in the world. It also has the youngest population globally. However, youth and women are underrepresented. In fact, online news coverage of young people has declined since 2017, falling from 12.5% of articles referencing young people in 2017 to 8.1% in 2021.
6. Government, policy and regulations dominate: Around 54.5% of business news in 2021 was framed through government action and policies. Additionally, African media focused more on themes related to government than on those related to entrepreneurship. Yet, African countries make up six of the top 10 countries whose populations were most likely to search for the topic of entrepreneurship in 2021.
7. Missing Free Trade Area and investment: It makes up 1% of news and academic research, yet the agreement is expected to lift 30 million Africans out of extreme poverty and boost the incomes of nearly 68 million others. It’s also projected to boost Africa’s income by $450 billion by 2035 and increase Africa’s exports by $560 billion, mostly in manufacturing." (Executive summary, pages-5-6)
"The report analysed over 750 million stories published between 2017 and 2021 on more than 6,000 African news sites and 183,000 sites outside the continent. Insights were gained using eight research approaches, including analysing trends on Twitter, academic research and literature reviews as well as 22 global business indices." (https://africanofilter.org)
