Media in Africa

No media is free of influence. What matters is who's doing the influencing, and whether they're telling you about it. In this episode of The Media in Africa Podcast, Georja Calvin Smith speaks to Professor Herman Wasserman, Director of the Centre for Information Integrity in Africa at Stellenbosch University, about the big ideas filtered through what Africans read, watch and share: state ownership, old colonial broadcasters, Chinese investment, paid influencers and covert foreign campaigns. They talk about why struggling newsrooms are easier to capture, how US political vocabulary is migrating into African debates, and how tailoring a narrative can turn real concerns into political tools for off continent interests. As technology affects the making and meaning of media, Georja asks whether African newsrooms are ready for AI. Wasserman’s answer: "I think the short answer is no." Media in Africa is a ten-part podcast by Meridian17, a Dutch-South African think and do tank, produced in partnership with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation Media Programme Sub-Saharan Africa. New episodes weekly. Full video episodes: www.youtube.com/@meridian17org All platforms and more: meridian17.org/podcast Follow @meridian17org on Instagram and TikTok. © 2026 Meridian17 NPC. All rights reserved.

As a young journalist, Claus Stäcker stood metres from Nelson Mandela and was too moved to ask a question. Some would call that a missed scoop. He sees it as a lesson in what public service broadcasting should be. In the latest episode of The Media in Africa podcast, Deutsche Welle's Director of Programmes for Africa speaks to GCS about what it takes for a European broadcaster to earn trust on the continent: letting the beat change you, taking in its complexities, and listening as hard as you broadcast. DW says it reaches more than 100 million users a week in sub-Saharan Africa, with most regional coverage produced by journalists from the continent. Stäcker credits much of that following to how far his teams go in engaging with audiences. A conversation about public service media, trust, independence and listening well.

African journalism isn’t short on courage but it is short on support. In the sixth episode of The Media in Africa Podcast, Mamaponya Motsai—CEO of fraycollege, a journalism training institute in South Africa—tells host Georja Calvin-Smith that journalists’ safety is about more than physical danger. Online harassment, attacks on mental health, and the pressure to self-censor can all threaten the work journalists do. And women journalists are targeted especially hard. Protecting journalists is part of protecting journalism itself. And you can’t have safety without more resources. Low wages and a lack of funding for African journalism feeds directly into the kind of dangers faced by the people Mamponya works with. What do African journalists need the most right now?

Do you work with media and creatives in Africa? Well this one’s for you. And it’s all about money. In this fifth episode, Georja’s joined by former hit show mogul turned streaming and business guru turned popular author Marie Lora-Mungai. The founder of Restless Global works with companies investing hefty sums across Africa's creative and sports industries. She walks us through the reasons why so much cash set aside for African creatives never reaches them. And sets out the fix. Media in Africa is a ten-part podcast by Meridian17, a Dutch-South African think and do tank, produced in partnership with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation Media Programme Sub-Saharan Africa. New episodes weekly. Full video episodes: www.youtube.com/@meridian17org All platforms and more: meridian17.org/podcast Follow @meridian17org on Instagram and TikTok. © 2026 Meridian17 NPC. All rights reserved.

Drawing on more than two decades of reporting, most of it by bus and motorbike rather than by hired car, Ruud maps the landscape: why he calls the buying and selling of African stories a kind of colonialism, and names the one funder he thinks got it right, how a coffee shop in an empty mall turns into a story about geopolitics, why a Kenyan journalist can reach places he cannot and why their own state is the harder obstacle, what he would spend a million euros on if it were handed to him for African voices, why putting the same story in a vertical format is not what the big broadcasters should be learning from Nairobi's creators, and how the story about Africans training AI models gets told wrong. Plus, as every episode: Ruud's nerd fact, which involves chains, caps and a late discovery of fashion. Media in Africa is a ten-part podcast by Meridian17, a Dutch-South African think and do tank, produced in partnership with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation Media Programme Sub-Saharan Africa. New episodes weekly. Full video episodes: www.youtube.com/@meridian17org All platforms and more: meridian17.org/podcast Follow @meridian17org on Instagram and TikTok. © 2026 Meridian17 NPC. All rights reserved.