Ruud Elmendorp (freelance journalist) - Partnerships & intentionality of news stories | Media in Africa #3

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.