Television & Soft Power: The 21st Century Competition for African Hearts & Minds

This article first appeared in the SiC Report “The Global South in an Era of Great Power Competition. Click here to access the introduction and a full pdf download of the Report.

By Lee Shaker, PhD. Associate Professor, Portland State University. lshaker@pdx.edu and Paul Falzone, PhD. Executive Director, Peripheral Vision International. director@pvinternational.org

Abstract

This article examines the intensifying competition in Sub-Saharan Africa among Russia, China, and the United States to capture television audiences’ attention and advance their own geopolitical goals. We explore the implementation of the Great Powers’ competing strategies from the perspectives of African television executives. Our findings show that they have a nuanced understanding of the competition to reach their viewers and are adroit at leveraging their gatekeeping position to meet local audiences’ demands. Our article concludes with recommendations for policymakers and media executives to effectively engage with African audiences in the evolving media landscape.

Introduction

As Africa’s demand for media content grows, Russia, China, and the United States are intensifying their information campaigns on the continent. The proliferation of media technologies in Africa, combined with the limited commercial funding available to develop local media industries, presents tantalizing opportunities for external actors to intervene and shape local public opinion. From the perspective of these global powers, capturing the attention of African audiences offers the possibility of important strategic advantages as each of the three nations seeks to bolster its own future power and prosperity. But what does this competition look like to Africans? 

Russia, China, and the United States each has unique tools and strategies to develop and promote media outcomes in support of their agendas. China’s media strategy in Sub-Saharan Africa aims to facilitate the extraction of resources and minimize global opposition to Chinese foreign policy. China invests in media infrastructure and uses Chinese-owned media outlets to promote a positive image of the country and its investments in Africa. The United States, on the other hand, seeks to ensure the stability of markets for investment and business, promote shared values, and cultivate human capital in alignment with American interests. The US is increasingly investing in media development programs and using existing media outlets such as CNN and Voice of America to counter narratives promoted by China and Russia. Meanwhile, Russia’s media strategy in the region aims to facilitate access to natural resources, challenge the US's perspective, and undermine the unity of the global community that may oppose Russian priorities. 

While the rivalry between Russia, China, and the United States leads to a diversification of the content available to Africans, it also raises concerns about the spread of propaganda and the impact on media freedom. Understanding the dynamics of this media competition is crucial for policymakers and researchers seeking to promote independent and objective media in Sub-Saharan Africa. Furthermore, as African populations grow and increasingly come online, they will become more closely involved in international social, economic, and environmental concerns that affect the global community. The struggle for African hearts and minds has substantial implications for the people of Africa – and also for the stability and well-being of citizens around the world.

To examine this competition, we conducted an online survey of African television programming executives complemented by a series of subsequent thirty-minute interviews with willing respondents. Three key findings emerge from our research. First, globalization of media production is increasing the cost of creating content locally in Africa, which is driving African networks towards international content even though audiences prefer local (or at least regional) fare. Second, programming executives are broadly open to the overtures of foreign parties because they see opportunities to achieve their own objectives simultaneously – and they are willing to leverage the gatekeeping access to local audiences that they hold accordingly. Third, these executives are adept at navigating local tastes and pressures: they are not likely to distribute international programming that could cause recriminations on the homefront, but they do see potential benefits from using international content to push boundaries on occasion. All together, our research portrays a population of programming executives across the continent who demonstrate considerable savvy and autonomy in the face of overtures from Russia, China, the United States, and beyond.

Chinese, Russian, and American Orientations Towards Influencing African Television

Information campaigns complement traditional forms of diplomacy by allowing foreign powers to directly reach broad swaths of the African public and nurture support for desirable values. However, it is difficult to navigate a highly fragmented media landscape across dozens of nations and languages, with innumerable gatekeepers, to attract audience attention. Faced with this challenge, and with unique interests and assets, China, Russia, and the United States deploy different soft power strategies. In this section, we explore the tactics they pursue specifically with regard to African television.

Prior scholarship depicts a multi-pronged strategy utilized by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as it pursues its policy goals through African television.¹ First, China has an array of strategies to shape the content available to Africans throughout the television landscape. For example, programming from China Global Television Network (CGTN) is often provided to local broadcasters; Xinhua, China’s state news service, has more bureaus in Africa than any other international media outlet² and it generates material employed by outlets across the continent; all while Chinese officials leverage interpersonal diplomatic ties to ensure favorable depictions of China by state-affiliated media throughout Africa. Second, the CCP has worked to shift television distribution in Africa in ways that benefit Chinese manufacturers as well as state interests.³ For example, StarTimes is a state-subsidized satellite TV operator that excludes Western channels from its line-up in favor of Chinese and African content.⁴ By charging as little as $4 a month, StarTimes is both broadly affordable and accessible to Africans across the continent. Additionally, the 10,000 Villages Project advanced under Xi Jinping compounds the market reach of StarTimes by installing free televisions in villages throughout Africa.⁵ As a result of these efforts, more than 10 million African subscribers view StarTimes’ television ecosystem that hews the line of the CCP–and countless more are exposed to favorable content seeded in innumerable African broadcasters.

While much of Russia’s renewed focus on Africa is driven by trade interests, there is an emphasis as well on cultivating geopolitical allies and popular favor.⁶ On the surface, these efforts are driven by official state representatives and, with regard to television, the Russia Today (RT) network. For example, RT programming (“Drift It Like Putin’s Driver”) is made available to African broadcasters, and subsidized training programs are offered to African journalists.⁷ However, beneath the surface, a network of entrepreneurs is also at work advancing Russian interests. For example, Laruelle & Limonier⁸ outline a number of television initiatives connected to Luc Michel, an anti-Western activist. As the leader of Afrique Media, a TV channel based in Cameroon, Michel has worked to create a pan-African CNN; Michel also operates online TV channels in Chad, Benin, and Cameroon. Through operatives like Michel, Russia-inflected narratives and disinformation common on social media are amplified and connected to the larger African media environment.⁹

Meanwhile, compared to China and even Russia, the United States’ strategic efforts to reach African audiences through television are more circumspect. After a period of disengagement under the leadership of Donald Trump, the Biden administration issued the U.S. Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa to outline a regional five-year plan.¹⁰ The Biden memo identifies the United States’ need to “defend against digital authoritarianism” and “fight back against disinformation” by “fostering” an open digital media ecosystem and working to “ensure” affordable access to an open internet, yet the memo says little directly about television.¹¹ Reading between the lines, the document suggests that the U.S. will continue to rely substantially on the market power of private parties like CNN and Netflix which, to some degree by default, construct a television environment that centers American interests and values. In addition, the U.S. government does sponsor disparate television programming efforts filtered through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and external NGOs. However, these content productions are scattered, and critics suggest that they are not typically innovative nor are they subject to rigorous assessment.¹²

African Television Executives’ Perceptions of International Programming Partnerships

Little scholarship exists that captures the perspective of African television executives as they navigate an international competition for their viewers’ attention. To remedy this, we conducted a combination of online surveys and interviews with 26 senior executives working in broadcast television in Sub-Saharan Africa. Overall, we oriented our research around the following research questions:

RQ1: What experience do African television executives have with international programming partners?

RQ2: What perceptions do African television executives have of international programming partners?

In this section, we summarize the key findings from our inquiry.

Content sharing with international partners was a familiar subject for our participants. Every respondent to our survey reported collaborating with at least one source for foreign content, most often BBC Media Action, Ubongo, and Voice of America. CGTN was a content source for programmers in Nigeria, Tanzania, and Zambia, while RT provided content for programmers in Cameroon, Nigeria, and Tanzania. Respondents described receiving access to free content as well as training and viewed these arrangements favorably. They described their networks as open, pliant partners; all but one respondent (the CEO of a station in South Africa) said their network would trade airtime to a foreign partner in return for satellite distribution. Additionally, all but one respondent said that they had, at times, felt an “expectation to broadcast programming that is favorable” to the international partners that provided content. However, this perception was not consistent: more than half of respondents (53%) said this expectation was present only “sometimes” while 18% observed it “always.” 

Notably, participants reported working with a wide range of international partners, including entities from China, Russia, and the United States–but also many others like DW from Germany, NHK from Japan, Korea Creative Content Agency, and the BBC. In general, they found the expectations from international partners to be “not very stringent. I think [we] just provide them schedule reports like when you’ve scheduled the program how many times, but there are no other conditionalities attached.’ That said, they had a detailed awareness of international governments’ interest in African television. For example, one respondent discussed the different ownership arrangements for StarTimes distributors by country, noting that only in “…Rwanda is [the distributor] not owned a hundred percent by Star Times. It's owned 50-50 with the media owners in Rwanda and 50% by the Chinese government.”

Research participants saw international partners as sources of programming that they could leverage because of the access the broadcasters offer. Limited local production budgets nudge the executives to find low-cost (or free) content to fill their broadcast slates. This pressure creates an opportunity for foreign partners–but an abundance of international content (and lax intellectual property enforcement) allows African programmers to be selective in what they choose to air. They are aware that the distribution they offer has value to foreign partners: “we don’t get to pay for the content, but we get to give you space to use on our platforms.” As one interviewee put it, when content is offered to African broadcasters “the idea is to influence their way of life and their culture on our African audiences…[they] try to export their culture and their way of life through content.” With this in mind, they look for content from international partners that is “clean and [without] any underlying things that they're trying to promote;” although the themes and values that are acceptable to programmers may vary by country and network.

Meanwhile, the rise of satellite and internet television is roiling the programmers’ work. Broadcasters in Africa are aware of being circumvented by these new technologies. Speaking about StarTimes, one interviewee noted that “...what China has done, it came into the market, didn't bother going to the cities. It actually went to the rural regions...It gave set boxes to 10,000 families. Those families are only consuming content directly from China. They're programmed to see what China has to offer in terms of entertainment, in terms of music, in terms of movies.” In addition, Netflix (and other internet television sources) pose a new, unique challenge: by offering production fees that are large locally, but small relative to American or European budgets, internet TV companies are driving up local production costs. As one executive at an East African national broadcaster told us, “Netflix is really paying well. It's paying between $3,000 to $6,000 per episode. All producers are expecting the local small terrestrial TV stations to pay them that much.” This international competition makes it cost-prohibitive to produce content locally while also locking up the output of local talent in proprietary libraries that are not available for broadcasters to license.

As market fragmentation and ever-increasing access to international content makes it ever more difficult to attract audiences, programmers see local content as even more critical to attracting viewers: “People are moving away from the international content, people want to actually get to see local players, local actors doing good quality content, good storyline people, they can resonate with people…Those shows are pulling in crowds.” But, while these trends undermine foreign programming’s attractiveness to the African broadcasters (because it is increasingly available in abundance elsewhere), paying for local content is also a growing challenge. One solution African broadcasters see is to produce content that is regional, not national, in nature: though not strictly ‘local’, programming that is deemed to be authentically African can thread the needle for transnational audiences. As one respondent said: “What they're looking for is original African stories. If you're able to script an original African story or whether it's true, whether it's myth, the stories we grew up listening to from our parents and grandparents, those are the stories we're looking for so that we're able to animate and put that out.” Transnational shows can justify higher production costs because you can, “Sell per region, move to the Tanzanian market, move to the Ugandan market, move to the South African market."

Discussion

African media industries are becoming increasingly prominent on the world stage. Musicians like Burna Boy and Rema are bringing Afrobeat to a global audience. Meanwhile, there is rapidly expanding foreign investment in the television industry as streaming platforms enter the market. Netflix, for instance, has spent a cumulative $175 million on productions in Africa since it gained entry in 2016.¹³ This investment garnered Netflix 170+ licensed titles, and 16 original series with significant cost savings for the streamer relative to western productions.¹⁴ But monetization of this media is largely coming from outside the continent. By 2021, there were only 2.6m Netflix subscribers within Africa, compared to roughly 250m global subscribers.¹⁵ And, not only are there far fewer subscribers, but the average revenue per subscriber is far below that of subscriptions in the west.¹⁶ The spread of internet television into Africa is ironically making local talent/productions less accessible to African audiences. In other words, investment in African commercial media is likely to be extractive in nature. Foreign businesses can content farm in Africa for international rather than local markets, with the effects felt by media gatekeepers in Africa.

While audiences clamor for locally produced and salient content, African broadcasters are unable to meet this demand with the budgets they oversee. Simultaneously, the shift from analog to digital broadcast means that many of these free-to-air television stations now have multiple channels to fill instead of one, with more competitors than ever competing for shrinking advertising dollars. This advertising issue is exacerbated by wealthier households (who are more desirable for advertisers) having more screens in their home. Mobile phones, tablets, and expensive digital and satellite TV have pulled advertiser dollars away from broadcast, fragmented viewership within wealthier homes, and shrunk this valuable audience for broadcast networks. At the same time, the massive and recent growth of small-scale solar power means that their audiences at the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid are growing. Unable to afford streaming television or satellite/multichannel television, these new viewers are tuning into free-to-air broadcast television. With fewer screens and less jaded attitudes toward the media, young and older audiences are more inclined to co-view television content together.

Much has been written about the “youthquake” currently underway in Africa.¹⁷ The population is projected to double to 2.5 billion by 2050: one quarter of the world’s population and roughly one-third of all young people aged 15 to 24, according to United Nations forecasts. This population will be increasingly looking to media to make sense of the world and their place within it. If commercial media makers cannot find a way to monetize their attention, it is likely that both state actors and nonstate actors (such as churches) will increasingly fill this gap, trading content for access to this large and impressionable population.

Based on our interviews and surveys with broadcast gatekeepers, several suggestions emerge for policymakers and others interested in utilizing broadcast television:

Content is King: Content increasingly travels across platforms, both digital and broadcast. Rather than controlling platforms (as China seeks to do with its Star Times initiative), the broader opportunity is to plug into proliferating platforms and channels, syndicating to gatekeepers with free or low-cost content that they can monetize. 

“Local” is Relative: Audiences prefer content that is local to content that comes from abroad, but “local” can mean “African.” Audiences within Sub-Saharan Africa are largely missing from their own media and hungry for local representation. But local doesn’t necessarily mean within the country of origin. A single “local” program can air across multiple countries and regions.

Timing for the Long Tail: Within funding circles there has been a strong bias toward supporting journalism; but “yesterday’s news” doesn’t have a long shelf life. Content that is “evergreen” is going to be able to slowly roll out across dozens of countries and hundreds of platforms in a way that breaking news can’t. Content should be able to be played over and over again, months or even years after it was first made.

Tell a Story: Media gatekeepers consistently rank “drama” as what their audiences want. Fictional formats are not only more popular, but less likely to meet censorship than journalism or nonfiction formats.

More is Better: Broadcast gatekeepers have 24 hours of airtime to fill each and every day. Because of this, they consistently indicate that they prefer larger numbers of episodic programming that can fit within an ongoing broadcast schedule to one-off projects. 

Reach the Whole Family: Western programming runs the risk of offending local audiences with values that are perceived as “un-African.” This is particularly salient in contexts where there are fewer screens within the home and increased co-viewing by multiple generations watching and discussing together. Content should be engaging but not overly controversial.

In the aggregate, our research depicts a community of savvy, opportunistic media executives who are aware of international partners’ foreign policy objectives but also open to collaborations. These African executives face pressing business challenges that are heightened by rapid changes in the technological landscape. As they seek to stay relevant and profitable, they realize the potential benefits of international partnerships, but they are also keenly aware of audience demands and the strategic opportunities they provide by offering access to audiences. 

Footnotes:

1: Cook, S., Datt, A., Young, E., & Han, B. (2022). Beijing’s Global Media Influence: Authoritarian Expansion and the Power of Democratic Resilience.
Freedom House. https://freedomhouse.org/report/beijing-global-media-influence/2022/authoritarian-expansion-power-democratic-resilience

2: Eisenman, J. (2023). China’s Media Propaganda in Africa: A Strategic Assessment (516). United States Institute of Peace. https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/2023-03/sr_516-china_media_propaganda_africa.pdf

3: Kurlantzick, J. (2022). Beijing’s Global Media Offensive: China’s Uneven Campaign to Influence Asia and the World. Oxford University Press.

4: Olander, E. (2017, August 26). China’s StarTimes is now one of Africa’s most important media companies. Medium. https://medium.com/@eolander/
chinas-startimes-is-now-one-of-africa-s-most-important-media-companies-103843ebc376

5: Marsh, J. (2019, July 23). How China is slowly expanding its power in Africa, one TV set at a time | CNN Business. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/23/business/startimes-china-africa-kenya-intl/index.html

6: Foy, H., Astrasheuskaya, N., & Pilling, D. (2019, January 23). Putin’s pivot to Africa. The Financial Times. https://go.gale.com/ps/retrieve.dotabID=RecentNews

7: Troianovski, A. (2019). “A New Message”: Russia Trains Its Propaganda Machine on Africa. International New York Times, NA-NA.

8: Laruelle, M., & Limonier, K. (2021). Beyond “hybrid warfare”: A digital exploration of Russia’s entrepreneurs of influence. Post-Soviet Affairs, 37(4), 318–335. https://doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2021.1936409

9: Siegle, J. (2021). Russia and Africa: Expanding Influence and Instability. In G. P. Herd (Ed.), Russia’s Global Reach: A Security and Statecraft Assessment (pp. 80–90). George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies.

10: Owusu, F., Reboredo, R., & Carmody, P. (2019). Trumping Development: Selective Delinking and Coercive Governmentality in US–Africa Relations. Africa Today, 66(1), 2–27. https://doi.org/10.2979/africatoday.66.1.01

11: White House. (2022). U.S. Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/U.S.-Strategy-Toward-
Sub-Saharan-Africa-FINAL.pdf

12: Devermont, J. (2020). A New U.S. Policy Framework for the African Century. https://www.csis.org/analysis/new-us-policy-framework-african-century

13: It should be noted that about $125m of that was spent in the largely white and westernized media industries of South Africa.

14: Netflix. (2022) Netflix’s socio-economic impact: South Africa, Nigeria & Kenya (2016-2022). https://africapractice.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/
NetflixReport-11April-DIGITALfile-1.pdf

15: Szali, G. (2021, August 26). Netflix May Reach 2.6M Subscribers in Africa by End of 2021, Analyst Estimates. Hollywood Reporter. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/netflix-streaming-subscribers-africa-disney-amazon-1235003531/

16: Uluwole, V. (2023,February 22). Netflix slashes subscription fees in select African countries. Business Insider Africa. https://africa.businessinsider.com/
local/netflix-announces-reduced-pricing-for-select-african-countries/wzw8eyj

17: Walsh, D. (2023, October 28). The world is becoming more African. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/10/28/world/
africa/africa-youth-population.html

Lee Shaker is an associate professor of communication at Portland State University. His primary research interest is in the intersection of new communication technologies and politics. As people increasingly learn about their communities and countries via new, emerging information sources, long established political patterns and practices are changing. Shaker’s research has been published in many journals including Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Communication, and the Journal of Communication. In turn, this work has been featured in popular publications like the Yomiuri Shimbun, Boston Globe, Wired, Politico, and The Atlantic. Before joining the faculty at Portland State, he received his Ph.D. from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and was a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Politics at Princeton University.

Dr. Paul Falzone is a media strategist, producer and scholar. He is the Executive Director of Peripheral Vision International, a Peabody Award nominated media NGO whose output has reached tens of millions across the developing world over the last decade and whose work has been profiled on CNN, The New Yorker, NPR, The Guardian, and dozens of other news outlets. He is co-editor of “EntertainmentEducation Behind the Scenes: Case Studies for Theory and Practice” (Palgrave Macmillan 2021). He earned his MA and PhD from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.