“Africa is only on Ebola right now”: Stories from “Africa” and their coverage in mainstream media outlets

By Arndt Peltner, Freelance Correspondent

I have been working as a freelance correspondent for the last 20 years. I’m based in Oakland, California. Most of my reporting is about stories and events in the United States.

Arndt Peltner in Niger, visiting a CARE programme. Photo: CARE/Johanna Mitscherlich

For the last ten years, I have also been traveling extensively to conflict and post conflict areas, including Afghanistan, Rwanda, Burundi, DR Congo, Chad, Somalia, Somaliland and Niger. My reporting from these countries has largely covered topics such as the refugee crisis, female genital mutilation, climate change, malnutrition, sexual violence and civil war.

As a freelance journalist I have to cover my own expenses. Traveling to African countries can be quite expensive. Beyond air travel, lodging and food, I have to pay for visa applications, accreditation, translator, ground transportation, security and local phone connections. Expenses add up very quickly. To be in the red before writing even one sentence is normal for many freelance correspondents.

Luckily, I have always been able to sell my stories to different outlets. This includes long radio features, shorter radio reports, and articles for newspapers and magazines. Over the years I have built up a kind of vendor’s tray with outlets I work with. That is necessary to at least break-even in the end. In addition, trips with CARE Deutschland-Luxemburg have been and applications for travel grants at other institutions have supported my reporting. This way I could cover some of my costs and I had lots of logistical support on the ground.

Getting the interest at editorial desks for “African” stories is sometimes quite difficult. I remember one particular incident, after I got back from a trip to Chad, covering the refugees from the Central African Republic in the southern part of the country. I recorded lots of interviews, sounds, music. I was ready to tell this important story. Offering it, I was told by a chief editor of a public broadcaster in Germany that “Africa is only on Ebola right now”. In fact, no other stories from and about the continent were ordered for broadcast. My objection that only a small part of Africa was affected by the disease and that the refugees from the Central African Republic in the Chad need acknowledgment didn’t go very far.

Another story I once offered about the biggest solar power plant on the continent was also not selected. Africa, I was told, is war, starvation, crisis. I had to learn that positive stories from African countries are very hard to “sell”. If at all, they’ll be published rather as part of the background of a crisis. For example, I did a story from Puntland about football in this part of Somalia. The editor at a German football magazine made sure that the story was not just about the sport.

At the moment I’m trying to offer stories from my last trip with CARE to Niger. I have visited great projects about support for farmers affected by climate change, fighting malnutrition in some villages, an inter-religious dialogue as a peace building process, and health programs on community radio stations. Each of these make a great story, but what is missing in all of them is the “in your face” drama. After I returned and offered the stories, I got a mail from one editor of a radio station asking me, if I visited the Diffa region of Niger, a district that is hit hard by the constant attacks of armed groups crossing the border from Nigeria. I responded that I wasn't, but that I had other interesting stories from Niger. “Sorry, we’ll pass”, was the answer I received.

I know that there are many journalists out there trying to cover stories in and about Africa. They are passionate, they believe in what they do, they want to look beyond the typical coverage of African countries, that is war, crisis, diseases. They want to give people a voice. At the same time, there are so many humanitarian crises out there that media outlets often focus on just one that grabs the most attention of its listeners or readers. It’s often not easy to get good, long and in-depth articles, features, reports published. I believe it is still possible, if we persist and stay tenacious.  But it gets harder and harder.

CARE just published a report on the humanitarian crises that received the least media coverage in 2016: Suffering in silence: The 10 most under-reported humanitarian crises of 2016.