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J. Siguru Wahut, "In the Shadow of the Global North: Journalism in Postcolonial Africa" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
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Podcast Host Intro
Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Nome Anthony Kanayo
Welcome to today's episode of the New Books Network. I am your host, Nome Anthony Kanayo, and today I am honored to be joined by Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu. Dr. Wahutu is an Assistant professor of Sociology and African Studies at Yale University, a Fellow at the Macmillan center for International and Area Studies at Yale, a Fellow at the center for the Study of African Studies and Economies at Harvard University, and a Fellow at the center for Media Risk at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include the effects of ethnicity and culture on media representations of human rights violation, global and transnational news flows, post colonial land claims, and the political economy of international media with a regional emphasis on post Colonial Africa. Dr. Wahutu's works have appeared in top journals including African Journalism Studies, African affairs, the International Journal of Press, Politics, Global Media and Communication. Media Culture and Society, Media and Communication and Sociological forum. Today we will be discussing his first book, in the Shadow of the Global Journalism in Post Colonial Africa, published by Cambridge University Press in 2024. Dr. Wahutu, thank you so much for joining me today.
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
Thank you so much for having me. Kalaim, how are you?
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Nome Anthony Kanayo
Very fine, thank you. So the book is about journalism and African journalists, and you explore what it means to be an African journalist covering events within the continent, especially how African journalists represent the continent and its peoples particular conflicts, how they frame conflicts in Africa. So can you help us understand the inspiration behind this work? You described being told that African news were irrelevant to global media studies. How did that dismissal shape your decision to journalism in the field?
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
That's interesting, right? That's. That comment about the relevance of African newspapers actually came from somebody who was a fellow covered while I was a fellow covered. After Dwayne Dissertation, we had both been invited to a conference in Canada, right? So clearly somebody was interested in my work. The interest in this work is twofold, right? One, I came to the US in 2007 and my country, Kenya, had one of the most contentious and violent episodes of post intellectual violence in my fall semester. And I was trying to figure out what was happening. And all I could get easily at that particular point was CNN and New York Times because they're delivering continuous coverage. But what they were covering and what my parents were telling me and my family was telling me were often at variance, right? I'm watching these news organizations cover my home country. I thought my home country was up in flames. From Mombasa, Kisumung, east to west, north to south. I would talk to my parents and my parents would go, we don't know what you're talking about. We're currently getting food at the supermarket, right? So this kind of got my interest. But then I was curious as to how other Africans were talking about Kenya, right. What were the messages they were sending and what are some of the key issues they were debating while looking at what was happening in Kenya? So I did that as an undergrad paper and I came across a professor who encouraged me to kind of dig in some more and. And look into some of these questions, right? I'm one of my mentors. I remember as I was writing three years later, as I'm writing my senior paper, I was complaining about something else. And he goes, well, you could go to graduate school and do the research, or you could not go to graduate school and not complain, because if you are not doing the research. Nobody's going to be listening to what you're saying or reading what you're saying, right? So that's how I end up going into graduate school. But to be honest, and I talk about this in a book, even when I went into graduate school to do this project, I was more interested in showing that African journalists were doing better, even though I did not know what better was. Because at the back of my mind, I was comparing it to the New York Times and the CNN's, right? So the transition to kind of say, I want to focus on African journalists and I do not care what anybody else is saying was not natural.
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Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
But it's a thing that happened due to prodding from a dissertation committee and kind of them asking, well, why is this important? Why are you always looking at the West?
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Interviewer/Moderator
Right?
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
Why don't you just focus on what is happening on the continent? So fast forward to at this conference and somebody's telling me nobody cares about African newspapers. I was like, well, my committee cared because, you know, they get. They let me pass the dissertation. Hubbard clearly cared because we are both fellows that have it right. This conference where we were both invited at and we're both speaking at clearly cared because they invited me.
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Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
But even outside of all of those things, it was fascinating to listen to somebody who was not African tell me that African newspapers that were being read by people that looked like me in places where I was from were not important and they were being labeled as nobody.
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Interviewer/Moderator
Right?
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
There's an interesting thing to watch because if you're saying nobody cares about these things, am I included in the nobody or am I one of the good people that's moved from the nobody to somebody? Because I'm articulating certain things and I'm reading certain newspapers that you recognize.
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Interviewer/Moderator
Right?
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
So those are sort of the underlying currents from undergrad to dissertation project to turning this into a book project.
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Nome Anthony Kanayo
Interesting. So you mentioned when you set out to write, when your assumptions about African journalists being better and you really didn't know what better was. So would that be like reporting Africa in a contextually, in the right context? What does beta mean now? Ah.
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
What does better mean? I think better is one of those complicated words when I think about my project. Right. Because yes, one would argue, yeah. I mean, African news organizations need to give. Are likely going to give much more context because they understand the context.
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Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
They're likely gonna do this thing in a different way because they're African.
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Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
They're likely gonna avoid certain things that we think of as stereotypical ways of representing Africa, the two problems often come up with. This is one, as a journalist in South Africa once said, why is it that when it comes to African journalists, we expect them to do something, but when you look at the New York Times, you don't expect them to do anything different? So the question was, why do we expect Africans to give more context? But nobody looks at the New York Times journalist and says, well, the US Is not the land of milk and honey. Why do you keep presenting it as the land of milk and honey? Everybody just moves on with their life. So it always feels as if when we talk about better, we're putting an extra burden on journalists. And the debate then becomes, is that the right thing to do? Should we put an extra burden on them?
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Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
But if you're putting an extra burden on them, the reality of the profession is that it needs to make money. That's the reality of the profession. The reality of the profession is that a journalist may have maybe 800 to a thousand words to tell the story.
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Interviewer/Moderator
Right?
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
So are we demanding more of them while not paying attention to the reality within which they work in?
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Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
And asking them to do something that the professional doesn't allow them to do? Right. If you look at Kenya, the two leading newspapers for the longest of times were owned by settlers, right? Daily Nation and the Standard were not owned by Africans. They were not owned by Kenyans. So what are we asking journalists that work in these organizations to do?
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Interviewer/Moderator
Are we.
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
For example, when you read the New York Times and they are writing something about midtown Manhattan, do you often go, well, clearly they're wrong and this journalist needs to do better about midtown Manhattan. We just go, well, okay, fine, that's what they're saying, and we move on. But when it comes to working on journalists, we go, well, you need to do better.
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Interviewer/Moderator
But why?
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
What does that better look like in a profession that is starving for revenue?
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Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
Space isn't necessarily increasing in a profession that has to deal very, in a very real sense, with the state in a way that American journalism or Western journalism never used to have to deal with, but now we know American journalism is having to deal with the state, Right? And what are those realities? And are we actually having all of those things at the top of our minds when you say they need to do better or they can do better Right? Now, this isn't a new question, right? We have folks like Kasama that argued a long time ago that we need to have a journalist whose ethics represent the continent. In my book, I talk about Kwame Kuruma's speech and thinking about the new African journalists and what journalists could do and these newly independent states, right? So I kind of move away from better and kind of landed on the can we do it differently, right? Because better still assumes that there is a metric to reach. But who sets that bar, right? Are we often doing this thing where. Where better, like modern is a hyper real thing that keeps on moving, whose terms are dictated by somebody else that kind of moves to can we do it differently? And what does that difference look like compared to what we have now? So it is not different compared to what minority world countries are doing, but different compared to what we have now in the continent.
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Nome Anthony Kanayo
Talking about African journalists, I mean, talking about Beta as well. And now you highlighting this from the context of social background in which African journalists are reports and also the social context they are in. And still we expect them to, you know, report in certain ways. You talk about it from two aspects. One is the strand of literature that considers social context of the reporters, the news agencies and the audience. And then you also talk about the role of non, non journalistic actors, you know, in influencing everything. You tied back to colonialism. So you sort of, from the. I think the second chapter, you trace African journalism's roots to colonial media system. How does this historical legacies continue to shape professional norms and the field and the logic of journalism in Africa?
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
I think. I think when we think about the colonial experience, right? And when you think about this current moment you are in, where it's not necessarily a moment of colonialism, but it's a moment of coloniality, right? These enduring legacies and these enduring logics. I think what we often tend to sort of forget, right, is that a lot of African news organizations during the moment of colonization were often indigenous and were often very, very, very strident in their critique of the colonial experience. They were very involved in the daily lives of people. And you could think of Namdiya Zikwe newspapers, you could think of the newspapers by John ten Lucha Bavu in South Africa. In South Africa, you could think about the indigenous newspapers in Kenya, right? And even the indigenous newspapers in Nigeria, whose primary role. They viewed their primary role as putting the colonialist feet to the fire. That is what they viewed their role as, right? Because they were very, very particular about this moment where they realized the colonialists were talking about rights and freedoms in the west, but they were not being treated in that very same way. The corollary to this, you can think of it as in Adam, getachu's World Making, where she talks about this moment.
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Interviewer/Moderator
Where.
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
African leaders, African Pan African leaders and Caribbean leaders are trying to imagine a world that is new, that kind of foregrounds these marginalized populations to create something new, right? To basically build a world that was going to be not beneficial, but that was going to treat Africans as whole and complicated human beings. Newspapers were doing the same thing, right? Newspapers were kind of putting forth these ideas, but they were also, as a kind of show in the book I kind of highlighted they were also very keen on holding African elites to account. So I call this African newspaper who are just like, look, while the elites are out here drinking and sleeping, the poor people are engaged in politics. They're engaged in kind of moving the needle. And I think that history is important because in a place like Kenya, you then have the state of emergency, which then kills off all of the indigenous newspapers. And the two newspapers that survive at the Nation and the Standard in this particular time frame, right? Those are the two newspapers that kind of continue to this day. But these two newspapers were not necessarily at the forefront of holding the colonialists to account. The Daily Nation is started by settlers that are British, right? They're not going to sit there and go, the Brits need to leave. That's not their job, right? So we get to this moment where as independence is arriving and journalists are being trained in these countries, they're being trained on models of journalism that sort of mimics the metropole. So people are coming in from Britain, people are coming in from the US and training people on how to be good journalists. In the book, I say that the policy was essentially how to turn quarter made journalists into half made journalists. Not full journalists, but half made journalists, right? And there's also this to the court where, you know, the argument is, you know, the African, the African journalists, when it came to the man on the street, they were just right about sports because the man on the street or the man only cares about sports. And which is really annoying because they love sports, but only cares about sports and those things about leisure Night, they are not sophisticated enough to engage in a policy conversation. So that was the training. And what then happens is in a place like Kenya, I will say the newspapers then tend to speak to the elites. And the elites are your political people. And those that are seen as having a higher socioeconomic status, that is the story. So a newspaper that is headquartered in Nairobi is going to treat Isiolo or is going to treat the border and Somalia, almost a different country, right? Because they're out there in the periphery and they're not where they are. So that legacy of coloniality, Right? Yeah.
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Nome Anthony Kanayo
Please go on.
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
So you know, they're going to treat a place like Moyale on the northern frontier as almost a different country because they're not being treated as Kenyan enough. The example I normally give in my class is there was an Al Shabaab attack of a university in Garissa. The longest of times in Nairobi, the first pictures and the first coverage was coming from Sky News, BBC, Al Jazeera. The first time we actually got live coverage from the ground by the local news organizations was about 2 o' clock in the afternoon. So almost six or eight hours after this attack had happened. So in Kenya, we will get stories from kindnesses. There's this moment where the periphery is not treated as important, right? In the same, those that were under colonization were treated as important. They were treated as primitives that needed to be civilized. And so when you think about the effects of colonization and you think about a country like Ken, that is maybe just around 60 years by those old school editors and we are wearing this excessive generation as well. Schools like the school I talk about in Nairobi rely on scholarship from the US and from Europe. So if you're in Nairobi and you're. And you're listening to and you're reading Michael Schutzson, for example, who's an amazing journalism scholar, but Michael Schutzson doesn't really write about Kenyan.
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Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
And if those are the people you're reading, you tend to think of journalism as the thing that Michael Schutzson, Anthony Kasha, that's Daniel Cris, says it is, rather than thinking about it contextually and going, okay, what does Francis Nyamjo say about journalism on the continent? What does Jacinta Moyo say about journalism on the continent? What does Kasama say?
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Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
I mean, these people are typically missing. So we have this enduring legacy where the older generation of professionals were trained by people like Tom Hopkinson, who came from South Africa, but was also, notes, Kenyan.
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Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
And then the generations go up. The scholarship that is being used is scholarship from the global north, right? And that's how this enduring legacy sort of continues.
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Nome Anthony Kanayo
You captured this a lot in chapter three. When you talk about the African African journalism education being, you know, having somewhat preference for Western pedagogy and theories. But you also sort of strike highlight a point whereby currently these Africans have the capacity African reporters, they now have the capacity to report Africa in their own terms. Yet they prefer or they choose not to. I mean it's some sort of conundrum, I would say where they are able to report Africa contextually but still prefer choose not to. So what is informing these sort of practices?
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
Did you get my question mark last bit? Sorry, I lost that last bit of the question. You said they choose to do what?
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Nome Anthony Kanayo
Okay, sorry, I was talking about African journalists and you highlight A situation where they now have the capacity to report Africa contextually, but still choose not to, you know, to. What is informing this sort of contradiction?
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
You know, I think it's less about choosing not to and more about the realities of the profession.
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Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
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Nome Anthony Kanayo
We live in a world where, you.
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
Know, and I think, I honestly, I think the larger conversation that we're often having without necessarily naming it is what do we think journalism is for? Like, that's a larger conversation, right. Do we treat. Should journalism have a civic minded aspect or should it be pure capitalism? We need to make a profit.
- [24:28]
Nome Anthony Kanayo
Yeah, I think you, you highlighted that from the, from the early chapter of where you talk about the role of economy, talking about the role of the state. And there's also the, the definitional struggles between the role of journalism, whether it's an instrument of state development or, you know, a tool for free press. I mean, I think we should even start from there. Like in your own, in your own view. What, what, what should journalism be?
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
Oh, I, I need to be careful because, you know, what's crucified.
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Nome Anthony Kanayo
I think.
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
No, I honestly though, I think journalism needs to find a way to be civic minded.
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Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
While also just being an actual capitalist enterprise. Right. Because it needs to make money, people need to get paid. I cannot sit here and earn a check for my job and then go, those people that are not being paid enough should not be paid as much as they are because they should be civic minded.
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Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
I think I'm often very cautious about those things and the hypocrisy that can come from such an argument. Now, on the civic mindedness, I remember when I said we need to think of journalism as can it do not better, but can it perform differently on the civic mindedness? Journalism on the continent has historically been civic minded, right. So that, that's not like I say, the indigenous newspapers were here talking about how do we improve the lot of the Nigeria, right. How do we improve the lot of the Kenyan, the lot of the Ghanaian? Historically, that had been the bar, right. When the, when the colonial administration was around, but also in those early years, post independence, right. And that disappeared, but that had been the power. So my argument has always been, okay, is there a space for us to go back to that version of journalism while also still making money right now? Several years ago, there was this political editor from Kenya who said, talked about, you know, they were looking at metrics of what people were reading on their website and they said, well, everybody says that newspapers need to focus more on useful news, but it seems that the stories they spend the most time on are the political drama stories and that's the story that everyone spends their time on. I appreciate the fact that as human beings we're interested in intrigue in the palace. I appreciate that. Right? But I think there's also space to sort of go, well, why is it that out here inaugurating this project that the country spent millions on, but the project is a water tank in a school whose walls are made of mud. What are we doing?
- [27:35]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right?
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
Where did the money go to? I think there's space for that, right? I think there's space for like during COVID I think there's space for a media that kind of goes, this is how we can keep ourselves safe, right? There's space for. These are the things. And you're kind of seeing that that space, right? These are the things that this kind of government is not doing appropriately, right? There's space to educate people on just the everyday.
- [28:04]
Nome Anthony Kanayo
I think there's space without coming in conflict with the state apparatus.
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
So that's how I was going to go, right? The challenge here is the state apparatus is an ever present thing, right? And it's present twofold. It's present in that it's. The state apparatus spends the most amount of money in advertising so they don't have to arrest you, they'll just hold their money and they'll kill your newspaper if you're not careful, right? And this is why I said we need to find a way where it's of kind, can do both, where it can still get the money and still do this thing. Is that possible or is that too optimistic? Maybe, right? I'm not going to sit here and say that it's easy, maybe it's too optimistic, right? But you know, sometimes maybe it's not. Maybe we need to figure out a way to dream slightly bigger and push those boundaries just one bit, right? Because the truth is a lot of journalists who are doing really good work are having it there, their lives at risk or they're poor, right? Because they've been blackballed. And that's just the truth. And how we sort of navigate that space, I think is a much longer conversation by people from various sectors to kind of think through what are these parts. What I do not think is a solution is getting funding from the West. The moment you do that, the politicians, the state can turn around and say, well, you're paid with those people. Why should we listen to you? And that's always the problem. It's very easy to kind of go, that news organization is an agent of the US Is an agent of Germany, because look at where the money's coming from. And these things are struggles. These things, I think, take a long time. And this is kind of what. And think about, okay, what is this thing about Afriethics that we can think of journalism through, Right? Is there a way to think of journalism as a journalism of care? Because African societies writ large, not necessarily uniformly, not all of them, but writ large, African societies kind of move in a very communal sense. And when people think of communal sense, they go, well, you know, that then will suppress the rights. But we've got a lot of amazing scholars that go, no, that you can move in a communal sense while still respecting and highlighting individual rights. A lot of societies do that on the continent, right. And how do we instill this idea of an ethical approach to journalism?
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Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
What does that look like? What can we learn from the older generation of journalists that were, for example, working in these indigenous newspapers?
- [31:02]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
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Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
It is amazing. I mean, I could ask you, and you know, when you come across, When I come across and I go, yeah, the New York Times and all of these things, we know what the criticisms are. Do you read newspapers for your home country? People will go, well, you know, well, they're not like, no, no. Either you read them or you don't. But if you don't read them and you read the New York Times and you want them to look like the New York Times, they're not going to look like the New York Times because they're not the New York Times.
- [31:30]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right?
- [31:32]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
Can you mention the newspaper in the country next to yours? A lot of people come, right? So this, this idea of how do we make different or better and be different about is not just a conversation about journalism, the profession, it's a conversation about societies and what societies privilege, right? Somebody is more likely to subscribe to the New York Times than they are likely to subscribe to the continent. And I'm like, well, but if you're not subscribing to the continent, what do you do?
- [32:05]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [32:05]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
How can you critique African news organizations if you're not spending your money where your mouth is?
- [32:12]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [32:12]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
If you're not subscribing to the Daily Nation, how can you say the Daily Nation is doing something terrible if you're not subscribing to the Garden of the Punch in Nigeria? How, how do you want them? Because they need money. In the same way the New York Times doesn't need your money. Save your money. Money goes farther. If you're subscribing to the Guardian of Punch in Nigeria than it does for the New York Times.
- [32:33]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [32:33]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
The subscription rates for the New York Times. You could use that to subscribe to three or four newspapers on the continent. You could.
- [32:39]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [32:39]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
But this is what I meant by. This is a conversation by different people from different sectors thinking about journalism not just as a profession, but as part of a larger ecology and want to figure out how to navigate that ecology. Then we can start thinking about something different. But there are people doing things different, the continent, who I just mentioned, the Republic in Nigeria, they're doing things differently.
- [33:05]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [33:06]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
It's just that a lot of people may not be subscribing to them because they do not know about them or they prefer something else.
- [33:14]
Nome Anthony Kanayo
Which is great for the forum.
- [33:16]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
Yes. Which is fine. But like my advisor said, if you're not going to do the work, you cannot critique anybody. Right. Either you go in and do the thing or you sit on the sidelines, but you cannot have it both ways.
- [33:28]
Nome Anthony Kanayo
Okay. I. I would like to ask a question that led me to your book. It's a very, should I say, naive question for, For a starter, you know, but I. I would like you. Because I know there might be our people out there who are also. Who also want to understand this. What can we really call African journalism? In. In a clear, simple, you know, man, what can we call African journalism?
- [33:59]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
I've been trying to find that answer for 15 years. I think. I think when we think of what we can call African journalism, maybe more interesting point, just because we do not have any profession in the world that have not been, at least not to my knowledge, that have not been affected by something else than somebody else. In fact, we do not have these pure things that exist out there. You know, even if you were to think of American journalism, American journalism kind of has been influenced by some things from Europe.
- [34:41]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [34:42]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
It's not necessarily pure state American journalism. Oh, this is dang. Right. But what I would say is that there are certain features that we can have at the forefront of this thing to think of as African journalism.
- [35:00]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [35:00]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
There's some features. One, I think when we think of African journalism, we have to think of a journalism that is rooted in an African reality. I'll give example. When I was doing this work, you know, I talk about this, I discovered that African journalists were using this term ethnic conflict, when talking about duffel. Now we know that when the white is ethnic conflict, they don't want to say, well, that's racist.
- [35:35]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [35:35]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
And there Is that shows specifically how that is really said. Good work. That shows. But enough use. And part of what I say in the book is that when an African uses it, it's a bit more complicated. It's less about. It's less about race and it's more about. I have words. What can I use here as a cultural term to include all of these things in a way that my audience understands if I use the term ethnic in Kenya, that a Kenyan audience will go, oh, okay, so these are people that sort of have identities in the same way I do right now. That identity could be linguistic, could be religious, could be regional, right? Ethnic in this sense means so many things. And it's about me versus you in a very clear. So that then allows a journalist to domesticate the story and go, these are people with whom we share certain traits, certain ideas of belonging, right? These are people with whom we share a certain bond. Depending on how you want to carve out that bond, right? The bond could be based off of Muslim versus Christian. It could be based off of somebody. Sarah versus somebody that is not right. Like, they're all of these things. And I think when we think of this thing we call African journalism within the context of African. The African continent, we have to be very careful about how we use terms as scholars, right? But African journalism has always been confrontational. That is the thing about journalism or the content, historically, confrontation. So the thing that Western. Western scholars are excited about when they talk about investigative journalism and everybody's excited about this, I'm like, yeah, but we've been doing that for the Islam, right? Like, that is what we did. We, we journalists were what you would think of today as macros, right? That is not new. It is a thing that has been blunted by the state, but that is quintessentially characteristic of the profession on the continent. The profession on the continent was born at a moment where they were fighting an external occupying force. They were never going to be compliant, right? One of the things that Stephanie Newell talks about when talking about news organization newspapers in British West Africa, right? She says, you know, they've always been confrontational. They've always been out there just at the forefront of things. So sort of, kind of, for lack of a better phrase, causing chaos for elites, because that is their history, right? That. That is the history of West African newspapers, right? But that history of West African newspapers is also rooted in a very specific West African experience. It's going to look different when you go to East Africa, right? Like newspaper culture in Kenya, for example. Would look different from newspaper culture in Tanzania.
- [38:56]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [38:57]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
But there are certain characteristics that we understand.
- [39:00]
Nome Anthony Kanayo
Yeah, that element of, of struggle, confrontational, you know, characteristic. And this is really interesting because again, like I said, this was a question that drew me to your book. I am really interested in how it can be changing in nature. The element you highlight, which is the confrontational feature of African journalism, is in practice, but institutional. Is there anything that define African journalism institutionally?
- [39:34]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
Oh, man, that's a tough question. Honestly, I don't know. I think I sort of have to pass it out, right. Certain things about African journalism at the institutional level sort of used to be unique to the content, but no longer, right? So for example, institutionally, one of the things we know about African journalism at a much more institutional level is that like, like I kind of mentioned earlier, the state has very easy access to these institutions, right. Especially through ad revenues.
- [40:11]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [40:12]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
It's, it's just again, the state is the biggest buyer of ads, right? Which is ironic because comic rumor speech, you know, when you're talking about, well, you know, the newspaper cannot be free in the capitalistic sense, just because then they'll rely on advertising and then they'll focus on sensationalism and all of these things because they're pursuing profit. Well, the one giving, let's say, in that way, the stake, right, In a sense the money the state is giving you is sort of reducing the extent to which you can be as a gatekeeper, right? So, so one, yeah, so one of these features has always been a level of, a high level of access to the profession by the states, right? This, this, this kind of unfolds in multiple ways. But when you think about, like I say, during the colonial period, the indigenous newspapers were at the forefront of pushing for liberation. But that then meant that they were connected to individuals that were always going to be or were likely going to be state actors, state elites, right? On the continent. A lot of the people that then would become the leaders in the post independent African countries, right, had been people that owned newspapers. Like, like, you know, and in, in this speech, recommend Grummer, he mentions the folks from Tunisia, from Nigeria. I mean, Kwame Gruma himself had newspapers, right? So, so these people had always owned newspapers and they entered the space sort of understanding the power of these particular modes of communication, right? So they understood it both because they either what in them or they owned them, right? So that then meant that in those early years, one of the things they did was really, really constrict the space for these organizations because they knew the power of these organizations, right? And once Structural Adjustment Program showed up in the 80s, late 80s, early 90s, they're like, well, we can't necessarily use the old methods. We will use money.
- [42:30]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [42:31]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
So they fell back on capitalism to give them access.
- [42:34]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [42:35]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
And so the state being involved in these news organizations is not new, but is also rooted in a very specific type of history.
- [42:44]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [42:44]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
If you have newspapers in Kenya that were present under colonization, then they know what's what and they know what the deal is. Because they were the ones working with the colonial administrators as well.
- [42:55]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right?
- [42:58]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
That's always been. I think that's one of the features that is sort of unique. So when people often look at repression and repression of journalists and news organizations by the state, they normally treat it as something that is relatively new or odd. I'm like, well, actually, no, this relationship has been there for a long time. So that's one thing where I think institutionally we just have to accept it's a part of the thing and we need to figure out ways to navigate it.
- [43:33]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [43:34]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
At the same time, people forget that journalism and the journalism profession are institutions that are in the business of producing power and knowledge and. Producing power, sorry, but also producing culture. That's a business, Right? They're institutions of power. We may not want to talk about it that way, we may not want to look at it that way, but like I said earlier on Anthocya called these things ideological state apparatuses. They are designed to create the perfect citizen.
- [44:07]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [44:08]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
What does that then mean? It means that, yeah, sometimes the news organizations may fight the state, but those moments are very few and fine between right now in Kenya, one of the newspapers is vociferously holding the state to account, but that is only because they're annoyed by the state, because they missed certain privileges. And everybody knows this when in Kenya, not this government, but the previous administration, they got into office and one of the first things they did, they invited journalists and editors to State House for tea and dinner. They were engaged in soft power and everybody knew what was happening. So these things are not unique. One of the features about these organizations on the continent is that they have very close relationships with the state. And those relationships may be friendly, may be antagonistic, but it doesn't change that relationship with the state.
- [45:02]
Nome Anthony Kanayo
Okay, let's talk a little bit about agency of African journalists. You highlight the points that few African journalists constitute the editorial team of most media outlets, even though those outlets are located. Located in Africa, although headquartered in the global North. But at the same time I'm curious because you also pointed out that journalism education has a preference for Western pedagogy and theories. And even in the professional norms, practices sort of mirror Western approaches in certain ways. So I am curious about why these journalists, African journalists, don't make it to such in a sort of in a newsroom, you know, like the Edberia team. What is at play?
- [46:01]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
These answers will make me not be allowed in these spaces. I think it's twofold. I think when you look at an organization like Reuters, Reuters will never have somebody that is African as their senior editor, as the guy, as the boss of everybody. They just won't. There's typically this perception, might stated and unstated, that African journalists are not as professional and as strong as these organizations may like.
- [46:36]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [46:37]
Nome Anthony Kanayo
Even though they are brought up in the same, you know, pedagogy, training and education.
- [46:43]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
Yes, right. And on those few occasions where you may have an African as the main guy, that person maybe moved to the African country from the US are from Europe, right. So they had, they're, they're. It's, it's like me, I've lived here for this long and then a job shows up and then I go, hey, I can be a bureau chief, right? In that moment, I may be acceptable. Maybe I have a chance.
- [47:09]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [47:11]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
And those are. And those. And that's just the reality of it. Like they will hire people from their country, Right. Because there's this sense of not ready. Right. It's a very paternalistic relationship. So in this relationship, Africans, regardless of their expertise, regardless of their training, regardless of the fact that they can take work by Rasmus Klein, who used to be at the Reuters Institute, and repurpose it and make it much more practical for a Kenya. Regardless of this person can do that. They will not rise up to that level. Right. Partly because this is a company that is European or American. Partly because the home office may treat people on the continent as not ready enough or my favorite word is they need capacity building, which really annoys me. And so that it's often a mirage.
- [48:13]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [48:14]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
But it's not just the Western ones, Right. It's also the Chinese cable company.
- [48:19]
Nome Anthony Kanayo
I was about to ask that question because it is in this context that I'm sort of interested. This is the pattern. You, you define it as paternalistic relationship. I, I'm sort of, I became curious, you know, to know because there are other media agents. There is the age Asian, basically the Chinese media outlets in Kenya, they are usually headquartered in Kenya and do they have similar. But I don't know, if you look.
- [48:50]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
Through it, they have similar patterns. There was an amazing paper by Melbourne's K TR and what's his name? Scott. What is Scott's last name? Oh, this is going to kill me. Anyway, Melbourne, Kate Wright and Scott. I forget Scott's last name. And they did this piece on the news organization that was very, very, very clearly the one in Kenya or some somewhere in Africa. But what was clear in that is that all the top decision makers were from an Asian country and everybody else was from the continent. But one of the biggest complaints was the level of racism in those relationships and the fact that who was getting what benefit. It was clearly not the Kenyans.
- [49:42]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [49:43]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
Or the Africans. It was very, very clearly not the Kenyans or Africans. And so the Chinese news organizations are not necessarily exempt from this.
- [49:54]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [49:55]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
They, they have the same bad habits, Right. They treat Africans as again not ready, not well trained, whatever, whatever. And that is often Martin Scott. Scott is his first name. Martin Scott. Yeah. And those are sort of the challenges in these particular spaces.
- [50:19]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [50:20]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
And how we. The, the, the realities within which we exist.
- [50:28]
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- [50:54]
Nome Anthony Kanayo
Okay, we're concluding. I have two more questions for you just quickly it's about your case study. So I mean why Dapol? Because I think the, the geographical location, the composition, ethnic, religious composition, Arabic, black Africans and you know, would sort of produce a narrative. But I wonder if such narrative would be the same when these African journalists reports or cover conflicts in let's say West Africa where there is no. I mean I, I acknowledge the multi, you know, multi ethnic and religious nature of most African countries but there be some sort of difference in how an African journalist reports conflicts in West Africa compared to how they would, you know, report Dahu.
- [51:57]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
So let me start with why Darfur. Darfur was selected for a couple of reasons. One, it was the, one of the biggest conflicts. That sort of biggest conflict is not the right phrase. It was one of the more well known conflicts in Africa that erupted in a post war on terror reality.
- [52:19]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [52:21]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
And the reason why I pulled back on the biggest is, you know, the Congo was also happening at the same time.
- [52:26]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [52:27]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
But I needed, I was curious about a conflict that had an international glare and by International, I mean, both within the continent and outside the continent. But I needed to be able to sort of go, here's the thing that all of these people are covering. Let me look at how they're covering it, right? But also Darfur becomes an international phenomenon in a post Rwanda world, in a post 1994 genocide against the Tutsi world, right? In fact, in 2004, at the 10th anniversary of the short season Darfur, Kofi Annan gives a spirit speech, right, at the UN saying we have said never again. And 10 years after Rwanda, we have this genocide unfolding. So we need to do something which is interesting for me because Kofi Annan was in charge of the peacekeeping office at the UN during the genocide in London. So he had been around in this organization for a long time. And the other reason is Darfur was unfolding in the shadows of the peace negotiations that are happening in Kenya, between Sudan and South Sudan, right? And people are sort of trying to downplay Dafu because they were worried about what it would do to the peace negotiations happening in Nevasha, right? So that's why Darfur, right. It kind of came at a moment in time in the world where I think it made it an interesting case studies because there was also one of the flask times ever the US Holocaust Museum had issued the genocide alert ever in its history, right? So, you know, a lot of things coalesced around this. So that, that is what made it interesting for me. Now, if this was a conflict in Benin, right. If this was a conflict in Togo, if this is a conflict in Ghana, right. Would the, would the approaches and the findings and the tensions sort of be similar? I think so. I think so, right. Would they manifest differently? Maybe, but I think the tensions would be similar. I think, you know, I, I quote this journalist from Nigeria specifically, that's that comes to mind, right? And he says, look, even when we go to northern Nigeria, we rely on the military to give us access, right? Those are the people we rely on. That is not that different from what a canon journalist said about Darfur. They relied on the government. So I think that is one way in which the government also has ready access to journalists, right? Because they are providing you access. The other thing I think that would be similar is the fact that the use of ethnicity as a catch all term that is understood also as being a bit more complicated and nuanced would still be there. But I don't think that necessarily disappears, right? The fact that these news organizations relied on agencies from the global north, largely, I think would still be there. I think the only difference if you're doing this study now in West Africa is Xinhua becomes a larger presence.
- [55:48]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [55:49]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
But Zinwa just replaces, not replaces. Zinu is in addition to these, outside of African news organizations.
- [55:56]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [55:57]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
But I think it'll be the same. When you think about the sources being quoted, would sources from the US And Europe play a key role in shaping the narrative? I think so. Right now it may not be George Clooney.
- [56:09]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [56:10]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
But it's likely to be. Well, I was going to say somebody from usaid, but USAID has been shut down. It may be something from. It may be somebody from an American or European nonprofit organization.
- [56:21]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [56:23]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
When you think of maybe how this debate about being African and an African identity and how it showed up in Darfur, would it show up in. If this conflict is in Benin?
- [56:41]
Interviewer/Moderator
Maybe.
- [56:41]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
Will it show up if this conflict is in northern Nigeria? Probably.
- [56:45]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [56:47]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
Because those countries kind of have a similar north south fault line in the way Kenya does, in the way Sudan does.
- [56:54]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [56:54]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
That kind of influences who's African and who's not.
- [56:58]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [56:59]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
And in the four, it's much more interesting when you think of how Darfur as a city comes to be.
- [57:04]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [57:05]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
Because they're full of. The city comes to be. Gerard Punia talks about this comes to be at a moment where people are coming from as far as West Africa on their way to Hajj.
- [57:16]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [57:16]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
So Darfur becomes this city where it is on the migratory path and people settled.
- [57:22]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [57:22]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
So this debate about Africaness becomes really interesting when you think about, well, but they're coming from West Africa this way.
- [57:28]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [57:29]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
They are African. But you know, these are the debates Right. In Nigeria. I think that if this was happening in Nigeria and it was being covered, the debate would be something like, well, are they really Nigerian up in the north? But so the. I think these things would show up, these tensions would show up. This, the, this type of politics would show up. I don't think that necessarily changes. Yeah.
- [57:56]
Nome Anthony Kanayo
Thank you so much. In reading this book, my understanding is that you were a bit critical about journalism education and practice in Africa, particularly for their predictions for global notes, pedagogy theories and framing narratives. Where I see the book itself drawing from Western theoretical frameworks.
- [58:20]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
Ah, yes.
- [58:21]
Nome Anthony Kanayo
Someone out there could, you know, be wondering if this is not contradiction. I mean, this is part of a larger criticism of. For most African post colonial scholars who in writing, in writing appears critical but somehow give voice to what they criticize. You know, what do you say?
- [58:43]
Interviewer/Moderator
Okay.
- [58:44]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
So the colonizers become the colonizer in that. In the. In their. I think. I think. I think two things. I think one, that's a fair question and it's a fair critique, right? But I also think it's important to point out that when I think about. As I'm writing about Johnson, education, right? One of the things I say in my concluding chapter is that my approach is less a critique and more of a. Okay, we're doing this thing where we've focus on Northern scholars, right? But a lot of the things that Northern scholars are saying, African scholars and Southern scholars have also been saying, right? So is there. That. Is there a universe where we marry those two things? Right. And this is the conversation I sort of have in my concluding chapter. One of the things I say is, I'm not saying that the profession needs to pull back, right? Or the curriculum needs to pull. And in that, ship is gone. But also, the continent is hyperconnected to the rest of the world. We cannot just close our walls and say, no, think about it this way. You and I are both African, and we're both in this country, the U.S. right? And one of the things we're able to do is we can rely on those scholars from the continent. And that curriculum we learned. Cause I went to school at home. So the curriculum from home actually did me an amazing service when I moved here because I had read these people and because I had read these people in the context of Kenya, right. I automatically, in my brain, could make those connections when I was here, right? So part of what I say is, you know, as some folks have talked about local or these intersections, I think we're at a point where we know what they're saying. We know there are people on the continent saying these things. Can we marry it? Right? Which brings me to the theory I use, right? And, you know, in my conversation about this theory, field theory, one of the things I'm very particular to mention is that, yes, people do use a Frenchman. Yes, people do use white. Yes. Pierre Bourdieu was in Algeria within a context where Algeria had been colonized by the French, right? And yet field theory comes to explain the totalizing nature of colonization, right? So the youth theory goes to. Goes to kind of point out this moment that in scholarship where scholars kind of have to go, and Buddhist is kind of going, this is how to sort of understand the Algerians and the effect of colonization on their daily life, right? But also this moment where an Algerian is going to form this sort of hybrid identity because they have to Exist in two worlds, right? So their habitus is inflect, has these inflections of both what it means to be an Algerian. What it means to be an Algerian subject under French colonization. So when an Algerian is moving to Algiers, the city from the village, right? They sort of have to navigate these things and they have to sort of find a way to gain different species of capital to exist in Algiers, right? It is not a theory about purity. It is the theory about this moment of amalgamation in the contestation for different forms of capital, be it cultural, be it symbolic, be it economic, right? Which is essentially what I'm saying in the curriculum. I'm saying to create actors that are in the space where their habitus is a bit richer, right? Their doxa is a bit richer. We kind of need to bring in these African scholars and marry these two things. Because if we don't marry these two things, there's a bunch of scholarship that are going to be missing just with that, right? So I think that's how I marry those two things. But also, remember how I said earlier on these journalists need to make money. They're in a job, they need to make money. Nuts and bolts of it. I need to graduate, I needed to write the book. I needed to have a book for tenure, and I needed to be able to have a conversation that sort of did this thing that said, you see, this theory that a lot of journalism scholars like, it is a theory that originates to explain colonization on the continent. And we have sort of moved away from that. We have erased the experience of Algeria, we have erased experience of Algeria and Algerians in influencing this thing we call field theory. And what would happen if we take the theory, bring it back to the continent and center the native, Right? How does that enrich this theory? How does that give us new things about the way we use this theory, right? So one of the things I talk about in the book is when people talk about field theory and talk about journalism, they often assume the habitus and the doctor of the journalists are aligned, right? So I say the number people often assume that habitus and doctor of professionals are sort of aligned, right? One of the things I find is that in the case of journalists on the continent, the habitus and doctor are not often aligned, right? In fact, what is likely to happen sometimes is that they are likely to suppress the habitus, their Africanness for the doctor, because again, they need to move up that ladder because they are professionals, right? And what does that look like? What would it look like if habitus was playing a Larger role than Doxa for Jonzim on the continent. So the Africanness was top of mind. One of the things I think I'd do with the book is to say what would. Is to ask readers to split those two things when they're looking at professions on the continent and kind of see how we can build theory.
- [65:00]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right?
- [65:00]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
Because if you don't do that, then what are we doing?
- [65:04]
Interviewer/Moderator
Yeah.
- [65:04]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
So, yes, there is a tension where I'm like, well, Western, Western, Western, Western, all of these things. And then the theory using is Western. Like, well, you know. Yes, but that's a different debate about what do we think of as Western theory. My answer, Gilliam Goh argues that if you look at field theory at its root, when you look at Purdue and where Purdue comes up with field theory, right? It is a theory that seeks to imagine. That seeks to kind of imagine the necessary ingredients for liberation, right? This, this, this idea that. This idea that Southern theories are designed to think about liberation as top of mind. And it goes. Well, if you look at world theory, it is essentially a Southern theory, right? It is a theory that looks at colonization and says this is a bad thing because it seeks to dominate the person and relies on racial categories and caste systems to put Algerians at the bottom of the totem pole.
- [66:03]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right?
- [66:03]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
So if you do that, your agency is going to be constrained in a very real sense. But it is, it is. It is a tension in the book that I'm often asked and I have to go, well, you know, the conclusion does this thing, right? But yeah, but also, I'm appreciative of the fact that some people may look at it and go, well, that's duplicitous and that's speaking from both sides of your mouth. True, that could be a critique. But as I say in the book, the continent is big enough and diverse enough to be able to allow for space for multiple types of theories to show up to explain the realities of the people within it.
- [66:46]
Nome Anthony Kanayo
Thank you so much, Dr. Wahatu. Any last thoughts about this book? Any last thoughts for our audience out there? Anything you want to say to them about this book?
- [66:58]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
I don't know. I think. Hope you enjoyed. Feel free to critique it, because that's how we build knowledge, Right. I often have to remind my students that some of the most intellectually rich conversations I have is by people that come in that are skeptical about something, right? And then we have that conversation. In the same way, journalism on the continent has always been confrontational and engaging and seeking to change things, right? Scholarship about the continent on the continent has often been confrontational as well.
- [67:33]
Interviewer/Moderator
Right.
- [67:34]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
It is in the process of building something and making arguments that are important. But I also think, to go back to the early point where somebody told me that nobody reads African newspapers. I think. I think it is. I hope when somebody reads this book, if they think of a project, they take very seriously the place and role of African artists and treat them as they should be bold enough, hopefully, to treat them as the story rather than part of somebody else's story or a prop on the stage for somebody else's story. Right. Because a lot of work on the continent has treated African actors as props and part of somebody else's larger story. And I think there's enough work out there that shows that, well, no, we can engage with these actors as part of the story primarily and as people that produce knowledge that is worthy of being shared and being in teacher.
- [68:31]
Nome Anthony Kanayo
Well, once Again, thank you, Dr. Wahatu, for taking out your time to join me today. It was an honor talking to. Thank you so much.
- [68:40]
Dr. James Sigiru Wahutu
Thank you. Thank you. And as always, if you have any question, just feel free to shoot me an email and let me know.
- [68:45]
Nome Anthony Kanayo
Thank you.