In the world of journalism, a well-known expression says “when a dog bites a man, that is not news, but if a man bites a dog, that is news”. The same situation seems to happen each time global media talks about Africa. According to a report published by Africa No Filter (an advocacy organization that rails against harmful narratives that distort the reality in Africa), most of time the continent is portrayed in the media through a distorted lens, that focuses on structural weaknesses of its economies and shifts attention from positive stories to negative events, such as famine, war, violence and election fraud. On the one hand, this is perfectly understandable. People love hearing disaster stories, as those are the ones that sell best. But when this biased narrative ends up inflating perceptions of risks by investors, calling into question the ability of African countries to take control of their own development trajectory, this becomes a serious problem for a continent that is already in the grip of debt and that needs significant flows of investment to fund its growth.
