There is a publishing giant in Africa, a conglomerate of information media that aims to soon govern the entire information of the continent: it is China. Beijing has forcefully entered the world of African infotainment, investing huge budgets to control national and local television media, making agreements with newspapers and TV news channels to exclusively provide news provided by its news agencies and producing documentaries that aim to pave the way to the narrative of Xi Jinping. Beijing manages the media company StarTimesinto whose coffers it has poured two billion dollars invested in real estate for studios and staff in 30 African countries, from where it broadcasts more than 13 million digital channels for its 20 million subscribers and counting. And this makes it the second digital TV operator on the continent, behind only the broadcaster Dstv of South Africa. StarTimes has its own strategy of capillary penetration. It is installing satellite dishes in over ten thousand rural homes (as well as providing screens and photovoltaic systems to make everything work), which may not receive traditional channels but thanks to the generous “dishes” can be directly connected to Chinese digital TV with their entertainment and their information.
In the same vein, it carries out operations to “take over” institutional television networks: examples are the joint ventures between StarTimes and the Tanzania Broadcasting Corporationor with the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporationin which it boasts such a majority share that it is easy to imagine who dictates the editorial line.
Another way to gain control of the world of information in Africa is to train journalists directly, to give them the imprint and style that Beijing prefers. Many young Africans who aspire to work in the world of communications today more than willingly spend a long period of training in China, lasting at least ten months, where they are educated and paid by media organizations linked to the Beijing government. Thanks above all to the munificent Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (Focac) whose training courses benefit thousands of African professionals, and not only in the field of journalism. To give an order of magnitude, only in Kenya There are 500 journalists and local staff currently employed by Chinese news agencies, which send an average of 1,800 news items per month. The agencies are central to this story: the Chinese government has signed hundreds of agreements with African newspapers and TV news channels to provide them with services (which they greatly need) and exclusive news, thanks to giants like Xinhua, China Daily, China Radio International And Cgtn (all in one way or another related to the State Council of the People’s Republic and the Propaganda Department of the Communist Party of China). XinhuaAsia’s largest news agency, has 37 offices in Africa. Paul Nantulya of theAfrica Center for Strategic Studiesclarifies the order of measurement: «This is a number that exceeds that of any other news agency, African or non-African, and which represents a dramatic increase compared to the handful of offices of two decades ago».
It is quite clear that the growth of Chinese investment in the African media space is part of a global strategy that the Communist Party dominated by Xi Jinping has been chasing for a long time; one for which Africa, together with the leadership of the economic system of Brics which is supposed to be an alternative to the West and the dollar, has the more than obvious aim of using the media to expand influence in developing countries, colonizing their information environment.
And in addition to information this also involves entertainment. The aforementioned StarTimesfounded in 1988, employs 5,600 people in China, helps Chinese “soft power” with million-dollar productions. Like the hit docuseries Bobby’s Factory of the director Yong Zhangwhich tells the story of a Chinese factory owner in Africa and his positive relationships with local workers. Another series, TaZaRa: A Journey Without an Endmoves against the background of the Tanzania-Zambia Railway railway project (hence the name Tazara) and makes it a symbol of China-Africa cooperation in the name of the New Silk Road. Another major film production is My China Storywhere a series of well-known African actors recount the impressions and positive experiences of their time spent in China, offering the new generations, who consume digital products at an incessant pace, languages and contents aimed at guaranteeing a favorable image of the Dragon. The Communist Party applies to Africa what it has already accomplished at home: it eliminates dissent by incorporating every social sphere. And in this order of ideas, he considers the media as the most effective means to “tell China’s story well”. It is an expression used by him Xi Jinping in 2013, on the occasion of the National Propaganda and Work Conference on the Party’s Ideology. Another one, spoken by Xi in February 2016, explains better than Sun Tzu the doctrine to follow: “Wherever the readers are, wherever the spectators are, that is where propaganda reports must extend their tentacles.” Why? Because readers vote.
According to the Chinese Loans to Africa DatabaseChinese financial institutions are believed to have signed 1,243 loan contracts to governments and state-owned enterprises on the African continent between 2000 and 2022, worth approximately $170 billion. How much could Chinese media coverage have influenced the perception of African peoples on the bold projects undertaken in their territory or on the various political candidates during the electoral campaigns? The researcher and expert on Chinese affairs further comments Paul Nantulya: «The rooting of the Communist Party media in African media ecosystems risks distorting the continent’s information spaces, and therefore access to independent information that shapes citizens’ debates on a range of issues ranging from governance, to society, to the economy. China-backed media companies are expected to exclusively report favorable news about the local regime and amplify its plans and political positions. They do the same for Chinese investments, regardless of the local doubts that often emerge.”
In short, the propaganda machine is running at full speed. And it does so in particular when it has to magnify the results of Belt and Road Initiativethe New Silk Road, despite the megaproject of commercial hegemony imagined by Xi Jinping having already plunged those countries that ended up in its trajectory into a debt trap. Kenya, Djibouti, Angola and Zambiato name a few, have accumulated such debt interest for infrastructure projects that they will never be able to repay them, and as a result China is compensated with highways, ports and airports, which become its property. Some investigations carried out by the African press – which boasts a notable history of independent journalism whose roots date back to the 1970s – on the Chinese authorities who operate as intermediaries in Africa have repeatedly been the subject of scandals and complaints, but liquidated by the Beijing government as «smear campaigns orchestrated by rivals to weaken our diplomatic ties and solid economic partnerships with African countries» as stated in the mimeograph Xinhua. Citizens of African countries, interviewed by multiple sources, do not believe at all in the model of the Chinese Communist Party and much less do they wish to adhere to the doctrine of Xi Jinping of absolute control of the party over the state, the government, the armed forces and society. According to surveys carried out as late as 2024, around 71 percent of Africans prefer, or rather aspire to, democracy and believe in an independent press. How long will they be able to resist Beijing’s powerful media machine?
