Who's Reporting Africa Now?

“Who’s Reporting Africa Now? is a fascinating journey behind the scenes of the production of contemporary representations of Africa. Thanks to Kate Wright’s unique access and understanding of the news industry, the book unravels a captivating media ecology where NGOs and journalists engage in complicated exchanges, not only with each other but also with freelancers, private foundations, and PR agencies and social media participants. In so doing, Wright offers compelling evidence to understand how NGOs have come to play such a central role in the production of visual images of Africa. With tremendous energy, the book successfully articulates and combines a wide range of debates and literature from African studies, international development, media studies, and cultural and creative industries. The book will be a terrific opportunity for African studies readers to reconsider the key debates over Africa’s image in an increasingly mediatized world.” —Toussaint Nothias, Lecturer in African Studies, Stanford University
“To understand the moral economies of solidifying power in media representations of Africa, read Kate Wright’s book. Who’s Reporting Africa Now? is a detailed analysis of the production of ‘Africa’ in our contemporary world of social media and the widespread casualization of media production. Wright provides a deep understanding of the structural factors that bring forth relationships between freelancers and international NGOs and charts their struggles to produce ‘good’ journalism within these constraints. The book benefits from insider knowledge and an engaged writing style attributable to the author’s own lived experience as a journalist. Scholars and practitioners eager to understand the realities of the new actors and alliances shaping development and humanitarianism today must read this book.” — Lisa Ann Richey, Professor of International Development, Roskilde University
"Who’s Reporting Africa Now will make engrossing reading for anyone involved or interested in the production of news relating to the continent, whether they work in a newsroom, an NGO, or somewhere on that boundary. Wright’s detailed examination of each case study, right down to the individual translators, freelancers, fixers and fieldworkers involved in creating and pushing stories in each case study will provide generous material for discussion on both sides of the increasingly porous border between news and NGO communication." —Richard Stupart, Africa at LSE Blog, 1/26/2019
"This book is essential reading for anyone interested in human rights media, African studies, or international journalism in the digital age." —Lindsay Palmer, International Journal of Communication 13(2019)
“Kate Wright’s Who’s Reporting Africa Now? is a clear and thought-provoking work on the connections between NGOs, journalists, and news organizations. Using a case-studies approach, the book, the first of its kind, analyzes how multiple media producers within and outside of sub-Saharan African countries shape the production of international news about Africa. The book moves the study of NGO-journalist relations in a new theoretical direction using moral economy theory and contributes directly to our understanding of complicated international news production practices. I highly recommend this book, particularly for students and scholars interested in journalism, media studies, international politics, and sociology.” —Shakuntala Rao, Professor of Communication Studies, State University of New York