There is that saying that politics is perception. The same might be said of assessments of trust and worthiness. And so it was with the coincidence of two unrelated analyses in The Conversation last week assessing perceptions about Africa. The first analysis, by Misheck Mutize, a researcher at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, looks at how rating agencies on the continent may be contributing to bias against its fiscal worthiness. A rating agency is an organisation that assesses the creditworthiness of a country or company to determine how safe it is to lend it money. The analysis is, therefore, important. Lower credit ratings, for instance, means higher borrowing costs. This makes it more expensive for governments to access international capital markets, hindering their ability to finance development projects and manage their debt. To illustrate bias, the analysis points to the “thin presence” of the three major global ratings agencies—Fitch Ratings, Standard & Poor’s, and Moody’s, whose assessments greatly influence global perceptions about a country’s creditworthiness. Fitch closed its office in South Africa in 2015, leaving the other two which have offices in the country. Between them, they “have a total of five to 10 analysts covering about 25 sovereigns (governments), corporates and sub-sovereigns (i.e., local governments).” The analysis thus argues that, with so few hands on the ground, the agencies are stretched in their coverage, leading to their credit ratings being biased against Africa in subjective ways. One of the reasons for this is because they base much of their assessments on desktop reviews, virtual discussions on the internet and publicly available information. But, talking about publicly available information, it doesn’t lack its biases, some of it purveyed by influential international media that has often distilled negative perceptions about the continent to its local and global audience. Thus, the second analysis by authors of a newGlobal Media Index for Africa tracking how 20 of the world’s most influential global media organisations cover the continent. The media organisations range from the New York Times, CNN and BBC to Al Jazeera, Le Monde and Reuters. “Our findings,” explain the index authors, “confirm the stereotypes that have always accompanied reportage on Africa by the global media. The reporting continues to focus on war, diseases, corruption and insecurity.” Among other misgivings, there was scant attention to topics such as culture, the arts, innovation, technology, and other positive developments in the continent found in the online stories. The emphasis appears to be on the negative events. Misheck Mutize’s analysis on the ratings agencies observes a similar bias. It takes the example of Fitch’s warning last month that the rapid spread of the mpox virus in sub-Saharan Africa could add to the fiscal pressures many countries in the region are already experiencing. The analysis backs this up with studies showing evidence that there are biases with rating agencies overstating certain risk factors on the continent. A comparative analysis of 30 countries in Africa and other regions highlights a lack of uniformity in the application of the economic indicators in ratings. But, to borrow the cliché, behind every cloud there is a silver lining. It is because of such biases that the African Union’s decision to adopt a declaration on the establishment of an Africa Credit Rating Agency. As for the international media, the biases remain, though the index generally finds some improvement in their reporting with reduced stereotypes about the continent. Dr. Uzodinma Iweala of The Africa Centre, which together with the media development organisation Africa No Filter and the University of Cape Town compiled the index, notes how media “coverage of Africa has become more balanced over the years, largely due to the advent of social media that offers first-person counter-narratives to biases in journalism based on antiquated beliefs.” It, therefore, also has to do with the technological times that we are seeing some improvement, slow though it may be. What about Africa’s media? They have not been much better. One reason being that they often use news reports from Western wire services, some of them ranked in the Global Media Index for Africa, and therefore reproduce some of the same biases. Take the coronavirus, for example, as observed by yet another analysis. Media in the continent followed suit with the foreign media’s saturated reporting of how Covid-19 ravaged western countries which saw high rates of infection and deaths. But the fact that African countries kept deaths and infections to a minimum was de-emphasised. Instead, the emphasis was on the donations western countries were making to African countries. They must have copied western media, because reporting about donations is just the kind of thing the European and American media would do to assuage their countries guilt for hoarding the vaccines until the last minute. X: @gituram
