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Dulue Mbachu

The world’s two superpowers are waging an information war to influence the minds of Africa’s young and media-savvy demographic, with articles pitched by the United States and China designed to show each other in an unflattering light.
On March 31, Africa Defence Forum magazine, a publication of the US Army’s Africa Command, ran an article called: “China’s floating fish factories plunder Guinea Bissau’s resources”.
It detailed illegal operations by Chinese fishing trawlers in the West African country’s territorial waters, portraying the activities as part of a pattern of exploitation of African countries by China.
Meanwhile, over on the website of China Global Television Network’s (CGTN) Africa service was the headline: “Mahama warns of global impact of US ‘erasure’ of Black history”.
It was a story about President John Mahama of Ghana condemning the US for trying to erase its record of enslavement and exploitation of people of African descent.
Both headlines reflect the diverging approaches to the African story by the US and China media. In the rivalry between the world’s two biggest economies for access to Africa’s vital natural resources, there is also an expanding war of narratives aimed at winning African minds.
While the US and other Western media outlets portray the Chinese as the communist juggernaut intent on eating up the continent’s resources and enslaving it with debt, Chinese media in turn dwell on the European and American legacy of slavery, colonialism and continuing exploitation of the continent.
Africa’s 1.5 billion population is overwhelmingly youthful, with an average age of 20 years and more than 70 per cent under the age of 30, according to the United Nations. Born in the digital age, most adapt naturally to it.


“Their parents who lived under colonial influence had access only to the Western narrative, including old stereotypes of China,” Uzor Maxim Uzoatu, a Nigerian writer and media historian, said. “Now, in their time, they’re getting access to other versions and are starting to see things differently.”
Uzoatu said this dynamic demographic was the main target of messaging from both the US and China.
Having faced a global information war with the West since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 , when people in countries subject to colonial rule and Western education tended to develop an inherent bias against China and the communist government, Beijing invested more energy and resources in countering these stereotypes created among Africans, he said.
Overcoming this institutionalised bias, created through colonial education systems, took time and required great effort on China’s part.
Meanwhile, Chinese state news agency Xinhua, which had trailed its older competitors – Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse – in terms of global impact, began to give more resources to Africa when it moved its regional headquarters from Paris to Nairobi, Kenya, in 2006.
Traditionally, Western news agencies have accounted for a greater share of articles published by international media, while Xinhua has its strongest impact in Africa, Southeast Asia and the Global South in general, Joshua Kurlantzick, a senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council of Foreign Relations, wrote in the Washington-based Foreign Policy magazine in 2022.
Developing this influence was part of China’s “Going Out” strategy. With 37 bureaus across Africa, it now devotes more coverage resources to Africa than any other news agency, according to the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies.
In addition, CGTN started operations at the end of 2016 as a spin-off from China Central Television (CCTV), which had set up in Nairobi four years earlier, offering an English-language alternative to the American and European networks.
CGTN focused on global news and replaced its predecessor CCTV’s African broadcasts that same year. Chinese-owned StarTimes also became an influential actor in pay television with a presence in more than 20 African countries.
Social media has proved to be an indispensable megaphone for all sides. There are more than 400 million social media users across Africa, according to Social Media Marketing Africa, a firm that specialises in online marketing for businesses.
Intelpoint, another firm that tracks African social media trends, puts Meta’s Facebook users at 291 million people, making it the most popular platform across Africa.
It is followed by TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, with 189 million users across the continent. Instagram, also owned by Meta, has more than 91 million users on the continent, followed by X (formerly Twitter) with 27.8 million users.
For instance, both the US Army’s African Defence Magazine and CGTN posted their stories on X to give them more traction. CGTN, like other major media organisations, also has a YouTube channel on which it broadcasts live.
TikTok has achieved some distinction among lovers and critics alike as a platform that allows more criticism of the West while highlighting China’s strengths.
Some US and European analysts have highlighted “the convergence” of Chinese and Russian interests in countering the Western narrative in Africa. US and other Western officials have alleged collaboration between China and Russia to align their African information campaigns with a common aim of undermining Western influence.
Some of this came to the fore in discourse surrounding the West African countries such as Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, where military rulers seized power from pro-French regimes and allied with Russia after expelling French and US troops.


Ibrahim Traore, the young and charismatic leader of Burkina Faso, attracted attention far beyond his borders with his criticisms of the West for exploiting Africa. The development was blamed by Western officials on Russian and Chinese “disinformation”.
Under former US president Joe Biden, such suspicions gave rise to the Countering the PRC Malign Influence Fund Authorisation Act of 2023. The bipartisan law enabled spending of US$325 million a year between 2023 and 2027 to counter Chinese influence globally, particularly in Southeast Asia and Africa.
The funds are used “to support civil society and independent media to raise awareness of and increase transparency regarding the negative impact of activities related to the Belt and Road Initiative”, as well as “other economic initiatives with strategic or political purposes” by China.
A review of African coverage by leading US and Chinese media organisations was conducted last year by the Africa-China Reporting Project of the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa.
It found that the “media in the US were more prone to employ combative language in their articles”. However, the Chinese media tended to defend the country’s innovations “and focused on how China’s technology can help developing countries in Africa”.
China gives Africa a strategic advantage by being an alternative option to the US and the former European colonial powers.
Getting the best deal from either side should be the guiding principle of African governments, according to Obi Nwakanma, a professor of African studies at Florida Central University in the US, who tracks China’s rivalry with the West. “This is because each of these powers deploys narratives to prioritise their own agenda,” he said.


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Rivalry between two global superpowers spills into the media as East meets West head-on in a clash of narratives to win over the continent


Rivalry between two global superpowers spills into the media as East meets West head-on in a clash of narratives to win over the continent.


War of words: China and the US battle it out for the loyalty of African hearts and minds

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Rivalry between two global superpowers spills into the media as East meets West head-on in a clash of narratives to win over the continent

Rivalry between two global superpowers spills into the media as East meets West head-on in a clash of narratives to win over the continent