Bringing balanced reporting to Africa
SOPHIE Ikenye is a seasoned Kenyan journalist stationed in London’s BBC offices as host of the show Focus On Africa.
On her recent visit to South Africa, Ikenye spoke about the joys of her job, changing the world’s perspective on Africa and working with South African journalists.
Raised in Kenya, with a strong CV in news reporting, Ikenye was the right person for the job and she remains dedicated to making a difference through her position.
“Focus On Africa’s main challenge is to change the bad perceptions that we usually get on international media. We are looking at the continent, through African eyes, while we use an international medium. This means our content is broadcast wherever there is BBC.
“Every time Africa is shown by some media there is always the gloomy picture of the kid that is starving and it’s the same child you will see today, next year and the year after. It is this trend that finds Focus On Africa having to address what it is that happens on this continent. We try to give the true picture and it’s probably not a good one, but it is the reality,” she said.
While other international news companies depend on a “satellite” approach to news gathering, the Focus On Africa team have people on the ground to cover and these include talented South Africans.
“We have several seasoned journalists on the continent. We have reporters in South Africa who include Nomsa Maseko and Milton Nkosi. In Uganda we have Catherine Byaruhanga and in Senegal we have Laeila Adjovi who also give us great stories. These are people who understand the culture of the place they are reporting on and the issues that are taking place there. If there is an issue that we need clarity on, they do that for us. This ensures that what we are airing is exactly what is happening on the ground and not hearsay,” she said.
One of the biggest stories on the African continent this year is the outbreak of Ebola. Ikenye was happy to say that Focus On Africa did more work compared to their competition.
“We as BBC Africa started covering the Ebola crisis seriously around March this year. All other media houses only began covering it much later, around July. The seriousness of the coverage was inspired by the death of someone in the US. For us, our biggest challenge was not only covering it, but giving correct information to people affected. From the feedback we got, especially in Sierra Leone, there was a change in attitude because a lot of people were now hearing the truth on all you need to know on Ebola. We had radio and a Whatsapp group where people in the worst hit places would tell us what was going on there,” she said.
“Focus On Africa has played a huge role on informing people on what how to deal with Ebola.”
But there are also feel-good stories in Africa and the showzooms in on that as well. Ikenye spoke of these kind of situations: “The last interview I did before I came here was with the widow of the former Angolan president, Agostinho Neto. A lot of times you think the show is about looking at the country and how it is doing now, pondering if it would be better if Agostinho was still alive. Yet we didn’t even touch on that. We talked about love, poetry, how she pursued him. No one had done that angle. All the news always focuses on when it comes to Africa is the politics, but we sometimes push the human angle and do a sneak preview into people’s lives. These are the kind of interviews I enjoy.”
Telling the other side of gloomy African stories makes the show different from other international reports on the continent.
“Mostly we get positive responses. We are not perfect and we are learning every day. I think the continent is very political, but we try to avoid concentrating on that. Yet people want those kinds of stories and also the inspirational ones. So you have feel-good stories about African entrepreneurs who have achieved the African Dream,” concluded Ikenye.
airs on BBC World News (DStv channel 400) weekdays at 7.30pm.