Studying Media “from” the South: African Media Studies
and Global Perspectives
Alessandro Jedlowski
Black Camera, Volume 7, Number 2, Spring 2016 (New Series), pp.
174-193 (Article)
Published by Indiana University Press
For additional information about this article
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/619768
[ Access provided at 30 Sep 2022 03:16 GMT from Portland State University ]
Close-Up: The Marginalization of African
Media Studies
Studying Media “from” the South: African Media
Studies and Global Perspectives
Alessandro Jedlowski
Abstract
By taking the 2014 Johannesburg edition of DISCOP, the largest film and television
content market in Africa, as its ethnographic starting point, this essay critically discusses the position of Africa in contemporary film and media studies. It argues that,
if the marginal position to which studies of African media have historically been relegated within film and media studies curricula and conferences around the world has
never been justified or justifiable, today, in light of the transformations that have taken
place in media sectors worldwide over the past two decades, this marginality seems even
more striking and difficult to accept. In fact, paraphrasing the provocative argument that
Jean and John Comaroff propose in their recent book Theory from the South: Or, How
Euro-America Is Evolving Toward Africa, it is possible to say that to look at media
from the South is today a necessary move to interpret the way media production and
dissemination are transforming worldwide. These very transformations tend to manifest themselves first, and with their sharpest and most immediate consequences, in the
South, for, as the Comaroffs would have it, “contemporary world-historical processes
are disrupting received geographies of core and periphery, relocating southward—and,
of course, eastward as well—some of the most innovative and energetic modes of producing value.” This invites scholars to try to make sense of the world from these same
vantage points—that is, it invites us to study media from the south as a way to make
sense of wider transformations taking place the world over.
J
ohannesburg, November 2014: as part of the comparative research on the
economy and politics of screen media production and distribution in three
sub-Saharan African countries (Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Cote d’Ivoire) that I
began conducting in 2013, I find myself at the ninth edition of DISCOP, the
largest film and television content market in Africa.1 This event, organized
since 2008 by the B2B (business-to-business) trade show organizer Basic
Alessandro Jedlowski, “Close-Up: The Marginalization of African Media Studies:
Studying Media “from” the South: African Media Studies and Global Perspectives.” Black
Camera: An International Film Journal 7, no. 2 (Spring 2016): 174–193.
Alessandro Jedlowski / Studying Media “from” the South
175
Leads, brings together thousands of professionals from within and beyond
the African continent, twice a year in Johannesburg and Abidjan.2 The main
exhibition room is crowded with stands promoting media companies from
all over the world, and people are busy discussing acquisition deals and sale
rates for television series, documentaries, fiction films, and entertainment
programs of all kind. Captured by the spectacle of this landscape of intense
interactions and transactions, I walk around the main exhibition room, looking at the size and shape of each company’s stand and making up an imaginary geopolitical map of global media companies’ engagements around the
African continent. A few stands catch my eye for their impressive dimensions and for their attempt at dominating the room (and, metaphorically, the
landscape of media production and distribution in Africa) through the organization of special events and screenings.
First of all, there is the impressive, predominantly red stand of the
Chinese national broadcaster CCTV (fig. 1), which also hosts StarTimes
TV, the private Chinese media company that is currently the second largest satellite broadcaster and one of the most rapidly expanding media companies in Africa. Then, with stands of a slightly smaller scale, there are the
French CANAL+, one of the largest satellite broadcasters in French-speaking
Africa, and the Franco-Ivoirian, Abidjan-based Côte Ouest, one of the leaders of television content distribution around the continent. Also remarkable
is the size of the stand that the Ivoirian national broadcaster RTI has put
up to celebrate the fact that Cote d’Ivoire is one of DISCOP 2014’s guests of
honor (fig. 2), alongside Turkey, a country whose media companies are rapidly entering the African market through their highly successful TV series.
Other stands include those of the Indian ZEE TV (with its highly successful Bollyworld channel), one of the largest Indian television content
producers and satellite broadcasters, and DStv, the South African satellite
broadcaster and the leader of the market in sub-Saharan Africa. BBC and a
few other English-speaking western news and sports channels also have sizable stands, even if they are relatively marginal compared to the conspicuous
ones listed above. Finally, there are a large number of smaller stands, among
which the most remarkable are surely those of the numerous Latin American
companies, with Televisa and Telemundo playing a major role.
The map of global media transformations that this walk helps me drawing is a highly complex and layered one, which reveals the centrality of
the African continent in contemporary global flows of media content. As
businessmen from all over the world tirelessly repeated over the three days of
events that accompanied the DISCOP main exhibition, the African audiovisual market is one of the world’s fastest growing and many commercial opportunities for both local and international players have emerged. By the same
token, this rapid expansion is also paving the way for the experimentation
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Figure 1. The Chinese national broadcaster CCTV advertises its content and
services at DISCOP 2014. Image courtesy of Alessandro Jedlowski.
of new business practices, technological solutions and transversal alliances.
In a way, one could say, paraphrasing a senior European media businessman
in charge of strategic commercial plans for his company, the future of key
stakeholders in the global audiovisual sector is going to be (at least partially)
played out in Africa.3
Alessandro Jedlowski / Studying Media “from” the South
177
Figure 2. A banner identifies Cote d’Ivoire as “Country of Honor” at the 2014
edition of DISCOP in Johannesburg, South Africa. Image courtesy of Alessandro
Jedlowski.
I will further explore the metaphorical map of global media transformations that this brief walk suggested to me in the next sections of this article, but only after underlining another important aspect that my DISCOP
experience revealed. Compared to other events dedicated to African cinema
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and media such as the festivals discussed in Lindiwe Dovey’s recent book
Curating Africa in the Age of Film Festivals,4 DISCOP is striking for the very
limited participation of film and media scholars, from both African and
non-African universities. In a way, this is a somewhat obvious consequence
of the fact that DISCOP is, as its organizers put it, a business-to-business
event. Unlike a film festival, where films are screened and prizes awarded to
the benefit of a large audience of fans and critics, DISCOP seemingly offers
little to the scholar. At the same time, it is also possible to say that, precisely
for its business-only nature, this is a significant event to attend, where important information on the state of media industries in Africa can be collected.5
In some ways, the absence of media scholars at such a relevant event can be
seen as an example (among many others) of contemporary academia’s difficulties in keeping up with today’s social, economic, and political transformations, in particular when it comes to African realities and their interactions
with the world at large. In this sense, it seems to me that an analysis of this
absence (of what it hides and what it highlights), coupled with an analysis
of the realities that an event such as DISCOP evidences, offers a good standpoint from which to examine the marginality of Africa in current global discourses of film and media studies. In fact, if the marginal position to which
studies of African media have historically been relegated in Western universities (and more generally within film and media studies curricula and conferences around the world) has never been justified or justifiable, today, in
light of the transformations that have taken place in media sectors worldwide over the past two decades, this marginality seems even more striking
and difficult to accept. In many ways, the study of African media is today
fundamental to understanding global trends in media business and politics.
And the lack of serious engagement with this area by most scholars in media
studies is a sign of a problematic blindness, which can only exacerbate the already critical inability of academia to perceive and interpret ongoing transformations worldwide.
The Challenges and Prospects of a Theory from the South
Paraphrasing the provocative argument that Jean and John Comaroff
propose in their recent book Theory from the South: Or, How Euro-America
Is Evolving Toward Africa,6 it is possible to say that to look at media “from”
the South is today a necessary move to interpret the way media production and dissemination are transforming worldwide. These very transformations tend to manifest themselves first, and with their sharpest and most
immediate consequences, in the South, for, as the Comaroffs would have it,
the South can be seen as a productive “frontier in the unfolding history of
Alessandro Jedlowski / Studying Media “from” the South
179
neoliberalism.”7 Upon its publication in 2012, the Comaroffs’ book (a collection of essays including revised versions of previously published works,
framed by an original introduction) sparked a lively debate among scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds.8 Many considered the idea of
“Euro-America evolving toward Africa” as “outrageous,” and challenged the
Comaroffs’ claims about the relevance of theory from the South for the understanding of the contemporary world-at-large. More nuanced criticisms
pointed to the risk of reproducing, through the “evolving toward” argument,
a reverse teleology as problematic as the linear, positivist one the Comaroffs
wish to deconstruct.9 In this sense, their attempt was seen as further weakened by the adoption of a “discourse of aggregation,” as Ato Quayson defined
it, that ends up including under the same umbrella term (“the Global South”)
regions of the world which, while sharing a number of important elements,
are also profoundly different in many respects.10
In light of these criticisms, it is important here to clarify a few key points
of the Comaroffs’ argument, including their proposition that “the South”
should be seen as the position from which to best understand the dynamics
driving contemporary world’s transformations, and from which to produce
theory of universal use. According to Achille Mbembe, “This implies bringing ‘Africa’ to perform a radically new kind of work in theory—a work radically different, in its nature and scope, from the one ‘Africa’ has always been
historically assigned to perform.”11 This is, in other words, an invitation to
respond “to the command to ‘provincialize Europe’ (Chakrabarty) with a
provocation to ‘universalize Africa’”12—a challenge that I see as relevant to
scholars devoted to the analysis of African films and media.
This invitation, exemplified by the provocative subtitle of the Comaroffs’
book, does not suggest, as some critics have argued, the adoption of a counter-evolutionary reverse teleology opposed to the deterministic trajectory
of progress proposed by modernization theory. On the contrary, it points
to the fact that, “while Euro-America and its antipodes are caught up in the
same world historical processes, the Global South has tended to feel their
effects before the global north. . . . Old margins are becoming new frontiers,
places where mobile, globally competitive capital finds minimally regulated zones in which to vest its operations . . . where new idioms of work,
time, and governance take root, thus to alter planetary practices.”13 In other
words, this is a suggestion to look again, from a different perspective, at what
David Harvey defines as the “time-space” compression of the global neoliberal moment in which we live,14 a compression that blurs the geographical
distinctions between north and south, center and peripheries, past, present,
and future so as to maximize the profit of the “raw economy” upon which the
neoliberal economy itself is grounded.15 In the words of Juan Obarrio, the
Comaroffs’ provocative suggestion that “Euro-America is evolving toward
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Africa” is “more spatial than temporal, more geopolitical than historical, in
sum, more about directionality and dispersion than about teleology. It is not
predicated upon a scheme of centers and peripheries. It alludes to a global
order that is a multiple entry scheme, a variegated, textured canvas, where
‘global,’ ‘regional,’ and ‘local’ are not scales but rather various interrelated
entangled dimensions and folds.”16 Throughout Theory from the South, examples in support of this proposition span identity politics, urban planning,
migration policies, changing regimes of labor management, and various
conceptions of personhood, nationhood, and sovereignty. The Comaroffs
go on to emphasize that even more examples (albeit proposed in a different
tone and for a very different type of audience) can be found in contemporaneous articles published by major Western magazines such as Newsweek
and The Economist.17
Another controversial point raised by critics of the Comaroffs’ book is
related to the meaning of the word “from” in Theory from the South. Some
misinterpreted it as a reflection of the identitarian turn that has shaped numerous North American universities since the 1980s, according to which ethnic, racial, and gender identities, coupled with considerations of geographic
origin and class background, constitute the key criteria authorizing scholars
to speak about specific topics. According to this perspective, in what sense is
the theory that the Comaroffs propose really from the South? How can the
authors claim it to be from there when it is produced in one of the world’s
leading academic institutions (Harvard, where the Comaroffs teach), home
to the world’s intellectual elite? While arguably misleading, this ideologically grounded criticism needs to be addressed because its shadow looms
also upon some of the current debates about African cinema and media. In
fact, according to this logic, my argument in favor of “studying media from
the South” could equally be criticized and misinterpreted (i.e., how can I, a
southern European white male scholar based in a Belgian university, purport to talk about studying media from the South?). The Comaroffs’ answer
to this type of criticism is useful, returning the discussion to a more complex, layered understanding of what terms such as “from” and “south” really
mean here. As the authors suggest, Theory from the South “is not about the
theories of people who may be wholly or partially of the south, least of all
ourselves. Nor is it . . . simply theory ‘about’ the south. It is [rather] about
the effect of the south itself on theory, the effects of its excentricity . . . of its
structural and tropic situation in the history of the ongoing global present.”18
The key point here concerns the perspective from which one decides to look
at the world in order to make sense of it.19 And as the Comaroffs make clear
throughout their book, “because the history of the present reveals itself more
starkly in the antipodes, it challenges us to make sense of it, empirically and
theoretically, from that distinctive vantage.”20 As Ato Quayson points out in
Alessandro Jedlowski / Studying Media “from” the South
181
his review of the book, this would seem to suggest that a “theory from the
south” is useful only for an understanding of the north. In his commentary,
Quayson writes, “whether the Global South is conceptualized as victim, vessel or mirror, its agency is implicitly a form of illumination, once again, of
the north.”21 But the Comaroffs do not suggest simply to use the south as a
tool to understand the north, to reduce the south to the ancillary function of
making us better understand where the north is heading. Rather, they underline the relevance of looking at the world from a different vantage point in
order to make sense of it differently, through a privileged entry point into
the contemporary contradictions of the neoliberal moment in which we live.
The Marginality of African Media Studies
Jean and John Comaroff ’s work offers valuable theoretical insights into
the notion of media from the South and, implicitly, the place of Africa
within the academic field of film and media studies. Before attempting to
apply their suggestions to a few concrete examples, it is important to quickly
review some of the current contexts for studying African film and media in
the global academy. There have been, over the past few years, a few scholarly contributions analyzing in detail the history of, as well as the motivations behind, the marginalization of Africa in film and media studies, and
I do not intend to repeat their arguments here.22 No particular effort is
needed to recognize that African screen media are almost entirely absent
from most university curricula in Europe and in North America (as, sadly,
in many other regions of the world, including Africa itself), and whenever
they are the object of some attention, people tend to mention the same few,
well known examples, such as the work of Ousmane Sembène in relation to
the history of African cinema, the role of social media in the Arab Spring in
courses devoted to digital media theory, and so on. The academic contexts
I know best (Italy and Belgium) are no exception to this trend, with practically no courses in either African cinema or African media studies even
in universities with a long history of specialization in area studies such as
“L’Orientale” University in Naples, the Cà-Foscari University in Venice, and
the University of Ghent in Belgium. International film and media studies
conferences such as those organized by the US-based Society for Cinema
and Media Studies (SCMS), the European Network for Cinema and Media
Studies (NECS), the International Communication Association (ICA) and
the International Association for Media and Communication Research
(IAMCR) mirror a similar situation, with very limited numbers of panels
or papers focused on African cinema and media organized or presented at
each of these gatherings.
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This situation has multiple causes, among which it is important to consider the responsibility of African media scholars themselves. In fact, rather
than making an attempt at dialoguing with colleagues in the field of film and
media studies, they tend to present their work in area studies publications
and conferences (such as those organized by the US-based African Studies
Association or by the European AEGIS network). This tendency is partly a
reaction to the fact that, while knowledge of Western media histories and
theories is a fundamental requirement of film and media studies degree programs the world over, ignorance of basic aspects of African media and film
history is generally accepted (and the same can be said also for to Asian or
Latin American media and film studies). This recalls the problematic effect
of what Dipesh Chakrabarty defines as “asymmetric ignorance” in the context of global knowledge production: “Third-world historians feel a need
to refer to works in European history; historians of Europe do not feel any
need to reciprocate. . . . ‘They’ produce their work in relative ignorance of,
say, non-Western histories and this does not seem to affect the quality of
their work. This is a gesture, however, that ‘we’ cannot return. We cannot
even afford an equality or symmetry of ignorance at this level without taking the risk of appearing ‘old-fashioned’ or ‘outdated.’”23 Beyond the problematic “they versus we” narrative that Chakrabarty’s quote risks to foster,
what is at stake here is a fundamental issue concerning power relations in
knowledge production processes, an issue that Daya Kishan Thussu proposes
to resolve by actively engaging in an “internationalization” of media studies curricula worldwide: “An internationalized media history would take on
board non-European trajectories. It would note that printing was invented
in China, not in Europe; that the first printing press in the Ottoman Empire
was established in 1511, and in the Americas in Mexico in 1535. The history of journalism would include the name, for example, of Turkish journalist Ibrahim Şinasi (1826–70), considered the father of modern Turkish
journalism.”24
This issue points to two other key problems, an epistemological and a
political one. First, in what concerns the emergence and development of
film and media studies in Africa, the impact of this asymmetric ignorance,
coupled with the legacy of colonial power in the structure of education and
research institutions all over the continent, has created a major epistemological problem. As Winston Mano emphasizes, media studies curricula
throughout Africa have become “perhaps too internationalized: most syllabi were conceived abroad, most students and staff are still trained abroad,
and the major books and theories used are mainly written by Westerners for
Western students in the first instance.”25 This inhibited the formulation of
local epistemologies and original interpretations of local media beyond the
framework of Western media theory (and of the Western gaze on African
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183
media realities implicit in it), thus reducing the strength and originality of
African media studies as a discipline. The impact of the “colonial library”
on African epistemologies and on the analysis of African realities is a widely
debated issue, particularly in the field of African philosophy,26 and there is
no easy way around it, but it is important to bear it in mind as a reminder of
the historical factors that, coupled with contemporary contingencies, participate in weakening the position of African film and media studies in contemporary debates.
Secondly, the asymmetric ignorance mentioned earlier affects also the
politics of academic recruitment, making it hard for scholars specializing
in African media studies to obtain positions in film and media studies
departments. This pushes scholars of African media toward area studies departments or to other disciplinary fields (such as anthropology and
literary studies), further contributing to the marginalization of African
contexts in film and media studies curricula. In a time of widespread economic crisis, this situation has possibly worsened. In fact, in Europe as in
the United States, the first victims of university budget cuts have tended to
be area studies departments, which, as a result of the blindness described
above (that which prevents contemporary academia from accepting the
fundamental importance of addressing non-Western realities in the study
of contemporary global transformations), are often seen as unnecessary,
money-wasting institutions. The dramatic budget cuts that universities
such as the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London and
“L’Orientale” University in Naples have faced since the global economic
crisis of 2008 are vivid examples of this trend. Incidentally, it might be useful to underline that, while the existence of specific universities dedicated
to area studies (such as SOAS and “L’Orientale”) is a problematic legacy of
the creation of training institutions for colonial administrators in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth century, the absence of an effective “decolonization” and “provincialization” of academic curricula still makes their
existence inevitable: in many European countries, in fact, they are the only
places where serious studies of non-Western realities are allowed to take
place.
Such institutional conditions help to illustrate the paradox that I identified in the introduction to this article. What were businessmen from all
over the world doing at DISCOP in Johannesburg if African cinema and
media are as irrelevant as the vast majority of media studies curricula would
seem to suggest? What kind of transactions are these people debating in
the myriad stands that crowd the main exhibition hall? What do they see
happening around Africa that universities and, in particular, media studies
departments around the world often seem unable to see? In order to address
these questions, it is necessary to return to the DISCOP exhibition hall
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itself, and to try to point to some lines of inquiry that the metaphorical map
I drew earlier can suggest to contemporary film and media studies scholars.
African Media and Global Perspectives
Considering the interest that the transformations of China’s role in
African (and, more generally, global) politics and economics have raised
over the past few years, a good starting point for this brief analysis is probably
China’s particular position in the contemporary African mediascape, which a
walk through DISCOP’s main exhibition hall highlights. As I mentioned earlier, the Chinese stand was the largest at DISCOP 2014. Chinese media companies are in fact signing major deals all over the continent in an explicit bid
to develop soft power strategies that could later be applied elsewhere in the
world to consolidate the new hegemonic geopolitical position China is building for itself, and to counter the bad image of the People’s Republic that much
Western media have circulated.27 Between 2006 and 2011 three key Chinese
news companies (Xinhua, China Radio International and CCTV) opened
major offices in Africa, and particularly in Nairobi, where CCTV built one
of its largest offices outside mainland China.28 They created many jobs, organized training workshops and funded numerous interactions between
Chinese and African media professionals. Similarly, Chinese telecommunication companies such as Huawei and ZTE have invested abundantly all
over the continent, explicitly testing marketing strategies and technological
solutions they wish to later export elsewhere.29
Within this context, the position of the satellite broadcaster StarTimes
is probably one of the most interesting cases to consider, as well as one of
the least studied. This company has in fact gained a prominent role in the
African mediascape over the past few years, becoming the second largest
satellite broadcaster on the continent after the South African DStv, and it
is now in the process of acquiring a new strategic position thanks to the
role it is playing in providing the infrastructures for the transition to digital
television in several countries. According to the deadline set by the UN
agency for the regulation of the telecommunications sector (the International
Telecommunications Union, ITU), all African countries were supposed to
switch from analog to digital broadcasting by June 2015. The deadline has
now been postponed and exceptional extensions for a few countries are
under discussion.30 Within this context, StarTimes has signed several deals
to help national broadcasters in facing the technological and infrastructural
challenges connected to the digital switch. In Nigeria, for instance, it has
partnered with the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) and the National
Broadcasting Commission (NBC) to develop the infrastructures needed to
Alessandro Jedlowski / Studying Media “from” the South
185
make the technological switch accessible to low-income audiences.31 This
deal has helped StarTimes in consolidating its position in the local satellite
and cable television market, giving it the chance to extend its activities beyond infrastructural cooperation in order to venture into production. As a
result, in Nigeria (as in a number of East African countries) StarTimes has
short-term plans to set up a number of new channels, to begin to dub and
broadcast Chinese TV series and entertainment programs in African languages, and to become involved in the production and distribution of locally
produced content.32 The planned and actual activities of StarTimes in Nigeria
and in other sub-Saharan African countries are having an important impact
on the local mediascape in terms of media production, distribution and reception, and are generating a number of transformations which, until now,
have not received any significant scholarly attention, but which could help us
better understand the transformation of Chinese media strategies in Africa
and elsewhere in the world in the years to come. Many questions could be
asked in relation to this case study, whose answers could be relevant well beyond the field of African media studies. For instance, what are the political
consequences of the Chinese involvement in such a major media infrastructural transformation? What could be the results of this involvement in terms
of the Chinese political and economic influence in Africa? What is the perception of this transformation by local entrepreneurs and audiences, and
what are the actual consequences for their experiences of media production
and consumption?
The analysis of StarTimes’s activity around Africa pushes us to focus also
on another relevant transformation that my DISCOP experience highlighted:
the progressive penetration of Turkish entertainment programs (and, thus,
of Turkish media production giants such as Kanal D) in Africa. During my
recent fieldwork in Ethiopia (2013–2014), I had already noticed the fact the
Turkish soap operas, even if screened only in Turkish with Arabic subtitles
by Arabic satellite channels based in the Gulf, had become one of the most
successful entertainment products among urban audiences (and particularly women).33 For this reason, the fact that Turkey was one of the guests of
honor at DISCOP did not take me entirely by surprise. However, the aggressive marketing plan that Amaç Us, the acquisitions executive of Kanal D
Sales, unveiled during DISCOP intrigued me.34 Developing an argument that
(unknowingly) repeated Brian Larkin’s interpretation of Indian films’ success in Northern Nigeria and his formulation of a theory of “parallel modernities,”35 Amaç Us suggested that, according to Kanal D’s market research,
Turkish programs could be very well received by sub-Saharan African audiences because of their capacity to offer, on the one hand, a representation of
modernity more respectful of some aspects of local “traditional values” (i.e.,
religion, moral prudishness, respect for elders, and the role of the family),
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while being, on the other hand, able to tackle a number of issues too controversial to be touched upon by local media (such as gender relations, freedom
in marital arrangements, and the consumption of alcohol in public spaces).36
As journalists analyzing the success of Turkish soap operas in Muslim countries in the Middle East have underlined, Turkish programs attract local audiences in these regions often precisely for their original combination of Islam
and modernity and, more generally, of conservative moral values and progressive cultural, political, economic, and technological transformations.37 Within
this framework, in their bid to expand their market into sub-Saharan Africa,
Turkish media entrepreneurs found a proactive partner in StarTimes, which
became the first satellite broadcaster to acquire the rights for the distribution
of Turkish soap operas around the continent.38 The progressive penetration of
Turkish media content in Africa and the deal between Kanal D and StarTimes
both highlight the importance of South-South media connections in shaping today’s mediascapes all over the world, often along economic and cultural
lines of interaction that have rarely been investigated by media scholars.39
Furthermore, the collaboration between Turkish and Chinese media companies in Africa is particularly interesting because it suggests the emergence
of South-South strategic alliances in the media sector that somehow mirror
those taking place among BRICS countries, aimed at consolidating transversal partnerships to counter Western economic and political influence.40
This emphasis on South-South connections should not make us forget,
however, the role of former colonial powers and their renewed interest in
the African media sector. In this sense, DISCOP 2014 offered very clear
data. As I mentioned earlier, one of the largest stands in the main exhibition hall was the one by the French satellite company CANAL+, one of the
few European companies making explicit attempts at countering the dominance of South African and Chinese enterprises in the satellite market in
Africa. In 2014, CANAL+ opened its brand new African headquarters in
Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, and launched a pan-African, 24/7 African content
channel (A+), whose explicit objective is to counterbalance the rising influence of English-language content in French-speaking Africa, and particularly
the impact of Nollywood in the region. In an international context in which
major French media companies are losing ground in their traditional markets (Canada, France, and other southern European countries) due to competition from newcomers such as Netflix, the African market has become
a strategic priority. As online reports have shown, for instance, in 2015 the
CANAL+ group lost part of its subscribers in France, but has managed to
close its annual budget with an overall growth of 176,000 subscribers thanks
to its progression in the African market, where, in only two years, it more
than doubled its share of the market (from 700,000 to 1.5 million subscribers).41 As French media expert Pierre Barrot underlined in an interview: “A
Alessandro Jedlowski / Studying Media “from” the South
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few years ago, the chairman of a major media group would have made a fool
of himself quoting Africa as a source of strategic development . . . but today,
there is a feeling of pride when you say you’re developing there, because it’s
a promising market for the future.”42
The renewed engagement of French media corporations such as
CANAL+, Orange, Thema TV, Lagardere Entertainment, Diffa, and others in Africa has pushed some commentators to question the “hidden face
of the Francophonie” and the continuity between today’s French political
and economic engagement in Africa and previous colonial and neocolonial
networks.43 In more general terms, these data suggest the need for a solid
scholarly investigation of the political and economic interests played out by
former colonial powers around Africa through media investments. In fact,
while much attention has been given, over the past few years, to the analysis
of the new role of non-Western economic and political actors in Africa (such
as China, India, Brazil, and Saudi Arabia), limited has been the investigation
of the changing role of French media companies around the continent, often
explicitly directed toward counterbalancing the influence of new players on
the continent to maintain strategic control of African French-speaking regions. The collaboration between French companies and local media partners
in French-speaking countries (with Cote d’Ivoire being probably the best case
study in this sense) also suggests the importance of analyzing the emerging
or already existing alliances between corporate interests from former colonial
countries and local media sectors. Both actors, in fact, tend to perceive the
dynamism of media companies from English-speaking countries (and from
China) as a common threat to the perpetuation of their spheres of influence.
While these lines of inquiry highlight the interesting position Africa
occupies today in global media interactions and content flows, they should
not make us forget the key aspect that DISCOP evidenced: the great dynamism of the African audiovisual sector itself, that is, the enormous amount
of content production and distribution going on in Africa at the moment.
The increasingly active presence of international companies on the continent today is in fact a direct consequence of the fact that, since the end of
the Cold War (and particularly over the past ten to fifteen years), and thanks
to the introduction of new technologies, African audiences seem to have
made a radical turn toward local contents—and producers from all over the
continent are doing their best to satisfy this appetite. Within this context,
innovative solutions have been found to cope with economic, political and
infrastructural contexts that appear often as non-conducive for whoever
makes an attempt at setting up a media enterprise. In this sense, African
media entrepreneurs have been able to come up with original solutions that
have, in many ways, prefigured transformations in other parts of the world.
Nollywood, the thriving southern Nigerian video film industry, together
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with its local and international homologues (such as the video film industries that have emerged in northern Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, and
Ethiopia),44 is probably the best example in this sense. The way the Nigerian
video film industry has combined new technological solutions with previous media practices, creating an original “small screen cinema” and inaugurating African cinema’s “televisual turn,”45 has in many ways prefigured the
ongoing transformation of the relationship between television and cinema
in major film industries around the world.46 Similarly, the extensive use of
digital cameras and “light” technologies of production in Nollywood has
instigated the development of specific economic strategies and “production
cultures” whose analysis can interact with the emerging field of “production
studies,” supplementing the field’s investigations of the ongoing transformation of labor regimes in Western film industries,47 “posing questions to
reigning orthodoxies by displacing the gaze and indeed offering a new corpus through which new debates or new ways of looking at existing debates
become possible.”48
Conclusion
In a recent public lecture given in Johannesburg, the Kenyan writer
Binyavanga Wainaina proposed a few thoughts on the place of Africa in
today’s world. While underlining the unsettling energy of African youth,
their hunger for adventure, and their desire to “control the world in [their]
own terms,” he provocatively suggested: “Africa is taking its own shape . . .
and you are not even in that conversation”—the “you” here addressing the
larger-than-the-room audience of colonial and neocolonial “custodians of
African development” (be them from within Africa or from beyond its borders) who have been trying for decades to impose their specific agendas on
African realities.49
Africa is indeed transforming very rapidly, and the field of cinema and
media production occupies a fundamental position in this process. This
transformation is not all for the good, as the “Africa rising” rhetoric would
like us to believe. In fact, Africa “provides a fertile forcing ground for many
of the most destructively rapacious and the most urgently inventive faces of
advanced capitalism. It is both a frontier of and a window onto the signature
operations of our polymorphous global economy,” in which growth benefits only a very limited percentage of local populations.50 Nevertheless (and
in some ways precisely for the peculiar position that Africa occupies in contemporary politics and the global economy), the analysis of African realities
is today of fundamental importance to understanding the dynamics of globalization, capitalism, and neoliberalism.
Alessandro Jedlowski / Studying Media “from” the South
189
The great significance of Africa is equally relevant to the field of film and
media studies, a disciplinary field within which the “asymmetric ignorance”
inherited from colonial and postcolonial practices of knowledge production and dissemination has prevented scholars from appreciating the importance of studying African realities for the sake of understanding a wide
range of issues. But “contemporary world-historical processes are disrupting
received geographies of core and periphery, relocating southward—and, of
course, eastward as well—some of the most innovative and energetic modes
of producing value”:51 they thus invite scholars to try to make sense of the
world from these same vantage points—that is, they invite us to study media
“from” the south as a way to make sense of wider transformations taking
place the world over.
Alessandro Jedlowski is a Belgian Scientific Research Fund postdoctoral
fellow at the University of Liège (Belgium). His current research analyzes
the political and economic dimensions of film production in the southern
Nigerian video film industry (Nollywood) and compares them with those
of other similar industries emerging around the African continent, particularly in Ethiopia and Cote d’Ivoire. He is the coeditor (together with
Philip Harrison and Ute Röschenthaler) of a forthcoming special issue
of the Journal of African Cultural Studies on China-Africa media interactions. His main publications include “Small screen cinema: Informality
and remediation in Nollywood” (Television and New Media, 2012);
“From Nollywood to Nollyworld: Processes of Transnationalization in
the Nigerian Video Film Industry” (in M. Krings and O. Okome, Global
Nollywood: The Transnational Dimensions of an African Video Film
Industry [Indiana University Press, 2013]); and “Avenues of Participation
and Strategies of Control: Video Film Production and Social Mobility in
Ethiopia and Southern Nigeria” (in M. Banks, B. Conor, and V. Meyer,
Production Studies, The Sequel! [Routledge, 2015]).
Notes
1. See www.discopafrica.com.
2. According to the event’s website, the 2014 edition brought together more than
2,500 delegates representing more than 1,750 companies from 85 different countries. The
event initially took place in Nairobi and Dakar, it later moved to Accra, then Johannesburg,
and since 2014 it has been held annually in both Johannesburg and Abidjan.
3. Bernard Chaussegros, “L’avenir de l’audiovisuel français passe aussi par
l’Afrique francophone,” La Tribune, September 23, 2014, www.latribune.fr/opinions
/tribunes/20140923trib680400104/lavenirdelaudiovisuelfrancaispasseaussiparlafriquefran
cophone.html.
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4. Lindiwe Dovey, Curating Africa in the Age of Film Festivals (New York: Palgrave
MacMillan, 2015).
5. Both John T. Caldwell and Sherry Ortner in recent works have underlined the
importance of such events for the production of “thick” description of media industries “cultures of production” and ways of functioning. See John T. Caldwell, Production
Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film and Television (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 2008); and Sherry Ortner, Not Hollywood: Independent
Film at the Twilight of the American Dream (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2013).
6. Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, Theory from the South: Or How Euro-America
Is Evolving Toward Africa (London: Paradigm Publishers, 2012).
7. Ibid., 38. Keyan Tomaselli proposed a similar, even if maybe more moderate,
argument a few years ago. He wrote: “contradictions are always sharpest on the peripheries. This is one of the conceptual benefits for academics of working in Africa. The experience of the periphery both casts light on, and can learn from, experiences and histories
at the center.” Keyan Tomaselli, “Repositioning African Media Studies: Thoughts and
Provocations,” Journal of African Media Studies 1, no. 1 (2009): 17.
8. See in particular the debate “Fieldsights: Theorizing the Contemporary,” published
in Cultural Anthropology Online with articles by Achille Mbembe, Ato Quayson, Juan
Obarrio, James Ferguson, Srinivas Aravamudan, and Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff,
www.culanth.org/fieldsights.
9. See James Ferguson, “Theory from the Comaroffs, or How to Know the World
Up, Down, Backwards and Forwards,” Cultural Anthropology Online, February 25, 2012,
www.culanth.org/fieldsights/271theoryfromthecomaroffsorhowtoknowtheworldupdown
backwardsandforwards.
10. Ato Quayson, “Coevalness, Recursivity and the Feet of Lionel Messi,” Cultural
Anthropology Online, February 25, 2012, www.culanth.org/fieldsights/269coevalnessrec
ursivityandthefeetoflionelmessi.
11. Achille Mbembe, “Theory from the Antipodes: Notes on Jean & John Comaroffs’
TFS,” Cultural Anthropology Online, February 25, 2012, www.culanth.org/fieldsights
/272theoryfromtheantipodesnotesonjeanjohncomaroffstfs.
12. Juan Obarrio, “Theory from the South,” Cultural Anthropology Online, February
24, 2012, www.culanth.org/fieldsights/268theoryfromthesouth.
13. Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, “Theory from the South: A Rejoinder,”
Cultural Anthropology Online, February 25, 2012, www.culanth.org/fieldsights/273theory
fromthesoutharejoinder.
14. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of
Cultural Change (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989).
15. Achille Mbembe, “Theory from the Antipodes.” For a discussion of different trends
in the study of neoliberalism in social sciences (particularly anthropology) see Mathieu
Hilgers, “The Three Anthropological Approaches to Neoliberalism,” International Social
Science Journal 61, no. 202 (2010): 351–64.
16. Obarrio, “Theory from the South.”
17. See Jerry Guo, “How Africa Is Becoming the New Asia,” Newsweek, March 1, 2010,
42–44; and The Economist, “Africa Rising,” December 3–9, 2011, quoted in Comaroff and
Comaroff, “Theory from the South: A Rejoinder.”
18. Comaroff and Comaroff, “Theory from the South: A Rejoinder.”
Alessandro Jedlowski / Studying Media “from” the South
191
19. Jean-François Bayart makes a similar point when describing the methodological
features of an approach to the study of politics “from below.” See Jean-François Bayart,
“L’énonciation du politique,” Revue française de science politique 35, no. 3 (1985) : 343–73.
20. Comaroff and Comaroff, Theory from the South, 7.
21. Ato Quayson, “Coevalness, Recursivity and the Feet of Lionel Messi.”
22. See for instance Keyan Tomaselli, “Repositioning African Media Studies”;
Mohammed Musa, “Looking Backward, Looking Forward: African Media Studies and
the Question of Power,” Journal of African Media Studies 1, no. 1 (2009): 35–54; Winston
Mano, “Re-Conceptualizing Media Studies in Africa,” in Internationalizing Media Studies,
ed. Daya K. Thussu (London: Routledge, 2009), 277–93; Martin Mhando, “Approaches to
African Cinema Studies: Defining Other Boundaries,” in Critical Approaches to African
Cinema Discourse, ed. Nwachukwu F. Ukadike (New York: Lexington Books, 2014), 3–22;
Aboubakar Sanogo, “Introduction to In Focus: Studying African Cinema and Media
Today,” Cinema Journal 54, no. 2 (2015): 114–19.
23. Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Provincializing Europe: Postcoloniality and the Critique
of History,” Cultural Studies 6, no. 3 (1992): 337.
24. Daya K. Thussu, “Why Internationalize Media Studies and How?” in
Internationalizing Media Studies, ed. Daya K. Thussu (London: Routledge, 2009), 23.
25. Mano, “Re-Conceptualizing Media Studies in Africa,” 285.
26. As Valentin Y. Mudimbe puts it, “Western interpreters, as well as African analysts, have been using categories and conceptual systems that depend on a Western epistemological order. Even in the most explicitly ‘Afrocentric’ descriptions, models of analysis
explicitly or implicitly, knowingly or unknowingly, refer to the same order. What does
this mean for the field of African studies?” Valentin Y. Mudimbe, The Idea of Africa
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994): xv. See also Paulin Hountondji, African
Philosophy: Myth and Reality (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983).
27. See Joshua Kurlantzick, Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power Is Transforming
the World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007); Mingjiang Li, ed., Soft Power:
China’s Emerging Strategy in International Politics (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2009);
Helge Rønning, “How Much ‘Soft Power’ Does China Have in Africa?,” paper presented
at the international conference “China and Africa Media, Communications and Public
Diplomacy,” September 10 and 11, 2014, Beijing.
28. See Iginio Gagliardone, “China as a Persuader: CCTV Africa’s First Steps in the
African Mediasphere,” Ecquid Novi: African Journalism Studies 34, no. 3 (2013): 25–40;
Xin Xin, “Xinhua News Agency in Africa,” Journal of African Media Studies 1, no. 3
(2009): 363–77; Fackson Banda, “China in the African Mediascape: A Critical Injection,”
Journal of African Media Studies 1, no. 3 (2009): 343–61; Bob Wekesa, “Emerging Trends
and Patterns in China–Africa Media Dynamics: A Discussion from an East African
Perspective,” Ecquid Novi: African Journalism Studies 34, no. 3 (2013): 62–78.
29. Will Connors, “Nigeria Gives Huawei a Place to Prove Itself,” Wall Street Journal,
September 12, 2011; Zhao Hejuan, “China’s Telecoms and Wireless Drums for Africa,”
February 22, 2012, http://english.caixin.com/2012-02-22/100359637.html.
30. See Balancing Act, “DTT: Analogue to Digital Migration in Africa – Strategic
Choices and Current Development,” June 1, 2015, www.balancingact-africa.com
/reports/dtt-analogue-to-digi; Tom Jackson, “The Digital Switchover Stalls,” African
Business Review, April 15, 2015, http://africanbusinessmagazine.com/sectors/technology
/the-digital-switchover-stalls/.
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31. Emmanuel Okwuke, “Amidst Challenges, StarTimes Commits to Digital Switch
Over,” The Daily Independent, December 5, 2014.
32. Balancing Act, “StarTimes Ups its Game in Africa and Pitches a More Ambitious
Vision as the Key Pay TV Challenger While Wananchi Keeps Its Powder Dry,” November
20, 2014, www.balancingact-africa.com/news/broadcast/issue-no192/top-story/Startimes
-ups-its-ga/bc; Disbook#5, “StarTimes – Celebrating Digital Advancement in Africa,”
November, 2014, www.nxtbook.fr/newpress/BasicLead/Disbook_5_November_2014
/index.php?startid=67.
33. See also Seleshi Teshema, “Turkish Products Enjoy Positive Brand Image in
Ethiopia,” Turkish Weekly, January 21, 2015, www.turkishweekly.net/2015/01/21/news
/turkish-products-enjoy-positive-brand-image-in-ethiopia/.
34. See “Kanal D: Bringing Turkey to Africa Compiled,” February 13, 2015, www
.screenafrica.com/page/news/television/1651550KanalDBringingTurkeytoAfricaComp
iled#.VhzpEztmko.
35. Brian Larkin, “Indian Films and Nigerian Lovers: Media and the Creation of
Parallel Modernities,” Africa 67, no. 3 (1997): 406–40.
36. From personal notes taken during Amaç Us’s speech at DISCOP 2014.
37. See Piotr Zalewski, “As Turkey Turns,” Slate, August 16, 2013, www.slate.com/articles
/arts/roads/2013/08/turkish_soap_operas_go_global_turkey_s_homemade_melodramas
_are_popular_across.html; Nathan Williams, “The Rise of Turkish Soap Power,” BBC
News, June 28, 2013, www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22282563.
38. Juan Romero, “Kanal D Sends Turkish Dramas to Sub-Saharan Africa,” April 30,
2015, http://discopafrica.com/kanal-d-sends-turkish-dramas-to-sub-saharan-africa/.
39. Important exceptions in this sense are, among others, the studies included in Faye
D. Ginsburg, Lila Abu-Lughod, and Brian Larkin, eds., Media Worlds: Anthropology on
New Terrain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); and Matthias Krings and
Onookome Okome, eds., Global Nollywood: The Transnational Dimensions of an African
Video Film Industry (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013).
40. See also Karle Nordenstreng and Daya Kishan Thussu, eds., Mapping BRICS Media
(London: Routledge, 2015).
41. Afrique IT News, “Canal +: Cap sur l’Afrique,” September 23, 2015, www.afriqueitnews
.com/2015/09/23/canal-cap-sur-lafrique/; see also Serge Noukoué, “Abidjan, plaque tournante de l’audiovisuel africain,” Le Monde, September 2, 2015, www.lemonde.fr/afrique
/article/2015/09/02/abidjanplaquetournantedelaudiovisuelafricain_4743409_3212.html.
42. Disbook#5, “Audiovisual Landscape of French-Speaking Africa is Trending Up,”
November, 2014, www.nxtbook.fr/newpress/BasicLead/Disbook_5_November_2014
/index.php?startid=86.
43. Amaury de Rochegonde, “La Face cachée de la Francophonie ou comment les médias
français vont re-coloniser l’Afrique,” December 2, 2014, www.leral.net/La-face-cachee
-de-la-Francophonie-ou-comment-les-medias-francais-vont-re-coloniser-l-Afrique_
a131213.html; see also Jean-François Bayart, “Y a pas rupture, Patron!,” in L’Afrique de
Sarkozy. Un déni d’histoire, ed. Jean-Pierre Chrétien and Pierre Boilley (Paris: Karthala,
2008), 31–34; Jean-François Bayart, “Quelle politique africaine pour la France ?,” Politique
Africaine 121, no. 1 (2011): 147–59.
44. See Krings and Okome, Global Nollywood; Brian, Larkin, Signal and Noise: Media,
Infrastructure, and Urban Culture in Nigeria (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2008); Carmela Garritano, African Video Movies and Global Desires: A Ghanaian History
(Athens: Ohio University Press, 2013); Ann Overbergh, “Technological Innovation and
Alessandro Jedlowski / Studying Media “from” the South
193
the Diversification of Audiovisual Storytelling Circuits in Kenya,” Journal of African
Cultural Studies 26, no. 2 (2014): 206–19; Alessandro Jedlowski, “Screening Ethiopia: A
Preliminary Study of the History and Contemporary Developments of Film Production
in Ethiopia,” Journal of African Cinemas 7, no. 2 (2015): 169–185.
45. Alessandro Jedlowski, “Small Screen Cinema: Informality and Remediation in
Nollywood,” Television & New Media 13, no. 5 (2012): 431–36; Moradewun Adejunmobi,
“African Film’s Televisual Turn,” Cinema Journal 54, no. 2 (2015): 120–25.
46. See, among other, John T. Caldwell, “Welcome to the Viral Future of Cinema
(Television),” Cinema Journal 45, no. 1 (2005): 90–97.
47. See Caldwell, Production Culture; Vicki Mayer, Miranda J. Banks, and John
T. Caldwell, eds., Production Studies: Cultural Studies of Media Industries (London:
Routledge, 2009).
48. Sanogo, “Introduction,” 119.
49. Bookslive, “‘Africa Is Taking Its Own Shape—And You Are Not Even in That
Conversation’—Binyavanga Wainaina Delivers a Public Lecture in Joburg,” June 3, 2015,
http://bookslive.co.za/blog/2015/06/03/africa-is-taking-its-own-shape-and-you-are-not
-even-in-that-conversation-binyavanga-wainaina-delivers-a-public-lecture-in-joburg.
50. Comaroff and Comaroff, “Theory from the South: A Rejoinder”; see also Ian
Taylor, Africa Rising? BRICS–Diversifying Dependency (Oxford: James Curray, 2014).
51. Comaroff and Comaroff, Theory from the South, 7.