COVID-19, Africa Forgotten by the Mainstream Media. Monday, Talk on Meet Platform

Monday 27 April, in collaboration with COSPE, Focus on Africa speakers, Editor-in-Chief Antonella Napoli and Jean Leonard Touadi, one of our most authoritative contributors, will hold a talk called “Africa (no) news” on Meet from 4.30-6.30 pm (clickhere or on the link below to participate)

The meeting will see the participation of Anna Meli, head of the Italia Europa Department and Communications Director for COSPE, Paola Barretta with the Osservatorio di Pavia, Chiara Barison, journalist and Communications Director for AICS Dakar, and the above mentioned Antonella Napoli, who launched an appeal from our magazine on 24 February calling not to abandon Africa in its response to the pandemic, and Touadi, FAO consultant, professor and journalist.

In addition to focusing on the coronavirus in Africa, the debate will be a moment for reflecting on why the continent is constantly being “forgotten”, not just during the current emergency.

“This absence may be glaringly obvious now during the COVID-19 emergency,” says Meli who is coordinating the event, “but it had already been identified in the report, “Illuminare le periferie” published in 2019, where we said that there had been a drop of news coverage from the previous year by about one third”.

The Cospe report revealed that during 2018, Africa had registered the lowest visibility data in the past seven years: 440 news stories compared to 1,152 two years before, excluding current events such as natural disasters, terrorist acts and abductions of our fellow citizens (the abduction of Silvia Romano in Kenya and the death of COSPE aid worker David Solazzo in Cape Verde).

The meeting, organized by COSPE, will begin with the current situation including research and data collection for the reports, “Illuminare le Periferie. La finestra sul mondo, gli esteri nei telegiornali”, curated by COSPE, the Osservatorio di Pavia, the Italian National Press Federation (FNSI) and USIGRAI (Rai Journalists’ Labour Union) under the auspices of the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS). The reports have been updated to include the current phase of the pandemic with special reference to Africa.

To participate, tune in on the date and time indicated on the Meet platform in the following link:

https://meet.google.com/ogs-ozes-jcq