Teaching materials
Two ready-made courses, free to adapt. One is an academic seminar for master's students; the other is a practical workshop for people who write about the continent for a living. Both can be run in English or French.
Western media and representations of Africa
A seminar built directly on the book's case study. Students learn to detect the blind spots of international journalism, to measure their political, diplomatic and economic consequences, and to sketch what a decolonised journalism would look like. Assessment: weekly reading notes (30%), a paired presentation on one frame (30%), and a final corpus analysis (40%).
Why stories matter
Aims and methods of the seminar. Opening discussion of Binyavanga Wainaina's satire. Why do the stories we tell about the world shape the world? Introduction to media framing and to the case study.
Readings: Wainaina (2005); Hall, Representation, ch. 1.
Frames and power: the theoretical toolkit
The three analytical pillars. Framing theory (Entman): selection, salience, omission. Critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, Van Dijk): how language reproduces power. Postcolonial thought (Said, Mbembe, Bhabha): how the West constructs its Other.
Readings: Entman (2004), ch. 1; Said, Orientalism, introduction; Mbembe, On the Postcolony, introduction.
Two wars, two scripts: Bosnia and the Congo
Comparative study of the coverage of Bosnia (1992–95) and the Second Congo War (1998–2003). How a European war becomes a political narrative while an African war becomes a natural one. Workshop on wire copy and magazine covers.
Readings: Myers, Klak & Koehl (1996); Allen & Seaton (1999), ch. 2.
The colonial playbook: a genealogy
The making of colonial discourse in the nineteenth century. Stanley, Hegel, Conrad, Kipling, Sir Harry Johnston. The three pillars: the land without history, the savage mind, the white man's burden. How these ideas outlived the formal collapse of empire.
Readings: Conrad, Heart of Darkness (extracts); Spurr (1993), chs. 1 and 4; Blanchard & Bancel (1998), extracts.
Frame 1 — naturalising the conflict
How a political war becomes a natural cataclysm. Analysis of the geological and meteorological vocabulary in The Economist and Le Point. Consequences: the erasure of actors, causes and stakes. Textual analysis workshop on the 1998–99 corpus.
Readings: sample articles, The Economist, Aug–Oct 1998; Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History (extracts).
Frame 2 — the figure of the savage
The portrait of the irrational actor: Laurent-Désiré Kabila as “big village chief”. The tribal alibi: how the word tribe substitutes for political analysis. The Conradian echo. Discussion of Achebe's critique of Conrad.
Readings: Achebe (1977); corpus articles 1998–2001; Prunier (2009), ch. 4.
Frame 3 — the Western saviour
How African peace initiatives (Lusaka 1999, Sun City 2002) are systematically disqualified, and Western intervention (Operation Artemis, 2003) presented as the only rational horizon. The white man's burden in the humanitarian age.
Readings: Kipling, The White Man's Burden; The Economist, May–June 2003; Autesserre (2010), ch. 3.
Frame 4 — the silence of a continent
The journalist as omniscient narrator. The scarcity of African voices in the corpus. When an African voice is quoted, to what end? A typology of the voice of despair and the voice of validation. Who is allowed to know?
Readings: Chomsky & Herman (1988), ch. 1; corpus articles; Bourdieu, On Television (extracts).
Real consequences: from apathy to public policy
The architecture of apathy: why did five million deaths produce no Western mobilisation? The politics of pity: why humanitarian aid substitutes for political action. The economy of otherness: how the colonial narrative masks the exploitation of coltan, cobalt and gold. Study of the 2002 UN report.
Readings: Moeller, Compassion Fatigue (extracts); UN report S/2002/1146; Stearns (2011), ch. 11.
Comparative cases: beyond the Congo
The playbook at work elsewhere: coverage of Mali and the Sahel (2012–present), Rwanda in 1994, Somalia, and the M23 conflicts in eastern DRC. Group work on contemporary corpora. Do the same frames still operate today?
Readings: Wall (2007); selected Gathara columns; contemporary corpus supplied in session.
Breaking the frame: alternative journalisms
Practices that break with the playbook: Milo Rau's The Congo Tribunal, Patrick Gathara's meta-journalism, pan-African collectives (The Continent, African Arguments), the Pulitzer Center's collaborative model. The critical reader's toolkit: agency gap, expert problem, context deficit, Conrad test. A visiting journalist where possible.
Readings: Adichie, The Danger of a Single Story; selected Gathara columns; extracts from The Continent.
Presentations and prospects
Students present their final analyses of contemporary media corpora. Closing discussion: can international journalism be decolonised? What responsibilities fall to future practitioners, diplomats, researchers and citizens?
Final assessment: a critical analysis of a media corpus of the student's choice (8,000 characters).
Writing Africa — beyond the easy stereotypes
Where the seminar diagnoses, this course treats. Built for African writers, journalists and content creators, it moves from criticism to craft: short video lessons, practical exercises and peer review. The brief is blunt — write as if Africans are your primary audience.
Deconstructing the narrative
The colonial gaze, the taxonomy of clichés — the savanna sunrise opening, the tribe obsession, the
white saviour, poverty pornography — and the loaded vocabulary that carries them.
Exercise: the cliché audit.
The craft of nuance
Reporting urban realities and innovation without condescension. The complexity protocol: the layer
method, the network approach, the time telescope.
Exercise: one hour of market observation.
The power of specificity
Why “the African sun” is lazy writing. The sensory journalism toolkit and the architecture of
observation.
Exercise: describe a commute in 300 words — with eight words banned.
The ethics of storytelling
The extraction economy of stories, and the dignity framework: consent, reciprocal value, narrative
control. Question architecture and the trauma interview protocol.
Exercise: re-frame an extractive interview.
Writing about home
Proximity as an advantage, not a problem. Balancing intimacy and distance; the protection instinct
and the knowledge curse; the writer as translator.
Exercise: the two traditions.
Selling the real story
The psychology of an editor. The six elements of a pitch: hook, stakes, access, audience, visuals,
impact. The complexity sandwich and the pre-emptive strike.
Exercise: the triple pitch.
The nuanced story package
Vet a story with the story idea checklist, produce an 800–1,000 word article or a five-minute script, and write a 250-word pitch for it. The piece must demonstrate specificity, dignity in reporting, and complexity.
Adopting the book for a course
The book is short — 148 pages — and is designed to be assigned whole. It suits undergraduate and master's teaching in media studies, journalism, African studies, international relations and development.