China's media challenge in Africa

Even a cursory look at the African media will reveal its uncanny similarity between Eurocentric media trends and the contours of Sub-Saharan African press, which can be attributed to historical reasons.

The contact Africa has had with the West over the years has a lot to do with how the average African processes and presents his thoughts. The dyed-in-the-wool Western influence discernible in an Africa that was once colonized has a lot to do with the mind-capturing methods the West employed and deeply anchored its abiding influence in.

Obviously, many years of education and religious practices inspired by the West have molded preferences whose persuasion traverses virtually all facets of life - media consumption and appreciation included. Even decades into independence, top-level media executives and editors across most of Anglophone and Francophone Africa trace their professional training and lifestyles to the West. The prism that informs civility, excellence and success in most of Africa is largely Western.