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CHAPTER 12
Media studies, globalisation
and African realities
Alessandro Jedlowski

12.1 Introduction
Despite the complexity and dynamism of African media industries, the study of African
realities remains marginal in media studies curricula worldwide. Whenever these realities
are the object of attention, people tend to refer to the same few, well-known examples,
such as the work of Ousmane Sembène in relation to the history of African cinema, or
the role of social media in the Arab Spring in courses devoted to digital media theory.
International film and media studies conferences such as those organised 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
media organised or presented at each of these gatherings. But Africa is today at the
centre of important, wide-ranging processes of media globalisation, largely connected to
interactions happening along the south–south axis, whose study can offer original and
important insights into understanding processes of media globalisation the world over.
On the ground of these assumptions, in this chapter we will briefly analyse some of the
causes for the marginalisation of non-Western perspectives in media studies, in order
to discuss the theoretical basis for developing an approach to the study of media and
globalisation ‘from’ the south that could bring to light the universal value of knowledge
produced in relation to African realities and epistemologies. In the last part of this chapter,
we will show the relevance of this approach through a few examples based on African case
studies.

12.2 The marginalisation of African media studies

Students who approach the field of media studies would easily notice that the discipline
has long been grounded on theories and case studies based on Western realities, used
to develop universal generalisation. The global reach of Western media products and
technologies was considered a solid enough reason to assume that theories, formulated
in relation to these realities, could also be applied to non-Western contexts. From the
1960s, cultural imperialism theory participated in furthering these assumptions by
suggesting that the global spread of Euro-American media production was the result of a

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larger political project destined to assimilate different cultures into a Western-dominated

global order. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, cultural studies and globalisation studies
scholars demonstrated the limits of these theoretical orientations. On the one hand,
they highlighted the complexity of processes of media reception, and emphasised the
active role of viewers in creating alternative readings and in developing (consciously or
unconsciously) forms of resistance to imperialist assimilation processes. On the other
hand, they showed the existence of alternative networks of media circulation beyond the
north–south axis generally analysed in media studies, thus bringing to light the multipolar
nature of processes of media globalisation.1 However, media studies remain largely
Eurocentric in their core theoretical and methodological assumptions, overlooking the
complexity of south–south media exchanges and the theoretical relevance of analysing
media and globalisation ‘from’ the south.
While knowledge of Western media histories and theories is a fundamental requirement
of film and media studies degree programmes all over the world, ignorance of basic
aspects of African media and film history is generally accepted – and the same is valid
for Asian or Latin American media and film studies. This recalls 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.”’2 What is at stake here is the fundamental issue of the relation between
power and knowledge production, 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.’3
In what concerns the emergence and development of film and media studies in Africa,
the impact of the asymmetric ignorance underlined above, coupled with the legacy of
colonial power in the structure of education and research institutions all over the
continent, has created long-lasting consequences. 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’.4 This has
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
media realities implicit in it. As Valentin-Yves 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

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order.’5 Indeed, the impact of the ‘colonial library’ on African epistemologies and on the
analysis of African realities is a complicated issue, and 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.

12.3 Towards a theory of media ‘from’ the south

To counter the problems highlighted above, we need to engage in the production of media
theory solidly grounded on African realities. This does not simply imply the need to give
more space to African case studies in media studies curricula worldwide. Rather, it means
that we need to operate an epistemological shift in order to bring to light the universal
value of knowledge produced in relation to African realities and epistemologies. In order
to do that, we can take as a starting point the provocative argument that Jean and John
Comaroff propose in their book Theory from the South: Or, How Euro-America is Evolving
Toward Africa. Upon its publication in 2012, the Comaroffs’ book sparked a lively debate
among scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds.6 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 ‘Euro-America evolving toward Africa’ argument, a linear model of development
opposed, but very similar, to the ‘Africa evolving toward Euro-America’ argument that
the Comaroffs wished to deconstruct. 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. 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 the contemporary
world’s transformations, and from which to produce theory of universal use.

12.3.1 The place of Africa in theory

According to Achille Mbembe, producing theory from the south 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’.7 This
is, in other words, an invitation to respond ‘to the command to “provincialize Europe”
(Chakrabarty) with a provocation to “universalize Africa”’8 – a challenge very much
relevant to scholars devoted to the analysis of African films and media. If, as mentioned
earlier, media studies have for long time implicitly assumed the applicability and relevance
of Eurocentric case studies for the analysis of African realities, Mbembe suggests that we

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actively engage in highlighting the relevance of African case studies to understand global
realities. This invitation, exemplified by the provocative subtitle of the Comaroffs’ book,
Or, How Euro-America is Evolving Toward Africa, does not suggest, as some critics have
argued, the adoption of a reverse teleology opposed to the deterministic trajectory of
progress proposed by modernisation theory. On the contrary, it points to the fact that,
while Euro-America and Africa ‘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’.9 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,10 a
compression that blurs the geographical distinctions between ‘north’ and ‘south’, ‘centre’
and ‘peripheries’, ‘past’, ‘present’ and ‘future’, so as to maximise the profit of the ‘raw
economy’ upon which the neoliberal economy itself is grounded. In the words of Juan
Obarrio, the Comaroffs’ provocative suggestion that ‘Euro-America is evolving toward
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 canvass, where “global,” “regional,” and “local” are not scales but
rather various interrelated entangled dimensions and folds’.11

12.3.2 The meaning of ‘from’ in the theory

from the south
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 have misinterpreted it as a
reflection of the identitarian turn in social sciences according to which ethnic, racial and
gender identities, coupled with considerations of geographic origin and class background,
constitute the key criteria authorising scholars to speak about specific topics. According
to this perspective, in what sense is the theory that the Comaroffs propose really
‘from’ the south 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 criticism needs to be addressed because its shadow looms also
upon some of the current debates about African cinema and media. The Comaroffs help
to return 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 ex-centricity’.12 The key point here concerns
the perspective from which one decides to look at the world in order to make sense of
it. And as the Comaroffs make clear throughout their book, ‘because the history of the

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present reveals itself more starkly in the antipodes, it challenges us to make sense of
it, empirically and theoretically, from that distinctive vantage’.13 As Ato Quayson points
out in 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’.14 But the Comaroffs do not
suggest simply ‘using’ the south as a tool for understanding the north, reducing 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 neoliberalism.
To summarise, the Comaroffs suggest that we take African realities as terrains from
which to develop theories and epistemologies of global relevance. Applied to the field
of media studies and to the understanding of media and globalisation, this means
considering African case studies as conceptual lock-picks that can make us understand
how global media flows are transforming. The Comaroffs also encourage us to take African
epistemologies and concepts seriously as starting points for thinking about media and
globalisation differently. As mentioned earlier, this is still a work in progress, as the
excessive internationalisation of African media studies over the past few decades has
made this field of study rely heavily on Western categories.15 However, the work that has
been conducted in the fields of African philosophy and sociology by scholars such as
Achille Mbembe, Valentin-Yves Mudimbe, Kwasi Wiredu, Felwine Sarr and many others to
elaborate on theoretical concepts grounded in African languages points to the direction
that media scholars will have to follow in the coming years to develop original theoretical
tools, coherent with African realities.

12.4 Examples of global media research

On the grounds of these theoretical assumptions, we can now turn to a few African case
studies that illustrate the interest of looking at media and globalisation from an African
vantage point.

12.4.1 China–Africa media interactions

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 series of case studies is probably an analysis of China’s
particular position in the contemporary African mediascape. Chinese media companies
are signing major deals all over the continent in an explicit bid to develop strategies that
could later be applied elsewhere in the world to counter the bad image of the People’s
Republic that much Western media have circulated. Between 2006 and 2011, three key

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Chinese news companies (Xinhua, China Radio International and the Chinese Central
Television, or CCTV) opened major offices in Africa, and particularly in Nairobi, where
CCTV has built one of its largest offices outside mainland China. They have created many
jobs, organised training workshops and funded numerous interactions between Chinese
and African media professionals. Similarly, Chinese telecommunication companies such
as Huawei and ZTE have invested significantly all over the continent, testing marketing
strategies and technological solutions they wish later to export elsewhere. At the same
time, it is important to keep in mind that the current expansion of Chinese media in Africa
did not happen overnight. China has long-term political, economic and cultural relations
with most African countries, and today’s interactions, as well as their perception by the
local population, are linked to previous exchanges. For media scholars, kung fu films
from Hong Kong and Taiwan (generally considered as Chinese products by the African
audiences) are a particularly interesting case. Indeed, in the experience of cinemagoers
in most African cities, kung fu films are one of the main cinematographic references,
which still influence youth culture all over the continent. The success of this cultural
form is today exploited by Chinese companies who try to establish new ties with African
audiences (as in the case study discussed below).16
Within this context, the position of the satellite broadcaster StarTimes is probably
one of the most interesting cases to consider. 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 United Nations’ agency for the regulation of the
telecommunications sector (the International Telecommunications Union or ITU), all
African countries are supposed to switch from analogue to digital broadcasting between
2015 and 2020. Within this context, StarTimes has signed several deals to help national
broadcasters face the technological and infrastructural challenges connected to the
digital switch. In Nigeria, for instance, it has partnered with the Nigerian Television
Authority (NTA) to develop the infrastructure needed to make the technological switch
accessible to low-income audiences. This deal has helped StarTimes to consolidate its
position in the local satellite and cable television market, giving it the chance to extend
its activities beyond infrastructural co-operation in order to venture into production and
distribution. As a result, in Nigeria (as in a number of East African countries) StarTimes
has set up a number of new channels, begun to dub and broadcast Chinese TV series and
entertainment programmes in African languages, and become involved in the production
and distribution of locally produced content. Interestingly, StarTimes has also created a
number of channels specifically focused on kung fu films, to create a relationship with the
audience based on the legacy of the success of this film genre in Africa.
The 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 that can help
us interrogate the strategies that Chinese media companies are developing to improve

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the international perception of Chinese political and economic growth worldwide.

Existing studies on the expansion of Chinese media companies in Africa focus mainly on
the expansion in Africa of Chinese state media companies, such as Xinhua News Agency
or CCTV, through an approach that tends to read the activities of these companies as
being the direct expression of the Chinese government’s hegemonic project in Africa, and
therefore as the result of the soft power policies formulated in Beijing by the Chinese
Communist Party. However, to speak of a coherent and homogeneous ‘Chinese hegemonic
project’ is likely to be misleading: China’s international activities, in Africa as elsewhere,
are the result of the combination of a multitude of actors who do not necessarily share
the same project, and have sometimes diverging interests that can produce a hegemonic
dynamic but can also conflict with each other. The study of StarTimes’s activities
confirms this interpretation. Indeed, being a private company, StarTimes is positioned
in a particularly ambiguous way vis-à-vis the official policies of Beijing. If, on the one
hand, it receives funding from the Export–Import Bank of China to implement some of
the projects supported by the Chinese government, on the other hand it responds to
autonomous commercial logics, which adapt to local contingencies as well as the political
and commercial needs of its African partners and the specific demands of African viewers.
This case study thus shows the importance of taking into account the agency of
all actors involved in processes of media globalisation, so as to develop a nuanced
understanding of the decision-making processes by which the activities of an international
company operating in Africa, like StarTimes, are developed and implemented. The alarmist
perspective of many Western reports and much scholarship on Chinese media expansion
in Africa reproduces, with different terms, the key arguments of cultural imperialism
theories and thus depicts Chinese media expansion as a new form of colonisation of African
imageries. On the contrary, focusing on the analysis of these processes from an African
vantage point, this case study gives us the opportunity to look at media globalisation
as a process that is creating new geometries of encounter between societies whose
interaction has often been left beyond the focus of Eurocentric media studies. These new
geometries might include forms of domination, but they also produce new patterns of
media collaboration, new forms of viewers’ pleasure, and original, hybrid media products
that have not yet received the scholarly attention they deserve.

12.4.2 Indian films and African cultural production

If Chinese media companies are becoming increasingly active on the continent, Indian
media entrepreneurs also look at African markets as places where they can distribute
their products. Indeed, Bollywood films have been successful all over sub-Saharan Africa,
at least since the mid-20th century. As several researchers have demonstrated,17 Indian
films have influenced key aspects of popular culture contents and aesthetics in countries
as diverse as Nigeria, Tanzania and Ethiopia. Their success has rested on the capacity of
these films to offer, on the one hand, a representation of modernity more respectful of some
aspects of local mores and values, while, on the other hand, being able to tackle issues

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too controversial to be touched upon by local media. The success of Indian films across
Africa tended to fade in the 1980s, when kung fu films began to become popular with local
audiences, taking up most of local cinemas’ screening time. The gradual collapse of film-
going culture, caused by the economic and political crisis that many sub-Saharan African
countries witnessed throughout the 1980s and 1990s as a result of the application of the
Structural Adjustment Policies, also played an important role. Consequently, in most parts
of sub-Saharan Africa over this period, Indian films lost some of their attractiveness, but
Indian television series soon came to replace them, often becoming more popular than
their much more talked-about Brazilian and Mexican counterparts.
As a result of the familiarity between Indian films and African audiences, a number of
professional interactions between Indian and African filmmakers has also taken place. As
I could observe during my research in Nigeria, over the past few years numerous aspiring
Nigerian filmmakers and media professionals have gone to India for training, considering it
a more affordable option than Western training institutions. At the same time, Indian media
professionals have at times been hired to work on Nigerian productions. These aspects
of the connection between Indian and African media industries are still under-researched
but, as in the case of China–Africa interactions, they are a fertile opportunity to question
the nature and scope of south–south media interactions that go beyond the circulation of
contents to touch upon aspects of media training and entrepreneurship. Research on these
topics can contribute to larger debates about south–south connections (and particularly
about Asia–Africa relationships) by focusing on an often under-researched aspect of these
phenomena: the role played by cultural and media entrepreneurship in extending and
strengthening political and economic relationships between countries of the global south.
In my research experience, the analysis of the interactions between Nigerian and Indian
media professionals has revealed not only reciprocal fascination and interest, but also
stereotypes and forms of mistrust, in part related to long-term tensions between African
and Indian communities connected to the common colonial past under British rule. This is a
reminder of the fact that the importance of south–south interactions for decentring our gaze
on processes of media globalisation should not make us forget that these interactions take
place on the ground of complex and layered histories of previous encounters and within the
framework of present geopolitical specificities. Thus, when we approach the study of these
networks of circulation and collaboration, we need to be aware that, while often rooted in the
moral and ideological convergences caused by the common experience of anticolonial and
anti-imperialistic struggles, south–south interactions often remain ‘based on nationalistic
concerns oriented toward the achievement of specific economic and political goals’.18
Countering cultural imperialism theories on the predominance of north–south axis of
media circulation, the analysis of Chinese media expansion in Africa discussed earlier
evidenced the new geometries of encounter emerging through south–south media
interactions and the importance of studying them from an African vantage point in order
to bring to light the agency of African actors in these processes. But the analysis of
experiences of collaboration between Indian and Nigerian media professionals warns us
against simplistic accounts of multipolar globalisation processes by suggesting that these
new geometries have complex histories and are not necessarily grounded on implicit forms

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of anti-imperialist solidarity. In this sense, this case study underlines the importance of
making media studies, and the analysis of media globalisation, dialogue with the analysis
of long-term historical, social and political processes in order to understand the marks
that specific experiences (such as colonialism, imperialism and racism) have left on
contemporary scenarios.

12.4.3 African media and former colonial powers

The importance of the south–south connections that the analysis of China–Africa and
India–Africa media interactions highlights should not make us forget the role of former
colonial powers and their renewed interest in the African media sector, as shown by the
case of the French satellite company Canal Plus, one of the few European companies
making explicit attempts at countering the dominance of South African and Chinese
enterprises in the satellite market on the continent. In 2014, Canal Plus opened its brand
new African headquarters in Abidjan, Côte 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 Nigerian films (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 Plus group lost some of its subscribers in France,
but has managed to close its annual budget with an overall growth of subscribers thanks
to its progression in the African market, where, in only two years, it has more than doubled
its share of the market.
The renewed engagement of French media corporations such as Canal Plus, Orange,
Thema TV, Lagardère Sports and Entertainment, 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 neo-
colonial networks. 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 Malaysia), investigation of the
changing role of French-British, Belgian-Italian or Portuguese companies around Africa
has been limited, often explicitly directed towards counterbalancing the influence of new
players on the continent so as to maintain strategic control of the key resources of former
colonial territories. The collaboration between French companies and local media partners
in French-speaking countries (with Côte d’Ivoire being probably the best case study in this
sense) also suggests the importance of analysing 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

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African countries and from China as a common threat to the perpetuation of their spheres
of influence.19 This case study offers evidence to deconstruct media theories that ascribe
the agency of hegemonic processes only to dominant actors, suggesting how all forms of
hegemonic relation are co-constructed by the actors involved.20

12.4.4 African global media industries

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 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
10 to 15 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 often appear 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 with its
local and international homologues (such as the video film industries that have emerged
in northern Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia),21 are probably the best
examples in this sense. The way in which 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’,22 has in many ways
prefigured the ongoing transformation of the relationship between television and cinema
in major film industries around the world. 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 labour regimes in Western film industries, ‘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’.23
African video films also circulate widely across the African diaspora worldwide,
becoming a vector through which people have managed to create and maintain multiple
forms of connection with the homeland. Videos participated in the construction of an
Afrocentric transnational and diasporic mediascape that today appeals to people of African
descent throughout the world. The success of Nigerian videos among diasporic Africans
gave some Nigerian entrepreneurs, based in Europe and in North America, the idea of
setting up autonomous ventures. Nigerian production companies thus emerged in many
European countries, in the United States and in Canada, giving life to an interesting and

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in some ways unprecedented cultural phenomenon in the panorama of migrant cinema.

While, in fact, the emergence of forms of diasporic cinema in Europe and North America
is a well-studied phenomenon, the creation of independent production companies that
reproduce the format and the structure of an indigenous popular culture industry in
the diaspora is something that has happened rarely, particularly in what concerns the
African diaspora.24 The videos that these companies produce are the result of a complex
encounter between an entertainment-oriented film style, commercial movie genres and
the tradition of politically engaged exile filmmaking. Their existence challenges ready-
made definitions of European national cinemas, opening the space for the articulation
of complex interstitial filmmaking practices. Research on these production companies
and the films they produce also allows us to develop a critical perspective on the politics
of the representation of migration in European cinema, as they present migration in
unexpected and challenging ways that counter both negative stereotypes and politically
correct representations of the phenomenon by proposing an Afrocentric understanding
of migration and displacement. In countries like Italy, the circulation of these films has
influenced local Italian filmmakers, provoking the emergence of a number of Italian
productions about Nigerian migrants in Italy explicitly inspired by Nollywood-style films.25

12.5 Conclusion
After briefly highlighting the causes of the marginalisation of African realities in media
studies curricula worldwide, we outlined the theoretical basis for the formulation of a
theory of media and globalisation from the South, taking inspiration from the work of Jean
and John Comaroffs’ work Theory from the South: Or, How Euro-America is Evolving Toward
Africa. As the discussion of a few case studies showed, the analysis of African realities
is today of fundamental importance to understanding the dynamics of globalisation,
capitalism, and neoliberalism. 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’:26 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 of making sense of wider transformations taking place the world over.

12.6 Putting theory into practice

This chapter was intended to invite you to become familiar with the following key issues:
• To develop critical awareness about the marginal position of African media within
media studies as a discipline

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 Chapter 12 Media studies, globalisation and African realities | 197

• To understand the theoretical basis for a theory of media based on African realities
• To link these theoretical tools to the analysis of south–south media interactions
• To acquire knowledge of key case studies that illustrate the global relevance of Afri-
can media engagements.

To support your learning in this area, you may use these discussion points to guide your
revision and further reading:
• What is the place of Africa in media theory?
• In which sense can a theory of media from the south produce globally applicable
results?
• What is the meaning of ‘from’ in Theory from the South?
• Which examples of south–south media interactions can you discuss after reading this
chapter?
• What is the role of media companies from former colonial powers in today’s Africa?
• How did contemporary African media production prefigure transformations in the
way media work globally?

Further reading
Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization Minneapolis, MN: University of
Minnesota Press.
Chakrabarty, D. (2000). Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Curran, J. & Park, M.-J. (eds). (2000). De-Westernizing Media Studies. London: Routledge.
Eisenstadt, S.N. (2000). Multiple modernities. Daedalus 129(1): 1–29.
Ganti, T. (2014). Neoliberalism. Annual Review of Anthropology 43: 89–104.
Jedlowski, A. & Röschenthaler, U. (2017). China–Africa media interactions: Media and popular culture between
business and state intervention. Special issue, Journal of African Cultural Studies 7(1).
Hamid, N. (2001). Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Nye, J.S. (2004). Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. Cambridge: Public Affairs.
Shohat, E. & Stam, R. (2014). Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media. London: Routledge.
Thussu, D.K. (ed.). (2009). Internationalizing Media Studies. London and New York: Routledge.
Tomlinson, J. (1991). Cultural Imperialism: A Critical Introduction. London: Continuum.
Zhang, X., Wasserman, H. & Mano, W. (eds). (2016). China’s Media and Soft Power in Africa: Promotion and
Perceptions. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Weblinks
Fieldsights: Theorizing the Contemporary, Cultural Anthropology Online, www.culanth.org/fieldsights
Balancing Act, DTT: Analogue to Digital Migration in Africa – Strategic Choices and Current Development, https://
www.balancingact-africa.com/reports/broadcast/dtt-analogue-to-digital-migration-in-africa---strategic-choices-
and-current-developments-full-report---2017
Disbook#5, StarTimes – Celebrating Digital Advancement in Africa, November 2014, www.nxtbook.fr/newpress/
BasicLead/Disbook_5_November_2014/index.php?startid=67
Afrique IT News, Canal +: Cap sur l’Afrique, 23 September 2015, www.afriqueitnews.com/2015/09/23/canal-cap-sur-
lafrique/

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 198 | Media Studies Decolonising concepts & counterpoints

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

Endnotes
* Parts of this chapter have previously been published in the essay ‘Studying Media “From” the South:
African Media Studies and Global Perspectives’, Black Camera 7(2): 174–193, and they are reprinted here
thanks to the authorisation kindly granted by the publisher, Indiana University Press.
1 Curran, J. & Park, M.-J. (2000). Introduction: Beyond globalization theory. In J. Curran & M.-J. Park (eds).
De-Westernizing Media Studies. London: Routledge, pp. 2–15.
2 Chakrabarty, D. (1992). Provincializing Europe: Postcoloniality and the Critique of History. Cultural Studies
6(3): 337–357, p. 337.
3 Thussu, D.K. (2009). Why Internationalize Media Studies and How? In D.K. Thussu (ed.). Internationalizing
Media Studies. London and New York: Routledge, p. 23.
4 Mano, W. (2009). Re-Conceptualizing Media Studies in Africa. In D.K. Thussu (ed.). Internationalizing Media
Studies. London and New York: Routledge, p. 285.
5 Mudimbe, V.-Y. (1994). The Idea of Africa. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, p. xv. See also
Hountondji, P. (1983). African Philosophy: Myth and Reality. Bloomington. IN: Indiana University Press.
6 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,
Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff. www.culanth.org/fieldsights.
7 Mbembe, A. (2012). Theory from the Antipodes: Notes on Jean & John Comaroffs’ TFS. Cultural Anthropology
Online, 25 February 2012. Available at https://culanth.org/fieldsights/theory-from-the-antipodes-notes-on-
jean-john-comaroffs-tfs
8 Obarrio, J. (2012). Theory from the South. Cultural Anthropology Online, 24 February 2012. Available at
https://culanth.org/fieldsights/series/theory-from-the-south
9 Comaroff, J. & Comaroff, J. (2012). Theory from the South: A Rejoinder. Cultural Anthropology Online, 25
February 2012. Available at https://culanth.org/fieldsights/theory-from-the-south-a-rejoinder
10 Harvey, D. (1989). The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Oxford:
Blackwell.
11 Obarrio, J. (2012). Theory from the South. Cultural Anthropology Online, 24 February 2012. Available at
https://culanth.org/fieldsights/series/theory-from-the-south
12 Comaroff, J. & Comaroff, J. (2012). Theory from the South: A Rejoinder. Cultural Anthropology Online, 25
February 2012. Available at https://culanth.org/fieldsights/theory-from-the-south-a-rejoinder
13 Comaroff, J. & Comaroff, J. (2012). Theory from the South: Or, How Euro-America is Evolving Toward Africa.
London: Paradigm Publishers, p. 7.
14 Quayson, A. (2012). Coevalness, Recursivity and the Feet of Lionel Messi. Cultural Anthropology Online, 25
February 2012. Available at https://culanth.org/fieldsights/coevalness-recursivity-and-the-feet-of-lionel-messi
15 But see Pype, K. & Jedlowski, A. (2018). Anthropological approaches to media in Africa. In R.R. Grinker, E.F.
Gonçalves, C.B. Steiner & S. Lubkemann (eds). Companion to the Anthropology of Africa. London: Wiley, pp.
353–376.
16 For an analysis of these different phenomena, see the essays included in the special issue of the Journal of
African Cultural Studies 7(1), 2017, edited by Alessandro Jedlowski and Ute Röschenthaler.
17 Larkin, B. (1997). Indian films and Nigerian lovers: Media and the creation of parallel modernities.
Africa 67(3): 406–440; Krings, M. (2015). African Appropriations: Cultural Difference, Mimesis, and Media.
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
18 Jedlowski, A. (2018). Post-imperial affinities and neoliberal convergences: Discourses and practices of
collaboration between the Nigerian and the Indian film industries. Media, Culture & Society 40(1): 26.
19 Jedlowski, A. (2017). African media and the corporate takeover: Video film circulation in the age of neoliberal
transformations. African Affairs 116(465): 671–691.
20 On this point see, among others, Bayart, J.-F. (2010). The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly (2nd edition).
Cambridge: Polity.
21 See Haynes, J. (2016). Nollywood: The Creation of Nigerian Film Genres. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press; Garritano, C. (2013). African Video Movies and Global Desires: A Ghanaian History. Athens, OH: Ohio
University Press; Thomas, M.W., Jedlowski, A. & Ashagrie, A. (eds). (2018). Cine-Ethiopia: The History and
Politics of Film in the Horn of Africa. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press.

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22 Jedlowski, A. (2012). Small Screen Cinema: Informality and Remediation in Nollywood. Television & New
Media 13(5): 431–436; Adejunmobi, M. (2015). African Film’s Televisual Turn. Cinema Journal 54(2): 120–125.
23 Sanogo, A. (2015). Introduction to IN FOCUS: Studying African Cinema and Media Today. Cinema Journal
54(2): 114–119, p. 119.
24 Jedlowski, A. (2013). Exporting Nollywood: Nigerian video filmmaking in Europe. In P. Szczepanik & P.
Conderau (eds). Behind the Screen: European Contributions to Production Studies. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, pp. 171–186.
25 Jedlowski, A. (2015). Nigerian migrants, Nollywood videos and the emergence of an ‘anti-humanitarian’
representation of migration in Italian cinema. In E. Bond, G. Bonsaver & F. Faloppa (eds). Destination Italy:
Representing Migration in Contemporary Media and Narrative. Oxford: Peter Lang, pp. 397–414.
26 Comaroff, J. & Comaroff, J. (2012). Theory from the South: Or, How Euro-America is Evolving Toward Africa.
London: Paradigm Publishers, p. 7.

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