Who’s praying for Africa?

By Kwesi Wilson

Today we Africans are praying for Belgium. The other day we swapped our social media profile photos with the French flag and cried, “Je suis Paris!” But who is praying for Africa?

A few days before the Paris attack in November last year, Boko Haram terrorists viciously attacked Nigerians. It was one of the boldest attacks yet. The news barely made the crawl on most major U.S. news outlets. It didn’t garner major coverage in African outlets, either. I didn’t see any mass action by Africans online. Most Africans seemingly shrugged their shoulders and moved on with their lives.

Then came the Paris attacks. Africans all over vociferously expressed their disdain for the terrorists, and sympathy for victims in the French capital.

So what accounts for the different responses to these two attacks? Before answering that question, let’s take a look at another case.

This week, terrorists attacked innocent people in both Belgium and Niger. Before that there were other other attacks in Ivory Coast, and Burkina Faso. And again, Africans kept mum about terrorism in their backyard. But now they’re screaming at the top of their lungs about Belgium.

So now let me answer the question I submitted earlier. It turns out CNN and other major U.S. outlets have no coverage hours to spare for attacks in Africa. But they gave wall-to-wall coverage of the France attack, and are doing the same now for Belgium.

So could this be the causal factor for the difference in response? Or is it just happenstance?

According to the Agenda Setting Theory by Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw, “the media cannot tell us what to think but they can tell us what to think about.” By giving heavy coverage to the Belgium and France attacks, the media sets the agenda for what we should think about. And conversely, what not to think about. Because Africans are heavy consumers of western media — both online and in television programming — we are not excepted from this theory.

But who does this formula benefit? Certainly not Africans. It only averts our attention from our local problems. And so our problems fester on as we marshal our efforts and resources to help others overcome theirs. And no one — absolutely nobody — is praying for Mama Africa. Not even her children.