Capital New York spoke with Yinka Adegoke, editor of Quartz Africa, about its launch and about how American media cover African business.
Here is an excerpt:
CAPITAL: How will Quartz’s coverage of Africa differ from your competitors, both globally and locally?
ADEGOKE: We’re bringing the Quartz unique style and approach to the continent’s news with a key focus on innovation in all its iterations. So, innovation in technology will be a lot of that, but also innovative thinking and solutions to many of the challenges many African countries face. We’ll also look at how success presents its own difficulties and opportunities. Therein will lie many of the best stories that will appeal to readers locally and globally who are looking for interesting stories to which they can find common ground. Traditionally, the coverage of business and economics news from Africa has focused on energy, commodities and national debt stories. Those will always be important but is not a space Quartz has typically covered.
CAPITAL: Do you think Africa is sufficiently, and accurately, covered by the U.S. media?
ADEGOKE: I think there has been some great coverage from the U.S. media on certain stories that local press in many African countries would struggle to cover, especially when it comes to reporting on their own governments. But on the other hand, there’s been a tendency to persist with an Africa-is-a-country philosophy which we can all be guilty of from time to time. If you only ever show up when there’s a coup, a war, a communicable disease and hardly ever tell stories about some of the other mainstream challenges and opportunities that people in individual countries face, then your coverage ends up being one-dimensional and without nuance.
Read more here.
