“Your business strategy has to be based on quality” – Our Digital News Report Africa launch panel on surviving new challenges

How can African news organisations sustain trusted, public‑interest journalism when audiences, attention and revenue are shifting to platforms, creators, and AI chatbots and summaries?  This was the question at the heart of the Africa launch of the Digital News Report, which we hosted earlier this week in partnership with our partners at Code for Africa. 

Moderated by our Director of Leadership Development Federica Cherubini, the panel featured David Adeleke, founder and CEO of Communiqué; Queenter Mbori, Executive Director of the Association of Media Women in Kenya; and Adriaan Basson, Editor-in-chief of News24. Here are a few takeaways of the event. 

Watch the launch 

1. The audience is shifting towards platforms and creators 

This year’s report suggest news audiences have passed a tipping point globally: for the first time, more people are getting their news from platforms than from traditional news publishers. This is not a new reality for African audiences, who shifted towards platforms and news creators many years ago. 

Our panelists spoke about this shift but warned against conflating the role of creators and journalists in the public sphere. While some creators are journalists that have turned independent, others are just “aggregators,” said Adeleke.

“They are either aggregators or commentators,” he said. “When they are talking about something that has already happened, the source that they are building their commentary on is a traditional news platform. That is mostly what we are seeing across the continent.”

Similarly, Mbori noted that many creators use legacy media content as raw material, which raises questions about regulation and compensation. “These creators are not just moving away with our audiences, they're also moving away with our revenue,” said Mbori. 

2. New models, formats, and alliances 

With these new challenges, the panellists stressed the importance of maintaining direct relationships with audiences while also experimenting with new avenues of reach. Publishers are now seeing new video formats as an essential component of the news ecosystem. But Basson, who leads one of the most prominent newsrooms in South Africa, thinks these new formats must be a supplement rather than an overhaul. 

“You can’t define your business strategy in terms of formats,” he said. “You have to be agile and change your formats, but your business strategy as a newsroom has to be based on quality journalism and original reporting.”

Our speakers discussed how AI is impacting journalism and news consumption across the continent. Basson connected it with the loss of traffic many news publishers are suffering, and said it further prevents audiences from engaging directly with news organisations. 

Around 10% of our respondents globally use AI chatbots for news. Figures are even higher for younger audiences and those most interested in news. 

In light of these figures, Adeleke argued that news organisations must either build self‑sustaining ecosystems or risk repeating the failed platform-dependency of the 2010s. “As an industry, we have to come together to ask hard questions,” he said, “to work together, to talk to each other, to learn lessons from one another.”

3. Original reporting are our non‑negotiable core

Panellists insisted on the importance of producing original reporting and fostering trust within audiences. 

Our report suggests trust in news is still relatively high among the young, urban audiences we survey in African markets. Mbori sees this as a strategic advantage to build on, but not as something journalists should take for granted. She explained that, despite the rise of creators and platforms, audiences fall back on legacy outlets for verification and accountability, which underpins trust.

“There's a lot of mistrust in government and public institutions, and therefore mainstream legacy media tend to be [audiences’] fallback plan when it comes to just checking and verifying misleading content,” Mbori said. “At the same time, audiences rely on legacy media to hold the government accountable on critical and public interest issues.”

Panellists framed trust and quality journalism as the factors that will future-proof the news industry, arguing that factual and impartial reporting is what distinguishes newsrooms from these new emerging formats. 

“We have to double down on [trust and quality journalism] even more,” said Basson. “For me, that is the factor that distinguishes us from content creators, AI models and social media platforms.”