The difficulty of resurrecting Ethiopia’s image

(MoFA 02/27/09):-Hearing the western media telling it, Africa’s history is simply a record of uninterrupted crises of astronomical proportions punctuated by bloody coups and fratricidal conflicts. Reporting on Africa has almost always been sweepingly negative and has nearly succeeded in situating the continent on a truly Hobbesian setting, all the while glossing over the complex and diverse social, political and economic realities obtaining in the continent. Catchy titles, age old stereotypes, simplistic generalizations: these are constant variables in just about every report about Africa by Western journalists. In the past, the reality on the ground may have been generally one of broken dreams and undelivered promises; however, there has always been, and there is still today, more to Africa than just machete-brandishing hooligans and refugees leaving their villages en masse, in single file. But these are the most enduring images that have accompanied just about every report on Africa. The trend has remained largely the same despite the indications that Africa, as a continent, has finally turned a corner in its endeavors to disentangle itself from the age old problems that characterized its entire existence. For all the progress, improving Africa’s image has been a tricky business. Progress or no progress, Africa, as far as the media goes, is the Dark Continent which is always engulfed in an interminable chaos. Ethiopia is not an exception, whatever the nuances.

Throughout the better part of its modern history, Ethiopia has been characterized by most of the western world, and western media and scholarship in particular, as a poster child of unparalleled misery and hopelessness. What with the catastrophic consequences of civil strife and successive droughts and famine that destroyed millions of people, Ethiopia has for decades on end epitomized the Western World’s text book example of what goes abysmally wrong in economics or politics. Mainly as a result of the disastrous consequences of ill-advised policies of successive regimes, the country had for a long time wallowed in the quagmire of poverty that has taken its toll on its image. In what can be considered the beginning of its renaissance, however, Ethiopia has since recently begun to make significant progress in its endeavor to extricate its peoples out of abject poverty. Indeed, following the promulgation of the current Federal Constitution, the government has introduced much progressive legislation that has paved the way for the formulation and strict implementation of pro-growth development policies that have not only succeeded in putting Ethiopia in the right direction, but have already started to pay off in terms of real dividends to its peoples. 

With an average growth rate of 10 per cent per annum, Ethiopia’s economy is set to continue growing in the years to come. Both the World Bank and the IMF, among others, have expressed their optimism regarding the prospects for Ethiopia’s economy. All told, there is every reason to believe that the country is on the right track to ensuring sustainable development and is indeed poised to make good on its promise to reach the Millennium Development Goals of halving poverty by the year 2015. This is no ordinary achievement given the decades—if not centuries—of bad governance and catastrophic policies rendered even worse by the hunger and suffering visited upon its peoples as a result of cyclical natural calamities.  

As a quick perusal of news coverage on Ethiopia would suggest, however, Ethiopia’s success stories, even if modest, receive little or no mention by the Western media. Ironically, the same media outlets fall over each other to highlight developments in Ethiopia that concentrate on the grim aspects. Quarter-century old footage of emaciated children and dying mothers are flashed on TV screens at the slightest mention of crop failure in some remote part of the country. In what has now become a pattern, most Western media outlets will take any grim story about Ethiopia for a hard and fast axiom, without so much as a second thought, while positive developments, no matter how significant, are either left unmentioned, or when they are, merely given space as a footnote. As far as reporting about today’s Ethiopia goes, the country’s past is pretty much alive, and all too often, unfairly so. It is as if in the unwritten rules that govern the life cycle of the media’s memory, the negative in the past is far more durable than the positive today.  

Official statistics by the likes of the World Bank and the IMF, the doyens among international financial institutions with the last word in economic science, may indicate that Ethiopia has made progress here or there. But very often, such a statement doesn’t make it into the news. More interestingly, when it does, whichever media outlet carries it will make sure there’s enough spin on the story to render it unreliable. If the Economist Intelligence Unit comes up with a forecast that Ethiopia is one few fast growing economies in Africa, then one can be sure the Economist magazine will invariably have a totally different, often diametrically opposed,  story to tell. This is indeed a trend that has played havoc with the difficult task of improving one’s image. Of course, Ethiopia is better placed to recognize this trend for what it is than most other countries as it has so often found itself at the receiving end of such lopsided representation and for far too long. Cases of such nature are legion; indeed, an attempt at an exhaustive list would only be an exercise in futility. But the pattern is unmistakable: a story that paints the situation in Ethiopia, economic or political, in a positive light hardly gets significant coverage: such a story does not fit well into the grand narrative of Western media discourse. When there is coverage at all, it is often paltry and whatever worth it may have can easily be cancelled out by another sad story coming on its heel. A recent such incident can help illustrate this point more clearly. 

On 17^th of February this year two news items focusing on Ethiopia drew the attention of two major international media outlets, namely Reuters and AFP. The Reuters story, which was based on the survey published by Business Consultancy African Rainbow, disclosed that Ethiopia, in a new index of African potential investor destinations, ranked second after Nigeria. This was indeed good news for a country that feverishly wants to improve its image so it can attract desperately needed foreign investment. AFP for its part reported that 12 million (15%) of the Ethiopian population were in need of emergency food aid. The actual figure of emergency relief-seeking beneficiaries, according to the document released by the Government of Ethiopia and its Humanitarian Partners, was 4.9 million. AFP’s story was based on a press statement issued in Geneva by a spokesperson of the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian affairs (UNOCHA). The figure was, in fact, very seriously exaggerated and it was corrected in a subsequent press statement from UNOCHA’s New York Office three days later, to put the record straight. While appreciating the UNOCHA’s correction, it was nonetheless too little too late. The harm to the slowly recuperating image of the country was already done. That said, we cannot fail to see the cruel irony of it all:  good news that could perhaps have counted for just a step in Ethiopia’s uphill struggle to improve its image was quickly drowned out by heedless reporting that readily clogged the airwaves of the major media outlets.  

There is no way of knowing where the exaggerated figures came from. Obviously, the spokesperson in Geneva never cleared her words with her bosses in New York. But no attempt was made by AFP to hear Ethiopia’s official version about the story they ran either. Apparently, AFP thought the better of it because, when it comes to Ethiopia, the figure was perhaps somehow believable. AFP is not alone. Even Ben of EthiopiaFirst.Com, a website empathetic to the cause of the Ethiopian Government, quickly swallowed AFP’s story and expressed somewhat off the wall criticisms against the government. Negative stories such as this one are very insidious indeed. 

The success or otherwise of a nation to achieve a modicum of progress, and to attract highly needed Foreign Direct Investment, largely depends on the extent to which it has managed to build a better image that the rest of the world will feel comfortable with. In the desperate effort to attract investment, image is everything. The coverage by the media of issues such as conflicts, stability, and poverty has a tremendous impact on the flow of investment or on other areas vital to ensuring economic growth such as tourism. In today’s world, the international media wields a near monopoly of the means to manufacture realities even where they don’t exist. Even more troubling is the fact that the media’s characterization of Ethiopia has a basis of self-fulfilling prophesy written all over it. Indeed, journalistic misrepresentation and misreporting on Ethiopia has often found its way all too easily into decision-making equations of donors and investors. It makes life all the more difficult for Ethiopia. 

The question that needs to be asked is this: why is the international media so extremely casual about its facts when it comes to reporting about countries such as Ethiopia? Why is the focus so consistently on the negative over the positive? Is this about benign indifference or something more malignant? We raise this issue not because we expect these media outlets to give up their time-honored traditions of sensationalism overnight. Ethiopia has never been a chronic believer in the fairness of the world. Nor do we want this discussion just to descend into unproductive hand-wringing and blanket condemnation of the media. But we should be remiss not to point to one area in which the international media can work on without having to take too much effort: to do a little bit of research, difficult as that may be. Empathy we don’t expect, but objectivity, and journalism that we might count on even if it does call for some unwonted effort.