This article draws from my conversation with Ivana Heijnen in Episode 7 of the Voices and Visions podcast, which explores the people and ideas shaping Africa’s innovation economy.
Across much of Africa, companies are becoming larger, richer, and more influential. The newsrooms expected to scrutinise them are moving in the opposite direction.
I found myself returning to this contradiction during the seventh episode of Voices and Visions, a podcast hosted by Ivana Heijnen about the people shaping Africa’s tech and business ecosystems.
I have always believed that journalism begins with caring about people, systems, and whether they work as they should. A reporter’s responsibility is not merely to describe events. It is to examine who is exploiting whom, which institutions are failing, and who benefits when they do.
“There’s that surveillance role of a journalist,” I told Heijnen. “You scrutinise who is stealing from whom, what is going on well, what is not working as it is supposed to, and give people solutions to some of these things.”
