‘Watching us is like watching a cousin’: the online creators reshaping Africa’s news ecosphere

Last year Amahle-Imvelo Jaxa posted a TikTok video about South African peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She explained an argument that had erupted between the South African and Rwandan presidents, then listed roles different South African groups would play in a war with Rwanda: the Sotho strategists, the Xhosa negotiators, the Afrikaner muscle. The video went viral and she racked up 100,000 followers in three days.

This breakout video enabled Jaxa to pivot from being a marketing and restaurant entrepreneur to a “professional yapper and current affairs enthusiast”, part of a group of content creators explaining the news to young South Africans who, like many of their global peers, are eschewing traditional news in favour of social media.

According to the 2025 global Digital News Report by the Reuters Institute, social media users in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria (the three African countries in the survey) were much more likely to report paying attention to news creators than their equivalents in much of northern Europe and Japan.

In Nigeria, 61% of respondents said they paid attention to news creators, just ahead of Kenya (58%), which in turn was far ahead of Indonesia, which was third, at 44%. The figure for South Africa was 39%.

The three African countries were also in the top four of those surveyed for a metric that aimed to assess the impact of news creators on social media users.

Guardian correspondents spoke to news influencers and analysts in the three countries for their views on changing habits.

South Africa

Jaxa, 32, started posting explainer videos after an argument with her brother, who is 10 years younger than her, about him not voting. She realised “the generation coming after me was very disinterested”.

“That was very concerning for me, because they are the next leaders,” she said.

Jaxa considers herself to be a translator of the news for younger generations, not a replacement: “I don’t exist if there is no traditional media, because … all the content I do is from traditional media.”

Recent topics tackled by Jaxa, who has degrees in philosophy, politics and economics and international relations, include the Iran war, the South African president’s annual state of the nation address and the budget, the last one sponsored by a bank. However, she makes most of her money from brand partnerships on Instagram, where she posts less news content.

Amahle-Imvelo Jaxa considers herself to be a translator of the news for younger generations. Photograph: Devyn Heuer

News used to be consumed communally in South Africa through a radio or TV, said Sisanda Nkoala, an associate professor at the University of the Western Cape. “The experience of the media being a place where people gather to watch the evening news, that has changed,” she said.

She expressed concern that the shift to online news was widening South Africa’s digital divide. In the 2022 census, 21% of households reported not having internet access, many in rural areas.

Kenya

Valerie Keter got into news creation by chance in 2023 after watching Shaka iLembe, a South African historical drama series on King Shaka of the Zulu Kingdom. As a history buff who grew up watching international historical programmes, she was amazed by the production quality and accuracy and posted a reaction video on TikTok, describing the show as an example of how to preserve African stories for future generations. It blew up, with curious people asking in the comment section about other kingdoms from pre-colonial Africa.

Keter took that as a challenge and started making videos on African history – including explainers and narrations of buried stories – from different countries across the continent and posting them online.

She is part of a class of independent news creators in Kenya who, through the use of social and video platforms, are reaching audiences who are not engaging in traditional media.

Their success is driven by Kenya’s young population and high levels of social media use. A study released on 4 May by the Media Council of Kenya said most Kenyans rely on social media as their source of news.

Today, Keter’s Instagram and TikTok accounts boast dozens of videos and millions of views. Her most popular video, titled “Why Europe Colonised Africa Easily”, has had 3.7m views on Instagram.

Valerie Keter said: ‘When they watch us, it’s like they’re watching their cousin, their sister’. Photograph: Tapawa/Valerie Keter

The 31-year-old said her main audience is people aged 25 to 34. “When they watch us, it’s like they’re watching their cousin, their sister,” she said. “Also, I’m shooting in my sitting room or my kitchen. It just looks normal, compared to traditional media where everything is so serious.”

Norbert Mburu, the head of culture and media research at Odipo Dev, a Nairobi-based data analytics and research firm that has studied news consumption in Kenya, said social media had democratised participation in the attention economy and news creators were now competing on the same level as legacy media.

“They grew up with mobile phones, they grew up with the internet, they grew up with social media,” he said. “It became very natural that for them.”

News creators are also able to deliver news with more flexibility than established news organisations, Mburu said. “They have to worry a lot less about regulation**,**” he added.

Nigeria

Bello “Dan Bello” Galadanchi became a self-described news addict after a Boko Haram bombing of a UN building in Abuja in 2011. Uncensored images of the dead kept the then final-year engineering student in faraway Pennsylvania awake and drove him to apply to work with Voice of America (VOA) in Washington DC. “I felt like I could also play a role in the media and help it [the bombing] get attention,” he said. “That was how I started. That really changed my life.”

At VOA and later at BBC Hausa, he accumulated thousands of followers that stayed when he left journalism to further his studies in China. Today, the 38-year-old Beijing-based schoolteacher’s videos in Hausa, Nigeria’s most spoken language, and subtitled in English – its official one – blend satirical analysis of current affairs with advocacy directly targeted at government officials.

Nigerians at home and in the diaspora are obsessed with news and politics, and Galadanchi is one of a crop of super-influencers, with more than 2 million followers on TikTok. In northern Nigeria and parts of Niger, he has a near-fanatical following among young people and unemployed housewives of all ages.

Bello Galadanchi is one of a crop of Nigerian super-influencers.

Operating as an informal news network, Galadanchi relies on a staff of two and a team of volunteers that includes professors and other acquaintances from within and outside Nigeria. They source and verify information before he takes it to the public. The team’s exposés have secured the release of people detained indiscriminately, payment of salary backlogs to government employees, and renovation of dilapidated schools.

Galadanchi dismisses accusations of being sponsored by the opposition to talk about ruling party officials and of being used by the northern establishment against southern politicians. “When you look at the work that we’ve been doing, you cannot find any evidence of that,” he said.

The shift to editorialising platforms or those that fuse social commentary with advocacy and comedy is due to a change in consumption habits, said David Adeleke, the chief executive of the Lagos-based media and intelligence firm Communiqué. “Not many people sit in front of TV or radio in urban areas … they have become more familiar and trusting of newer methods of storytelling,” he said.

The viral #EndSars anti-police brutality protests of October 2020 was also a turning point. The mainstream media was seen as cautious in their coverage, perhaps because broadcast regulators have been “significantly more heavy-handed on the media with the last two administrations”, Adeleke said. “These new media platforms were the ones who sort of ‘spoke up’ for the young people … because a lot of people across the country felt alone or almost powerless.”