MEDIA AND PROPAGANDA IN AFRICA: Cracks, Crevices, and Continuities

This chapter delves into the complex relationship between media and propaganda in Africa. Drawing on case studies from select African countries, Mare traces the development of the media as a civilizing and evangelizing force and shows how propaganda was implicated in processes of modernization and colonization. Foregrounding what he calls the cracks, crevices, and continuities associated with the deployment of propaganda in pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial Africa, he argues that some post-colonial African governments have appropriated state-owned media for propaganda purposes in ways that reproduce and reincarnate colonial logics. The chapter highlights how the human being has been implicated as a social infrastructure in propagandistic logics and ultimately argues that the increasing platformization, datafication, and digitization of African societies have contributed to the sustenance of new modes of propaganda production, distribution, consumption, and measurement.