Abstract Summary/Description
The COVID-19 pandemic which began in Wuhan, China in December 2019 rapidly spread across the globe, leaving in its wake public health and economic crisis. In Africa, the least developed continent in the world, the effects of the pandemic were just as devasting. Africa had previously had experiences dealing with endemics, and so the foreign press was keenly interested in how it fared in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous studies about the media reportage on Africa in public health crisis have been approached from the point of view of how such crisis were framed. Very few studies have specifically targeted Western media coverage of Africa’s COVID-19 situation, and those few have taken the representation or framing approach as well. This study specifically examines what major issues were common amongst Western media’s reportage of Africa’s COVID-19 situation, and not necessarily how they were framed, taking into consideration what is reflected in some African media as well. A thematic analysis of 22 news articles across 4 Western news outlets, and 13 articles from 2 African media outlets (for comparative purposes) using Grounded Theoretical approaches, resulted in two broad themes- Situation gravity and Contributing factors, which reviews the African COVID-19 outlook. The results and implications for theoretical studies are discussed.
