This article is based on a 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 growing larger, wealthier, and more influential. The newsrooms expected to hold them accountable are heading in the opposite direction.

This contradiction was a central theme in the seventh episode of Voices and Visions, a podcast hosted by Ivana Heijnen that focuses on the people shaping Africa's tech and business ecosystems.

Journalism, at its core, begins with concern for people, systems, and whether those systems function as intended. A reporter's responsibility extends beyond merely describing events — it involves examining who exploits whom, which institutions are failing, and who benefits from those failures.

"There's that surveillance role of a journalist," the author 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."

That role is becoming increasingly difficult to fulfill.

African newsrooms are operating under severe financial pressure. Advertising revenue has migrated to global tech platforms such as Facebook, Google, and X — a pattern mirrored worldwide, but one that hits African publications particularly hard given thinner margins and smaller subscriber bases to offset the loss. Print circulation has declined, while audiences increasingly expect news to be available for free. Media organisations have responded with hiring freezes, staff layoffs, and shrinking editorial budgets.

Reporters are now expected to produce more stories across more platforms with fewer resources.

Investigative journalism is especially vulnerable. It is expensive, slow, and legally risky. A reporter may invest weeks in a story that generates no immediate revenue and may never be published. By contrast, a sponsored event or corporate announcement can produce income and be repurposed into multiple pieces of multimedia content within hours.

While this is often framed as a media business problem, it also represents a significant accountability crisis.

"Media has a huge role," the author said during the conversation. "Surveillance. We need to scrutinise everything that is in the public. We need to hold everyone to account, and that is telling the story as it is."

Watchdog journalism, however, cannot survive on principle alone. It requires reporters, editors, lawyers, travel budgets, data, and institutions willing to withstand commercial and political pressure. As those resources disappear, the people and companies most in need of scrutiny gain greater latitude to shape narratives about themselves.

Powerful Companies, Weaker Newsrooms

Large companies possess resources that most African publications currently lack. They retain communications advisers, lawyers, lobbyists, and public relations agencies. They cultivate relationships with editors, sponsor industry events, and purchase advertising across multiple platforms.

None of these activities is inherently improper — companies have a legitimate interest in explaining their work. The difficulty emerges when their capacity to shape public narratives exceeds the media's capacity to interrogate them.

Some of the companies that journalists cover are also among the largest sources of advertising revenue. Their executives may maintain close relationships with media owners. In certain countries, individuals who hold political or commercial power also directly own the outlets expected to scrutinise them.

"Some of these people who have this power also own the media outlets," the author told Heijnen. "They just want reporters to rejig whatever they want to churn out."

A financially secure newsroom can resist some of this pressure. A struggling one must weigh what it can afford to lose.

This imbalance carries broader consequences because large corporations are not passive participants in weak systems. They wield considerable power to influence regulation. A major bank, telecommunications operator, or multinational can lobby policymakers, hire influential advisers, and access decision-makers in ways unavailable to ordinary citizens.

"If they want a regulation or a policy to be changed, they can lobby, they can push for it," the author said. "But they choose not to because they also benefit from that flawed system. And who loses in all this? The ordinary person."

Without independent reporting, the public sees only a partial picture of these relationships. Companies speak enthusiastically about innovation, inclusion, and job creation. Far less is said about market dominance, labour practices, political connections, or the regulations they helped shape.

Press Releases Become the Story

These dynamics are especially pronounced in Africa's tech ecosystem. Startup coverage is heavily shaped by fundraising announcements, founder profiles, and carefully crafted impact claims. This matters acutely because African tech ventures attracted billions of dollars in funding between 2019 and 2022, with annual investment levels reaching unprecedented highs before contracting in 2023. The volume of capital flowing into the sector has intensified media attention — and with it, the volume of press releases, founder profiles, and impact narratives competing for coverage.

The companies drawing the most attention are frequently those with the most sophisticated communications operations, not necessarily the strongest underlying businesses.

"Capital follows narrative," the author told Heijnen.

Before capital becomes rational, it can chase emotion and attention. A compelling founder story attracts coverage. Coverage generates visibility. Visibility signals momentum. That momentum draws investors, partnerships, and still more coverage.

Many well-funded startups understand this cycle. They engage effective PR firms and cultivate relationships with journalists and editors across the continent. They appear repeatedly in the media, becoming familiar names to investors and policymakers.

"Whether their business models are good, or they are solving a problem that is there, is neither here nor there," the author said. "They've mastered what can capture attention."

Journalists are meant to interrupt that cycle with probing questions: How many jobs did the company create? How much revenue does it generate? Are its customers better off? Did its product reduce costs? What happened to the millions raised three years ago? Are its claims independently verifiable?

Yet answering these questions demands time and expertise. It is far easier to republish an announcement that a startup has raised $5 million than to spend months investigating what transpired after its previous funding round.

"Fundraising should no longer be news," the author said. "A good idea should attract investment. The story should be the impact."

The amount raised is not without significance — funding can signal where investors see opportunity and which sectors are drawing capital. But capital entering a company should represent the beginning of scrutiny, not the conclusion of the story.

If journalism stops at the announcement stage, the media effectively becomes part of a startup's fundraising infrastructure.

Funding Accountability

The solution is not to pretend journalism can function without funding. Reporters need compensation. Publications require sustainable revenue. Events, sponsorships, subscriptions, and advertising can all support valuable reporting.

The danger materialises when the organisation under scrutiny becomes indispensable to the survival of the organisation conducting that scrutiny.

Such dependency can alter editorial priorities even without direct interference. Publications produce more of the content advertisers favour. Reporters devote more time to corporate events and less to workers, customers, and whistleblowers. Success is measured by output, traffic, and commercial partnerships rather than the public significance of the reporting.

Meanwhile, communities affected by corporate decisions typically lack professional communications teams. A customer disputing a bank's actions, a worker dismissed by a company, or a small business pressured by a dominant platform cannot convene a press briefing at will.

Journalism is intended to correct that imbalance — to provide people without institutional power a means of confronting those who wield it. But fulfilling that mission requires media institutions robust enough to absorb the consequences.

During the conversation with Heijnen, the author acknowledged that newsrooms are undergoing profound transformation and that legacy business models are no longer as profitable as they once were. Those constraints shape which stories can be pursued. Nevertheless, financial difficulty does not erase journalism's fundamental purpose.

"We need to think of it in the long term," the author said. "How do we keep up with storytelling and holding people to account?"

There is no straightforward answer. African media will need more readers willing to pay for journalism, more diversified revenue models, and stronger legal and institutional protections for reporters. Newsrooms must also establish clearer boundaries between commercial partnerships and editorial decisions.

Journalists, for their part, must resist becoming distribution channels for corporate narratives. They must scrutinise fundraising claims, question impact figures, and revisit companies after headlines have faded.

The survival of African journalism is not solely about preserving reporters' jobs or maintaining familiar media brands. It concerns sustaining one of the few institutions capable of confronting unchecked political and corporate power.