African startups and the tech media must find a way to coexist. In a fiery panel discussion at Moonshot by TechCabal on Wednesday in Lagos, founders and media specialists presented conflicting reasons why the relationship has been frosty.
The African tech ecosystem has grown in the past decade, so has the media that covers them. Homegrown publications like TechCabal have expanded, covering the industry with authority, integrity, and accuracy.
While TechCabal’s journalism has won applause in the ecosystem, some of its work has put it on a collision course with a section of stakeholders. Oo Nwoye, founder and director at TechCircle, said that media publications have failed to differentiate between bad actors and the rest of the ecosystem.
“If one bad apple commits fraud, they write it like all founders are fraudsters,” Nwoye said. Over the past year, stories covering startups like Dash, Brass, Ponatshego and Hohm Energy have rocked the ecosystem, exposing the behind-the-scenes of tech startups’ operations and failures.
TechCabal’s editor-in-chief Olumuyiwa Olowogboyega said that completeness and fairness of coverage are what the media aims for. “If we are going to call anyone’s reputation into question, we make sure that we have our facts straight,” he said.
Olowogboyega said founders have to understand that accurate media coverage contributes to that ecosystem growth, and there has to be a way to work with founders around the issue. In their reporting, journalists usually reach out to founders for the “right of response” to get their side of the story.
In a perfect work, founders can use the right of reply opportunity to chronicle their version of events, but according to Jessica Hope, founder of PR firm Wimbart, most founders do not take advantage of this opportunity.
“If you do not make your version of events clear, you create an information vacuum which can be filled by assumptions from readers,” Hope said.
As Africa’s tech ecosystem continues to grow, the stories which are covered by the media have to be of substance. This will require tech journalists to ask hard questions and for founders to provide insights into the challenges and opportunities of building in Africa.
