Paper short abstract:

Al Jazeera is rarely considered alongside other state-funded broadcasters making in-roads into Africa. Yet its claim to offer a 'voice for the voiceless' from 'the Global South' functions as a form of strategic role-taking for Qatar, which has important implications for sub-Saharan countries.

Paper long abstract:

Recent research and grey literature on state-funded international media in sub-Saharan Africa has tended to focus on the diplomatic purposes underlying the rapid expansion of Chinese state media and/or BBC World Service. Al Jazeera English, which is funded by the Qatari government, rarely comes in for the same kind of scrutiny.

Yet the business press has widely reported on the charm offensive undertaken by the Emir of Qatar in sub-Saharan countries, most notably Reuters newswire, from which the title of this piece was taken. Specifically, the Emir is reported to be seeking new markets and trying to diversify Qatar's economy, following the damaging blockade of the country by its Gulf neighbours. He's undertaken far more African tours than his predecessors, including a 6 country diplomatic trip in late 2018. This complements a longer-term form of national role-taking, in which Qatar has positioned itself as a peacemaker, mediating between Eritrea and Djibouti over a boundary dispute, and facilitating the peace process in Sudan over Darfur, which led to the Doha agreement in 2011.

But how might Qatar's diplomatic activity relate to its funding of the Al Jazeera network? The question has gone unnoticed by most media critics, despite the explicit positioning of Al Jazeera English in particular as a 'voice for the voiceless', reporting the 'Global South' from 'the Global South'. This paper seeks to explore those questions in relation to 3 year global project on humanitarian reporting, which included detailed discussions with journalists at the channel's Nairobi bureau about how state funding shapes their work.