‘Watching us is like watching a cousin’: the online creators reshaping Africa’s news ecosphere

L ast year Amahle-Imvelo Jaxa posted a TikTok video about South African peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She explained an argument that had erupted between the South African and Rwandan presidents, then listed roles different South African groups would play in a war with Rwanda: the Sotho strategists, the Xhosa negotiators, the Afrikaner muscle. The video went viral and she racked up 100,000 followers in three days. This breakout video enabled Jaxa to pivot from being a marketing and restaurant entrepreneur to a “professional yapper and current affairs enthusiast”, part of a group of content creators explaining the news to young South Africans who, like many of their global peers, are eschewing traditional news in favour of social media. According to the 2025 global Digital News Report by the Reuters Institute, social media users in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria (the three African countries in the survey) were much more likely to report paying attention to news creators than their equivalents in much of northern Europe and Japan. In Nigeria, 61% of respondents said they paid attention to news creators, just ahead of Kenya (58%), which in turn was far ahead of Indonesia, which was third, at 44%. The figure for South Africa was 39%. The three African countries were also in the top four of those surveyed for a metric that aimed to assess the impact of news creators on social media users. …