A Zimbabwe-born journalist wants the Japanese media to broaden its perspective and interest in African issues and be more balanced in its coverage. To help achieve this goal, he's calling for the establishment of an African news agency in Tokyo.
"Africans themselves have come up with an idea to establish a news office in Tokyo to raise the newsworthy level of Africa" in local coverage in an effort to dispel entrenched misconceptions, Roderick Ngoro said last week at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan.
Ngoro, a media-studies graduate student at Rhodes University in South Africa, said such an office could have a big impact, given the Japanese media's reliance on Western sources for African news, its limited knowledge of Africa and its focus on other pressing international issues.