Africa No Filter (ANF) launched Bird, which is Africa’s first, optimized-for-mobile, story agency designed to shift narratives, away from harmful stereotypes about and within the continent. According to Moky Makura, executive director of ANF, Bird is a digital story agency dedicated to covering humans- not just issues- and telling stories that celebrate Africa’s creativity and innovation through its arts, culture, people and places.

Africa No Filter is a not-for-profit organization amplifying African stories and supporting African creatives by providing a platform to share their stories to the world, in essence shifting stereotypical and harmful narratives. Africa No Filter funds the creation of content through a network of contributors, which the team at Bird edits and fact-checks, before delivering to its digital platform for its clients.
The launch of Bird, according to ANF, follows a ground-breaking report titled “How African Media Covers Africa” that found a third of all African stories in news outlets on the continent are sourced from foreign news services, many negative and conflict-filled. The research surveyed 38 African editors and analysed content from 60 African news outlets in 15 countries between September and October 2020, with the bulk of the analyzed stories (81 per cent) classified as hard news, largely political in nature while 13 per cent of the news focused specifically on political violence, civil unrest, armed conflict.
The idea does seem interesting to me. If you agree with me, you can contact Nasya Smith at nasya@africanofilter.org for media enquiries and Tom Kirkwood at tom@africanofilter.org for media partnerships.