J. Siguru Wahutu. In the Shadow of the Global North: Journalism in Postcolonial Africa. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2024. 230 pp. $30.98. Hardback. ISBN: 9781009431965.

Reading In the Shadow of the Global North: Journalism in Postcolonial Africa by J. Siguru Wahutu took me back to my journalism classes at the University of the Witwatersrand.To help us understand the colonial legacy in African journalism, the module Media & Society, fostered a critical engagement with the questions: do we have African journalism or African journalism ethics?These questions remain pertinent today, and is the reason I find Wahutu's book a timely contribution to African journalism studies.African journalism has gone through phases, from precolonial, colonial, to postcolonial.Thus, what we call African journalism today barely represents one, but all of these periods.I kept this in mind as I read In the Shadow to understand, as the book argues, how African journalists and news organizations have become complicit in silencing African voices, an emblem of Global North journalism.The book analyzes the coverage of the Darfur conflict by journalists from different African countries.It concludes that: (i) News organizations in Africa are critical players in the silencing of African voices; (ii) African journalists are themselves part of the marginalization of African voices; (iii) Narratives employed by African journalists do not differ that significantly from those employed by journalists from the Global North; and (iv) African journalists use ethnic conflict frames with relative frequency when narrating a conflict.The significance of the book is its attempt to understand why African journalists frame and present their continent in the same way as the Global North journalists and news organizations.The postulation that underpins this discussion is that journalism practiced in Africa is rooted in the Global North journalism culture and practice.This journalism is characterized by the marginalization of African voices.The argument is that a different kind of journalismor simply put, African journalism-could provide something different, particularly in how African issues are framed and presented.This logic recognizes "sovereignty" and "African journalistic traditions," as pillars for distinguishing African from Global North journalism.In South Africa, the collapse of the apartheid regime in 1994 exposed the country's press to serious scrutiny, which included searching for its sovereignty and journalistic traditions.The emphasis was on increasing the representation of black journalists in the newsrooms as a way of dealing with the marginalization of native's voices.This campaign also meant changes in media ownership, content, audiences, and the role of the media in the country.