By Senior Editor, China Africa News
Johannesburg&Beijing– At the heart of Johannesburg this week, the Global South Media and Think Tank Forum ChinaAfrica Partnership Conference convened under the banner “Reforming Global Governance: New Roles and Visions for China-Africa Cooperation.”
More than 200 participants representing over 160 media outlets, think-tanks, government bodies from China and 41 African countries plus the African Union assembled to chart new pathways for the Global South in global governance.
In parallel, earlier in the week, the China Media Group (CMG) hosted its “Global Governance, Youth Action” media forum, bringing youth voices to the fore. CMG President Shen Haixiong spoke of Chinese and African youth as “active participants and significant shapers” of global governance, underscoring CMG’s mission to build media platforms that amplify their stories.
Ambassador Wu Peng and other speakers emphasized the longstanding China-Africa cooperation, calling for a “skills revolution” to equip young people for digital economy, green energy and media-driven change.
In many ways, these twin gatherings one addressing broad structural reform of global governance, the other focusing on youth-driven media and innovation signal a shifting moment in how media across China and Africa envision their role.
Historically, media in both regions have often been beneficiaries or commentators of foreign-led narratives; now, there is a conscious push to take ownership of the narrative, reframe partnerships, and build institutional bridges.
The Johannesburg forum made this explicit: the media and think-tank community were tasked not just with covering China-Africa cooperation, but with shaping how that cooperation is understood, communicated and institutionalized.
As the African Union’s Leslie Richer put it, “shared knowledge and honest dialogue are vital to strengthening solidarity across the Global South.” This is a departure from seeing media as passive conveyors of information: it recognizes them as active agents in governance reform, in the telling of development stories, and in the crafting of global narratives.
On the CMG side, the youth-media forum underscores the idea that younger generations are not only beneficiaries of development aid, infrastructure or policy frameworks they are partners.
The emphasis on innovation, digital economy, entrepreneurship and cross-border cultural exchanges places media as the enabling infrastructure: storytelling, platforms, networks. A media-forum of this nature signals that the China-Africa partnership sees media not as appendices but as core to how participatory development is imagined.
Media cooperation between China and Africa carries strategic weight: by building their own networks and telling their own stories, African and Chinese media can push back against outsider-driven narratives.
Rather than being silent subjects of global coverage, they can assert narrative sovereignty shaping how development, governance, and partnership are understood. This is especially important in the Global South context, where historical misrepresentation has often meant that local voices are marginalized, and media becomes a vehicle to reclaim that agency.
