The Deadliest War in the 21st Century Took Place in Africa, But Didn’t Make Headlines
Exploring the relationship between African conflicts and global media coverage through the lens of the Tigray War in Ethiopia.
An unimaginable number of people died in a war that involved more countries than almost any other conflict since the Second World War. Yet for much of the outside world, it remained a distant crisis, rarely occupying the front pages of major Western newspapers. This has remained a pattern for many African countries ravaged with conflict. But why then, does a conflict of immense human suffering lack the media representation it deserves? It is very likely that you haven’t heard of the conflict that is being referenced in the title. Moreover, if you’re active on social media platforms like Tik Tok or Instagram you’ve maybe heard of the conflicts taking place in Sudan, South Sudan, or the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While these are all situations that too do not garner the media coverage they deserve, still none of them are the conflict I’m referencing.
The Scale of the Tigray War
The Tigray War in Ethiopia spanning from 2020 to 2022 is widely cited as the deadliest conflict of the 21st century with an estimated death toll of 600, 000 to 800, 000 deaths. The conflict in 2020 began when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali declared war on the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), however tensions in the Tigray region began far before that. The Tigray Region is the northernmost regional state in Ethiopia. The Tigray Region is the homeland of the Tigrayan, Irob and Kunama people. In 1975 the TPLF began a rebellion against the military government at the time, which was known as the Derg or the Provisional Military Administrative Council. The conflict gave way to a dire drought and famine between 1984 and 1985, which the government tried to alleviate the suffering by forcibly relocating hundreds of thousands of people to well-watered regions in the south and west of the country (international outrage led to the suspension of that program). In short, this first rebellion by the TPLF ended with the liberation of the region in 1989 and supported the overthrowing of the Ethiopian national government in 1991. In addition to the rebellion, Tigray is a region contested by both Ethiopia and neighboring Eritrea with both powers claiming territory in the region. This tension between Ethiopia and Eritrea persists to the present day and is what fueled the Tigray War. Now, for the current conflict of discussion, the Ethiopian government has time and time again tried to shield the international public from the true mortality rate, with Jan Nyssen, professor emeritus of geography at the University of Ghent, citing hunger being used as a weapon of war. During the conflict, the number of deaths per day was a staggering 600 people. As I was writing this article for it to be published, Eritrean soldiers had crossed into Northern Ethiopia heading towards an area where clashes had been taking place between the national army and regional forces. Both blame one another for violating the 2022 deal that ended the war initially. There have been reports of the advancement of Eritrean troops into the Tigray region with the Ethiopian government responding with targeted drone strikes (there are no verified reports regarding the number of casualties). If Ethiopia and Eritrea are to start fighting again, the sheer scale of the conflict is projected to be significantly worse, pulling in more international actors than previously which leaves the potential for this new conflict to become an all out proxy war.
Disparities in Media Coverage
Given not only the shocking numbers of the Tigray War and the fact that fighting is starting back up only 4 years later, one would assume that the media would have been all over a conflict of such magnitude; that it would spark international outrage and calls to action, and yet, news of the 2020-2022 conflict barely spread and news of its restarting requires a BBC subscription to learn more about it. Sadly, this has been the norm for African conflicts for quite some time. Media coverage of conflicts often reflect an area’s geopolitical relevance rather than humanitarian urgency. The divide between media coverage is most extreme when comparing major powers to countries that are less geopolitically influential. News outlets cater to what they believe their readers and viewers care about most, prioritizing regions that share cultural, historical, or racial ties with their primary domestic audience. For example, Tagesschau news (a German news outlet) reported on the war in Ukraine for around 86,115 seconds in 2022 alone and only 940 seconds for the Tigray War in the three years from 2020 to 2022. In addition to these statistics, some conflicts are too “complicated”, with no clear good guy and bad guy. For example, Russia as the bad guy and Ukraine as the good guy– and this is not to say that those labels are not fitting but African conflicts involve a complicated web of actors including state and non-state actors with both sides having committed atrocities. Furthermore many conflicts have deep tensions dating back to pre-independence in some cases, consequently in order to understand the conflict as it stands today, an understanding of the history that came before it is crucial. Most people today wouldn’t make the time to understand and keep up with a conflict that couldn’t be summarized in short form content.
The global narrative of Africa has always been poverty, disease, and political instability, so what’s another conflict in Africa? This global narrative hinders people from engaging with news regarding Africa, whether it’s positive or negative. The evidence is there, question how much you actually hear about Africa in the news on a regular basis versus other countries/conflict zones. Sudan, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, Nigeria, South Sudan, Mozambique, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, and Libya; all of these countries, all of these people forgotten, overshadowed by global media. You don’t have to be a conflict expert to care, you just need to be human.