Titled “The Media’s Agenda-Setting Role: Insights from Coverage of Nigeria’s 2023 Elections,” the study assessed the nature of media coverage during the 2023 elections in Nigeria, aiming to identify key elements shaping narratives and assessing the media’s effectiveness in providing education and information during the electoral process.

Covering 10 national and 36 state media outlets across 18 strategically selected states, the study monitored online/print, TV, and radio platforms. The national media outlets monitored include Arise TV, Channels, DailyTrust, NTA, Premium Times, and The Cable.

Analysis of the topics covered by the media during the 2023 Elections revealed a significant focus on non-programmatic issues, such as election logistics, party politics and campaigns, corruption scandals and controversies, comprising 80% of news items monitored. Programmatic topics like education, health, vulnerable groups, humanitarian issues, and security received less focus, accounting for only 20% of coverage.

The report also highlighted the underrepresentation of women in media coverage, with only 0.4% of news stories focusing on gender-related topics, indicating a gap in mainstreaming gender discourse in Nigerian politics. Other findings in this report include the origin and sources of the voices that shaped the election narrative and their political affiliations.

“The outcome of this research underscores the media’s vital role in shaping public discourse and influencing electoral outcomes,” said Oluseyi Olufemi, Insight Lead at Dataphyte. “With this media monitoring exercise, we aim to stimulate dialogue and encourage self-assessment within the media industry on its role in sustaining democracy and the responsibility of information and education that rests on its shoulders. 

In conclusion, the report emphasises the need for greater focus on programmatic issues like education, healthcare, and gender equality to foster informed public discourse during elections. Media organisations are urged to represent diverse voices and viewpoints, ensure balanced coverage, and highlight more gender-related issues.

The full report, “The Media’s Agenda-Setting Role: Insights from Coverage of Nigeria’s 2023 Elections,” is available below.Role

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A prominent example of such ‘digital arms race’ is the ongoing US-China tech competition. This ‘Great Tech Rivalry’ as we know it broadly plays out in two forms: the first is the protectionist approach each party takes to limit the influence of the other’s technologies on its economy. For instance, in the last few years, Washington has imposed tough sanctions on Chinese tech companies — including limiting their access to critical American technologies such as semiconductors; banning the sale and import of services or products from Huawei and ZTE; and the recent scrutinisation of TikTok, prohibiting its usage on US’ state-owned devices. America is now also heavily concerned about the national security implications of its interdependence on Chinese technologies. Nonetheless, for all its recent decoupling efforts, Washington has historically been more open to technology relations with China than China has with it. On its end, Beijing is closed to all forms of foreign competition, not just with the U.S.; as evident in its highly restrictive import regime for digital services, a highly regulated internet space, and strong data localisation laws. 

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This first edition, titled “Nigeria’s Post Oil Economy: Going the Housing Consumer Credit Path”, is a critical analysis of the employment cum income potentials of the manufacturing and construction sectors, positioning the housing subsector especially as an alternative for revitalizing Nigeria’s economy, and as a viable revenue alternative to the government’s perennial debt financing.

The Housing Advisory Note explains the unsustainability of aggressive deficit spending to sustain economic growth and the undesirability of the monetisation of deficit which rather weakens macroeconomic outcomes.

It examines previous attempts to stimulate the economy and how these attempts have predominantly focused on production, neglecting consumption. It explains how tapping into consumer demand can boost economic growth.

The report presents a clear path on how housing construction and homeownership may be a silver bullet, stimulating the construction and manufacturing sector, which can, in turn, create more jobs and employment, and drastically reduce Nigeria’s huge housing deficit. Homeownership in Nigeria is lower than in most countries. Only 35.7 percent of Nigerians residing in urban areas own their homes, down from the 2016 level of 48.1 percent. 

This deficit is indicative of challenges with affordability and availability, and the report suggests directing interventions at the Mortgage origination sector which could, in turn, trigger huge housing construction and jobs. 

Given that 60 percent of the investment in Housing will result directly in the purchase of construction input like aggregates, cement, wood & wood products, basic metal, iron & steel, electrical & electronics, and non-metallic products subsectors, such investment could potentially create millions of manufacturing, logistic and mining jobs in the short to medium term, thus, stimulating those sectors to productivity.

To reposition the housing sector, the report recommended deepening the secondary market for mortgage-backed securities, standardizing mortgage and foreclosure laws, simplifying mortgage payment structures, and reviewing the cost of building materials and training for local craftsmen.

The Dataphyte Advisory Note: Nigeria’s Post Oil Economy Going the Housing Consumer Credit Path” is a veritable resource for policymakers, especially as conversations around stimulating the economy and reducing Nigeria’s debt burden continue to take centre stage. Stakeholders in the Housing Sector will also benefit from the report’s insight on positioning the sector for big wins that underscore cross-cutting development.

The advisory note can be accessed using this link

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On June 4, 2021, the Nigerian government banned the operations of microblogging site, Twitter, stating that the company’s activities are “capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence”. Some have argued that the government’s action was not really predicated on a democratic concern about Twitter’s influence on Nigeria’s politics, but a vindictive reaction to the platform’s deletion of President Buhari’s violence-invoking, anti-Biafra Tweet. Yet, regardless of whether the Nigerian government’s decision was reactionary or truly democratic, Nigeria’s Twitter ban feeds into a broader global concern about the big techs’ monopolising power over social conversations.

The influence of digital tech platforms has permeated all aspects of global politics and economy — from being able to disrupt the stock market (the GameStop short squeeze on Reddit) and making cross-border tax regulations more difficult (intangibility of assets), to the risks of data surveillance and misinformation. More worryingly, big techs’ reach far outpaces the extent to which governments and international institutions have been able to regulate their activities. This reach produces impacts in the most unusual ways, raising a fundamental concern of whether the powers of social media platforms could truly be checked by the government.

The consequences of a heavily digitised globe are innumerable — from concerns of data privacy to cross-border inconsistency in data governance; cybersecurity; as well as misinformation and content moderation during important political moments. As a result, governments are becoming resistant of the scarcely regulated world of data assets in which big social media companies are in possession of large amount of customers’ data that are rarely subject to public accountability (for instance, data on the numeric and demographic composition of Twitter users are publicly unavailable, while historic big data on trends/hashtags is only available to academic researchers).

As such, there have been numerous regulations or efforts targeting the governance and economic dynamics of digital tech —such as the push for a special antitrust law for big techs in the US, the Global Data Protection Regulation and Digital Sovereignty frameworks in the EU. Such policies that are generally “governance” and “economically ” oriented have moved swiftly across the global south, as we begin to see a solid policy reaction in developing (African) countries in the areas of data protection (e.g., the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation), the digital economy, cybersecurity, and data sharing.

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The research brief also examines the various government interventions through the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) like the Anchor Borrower’s Programme and the Agricultural Credit Guarantee Scheme Fund (ACGSF). These appear not to have produced the desired outcome, noting that commercial bank loans and advances to the agriculture sector have remained low even though the sector accounts for about 26.84% of economic activities in Nigeria.

The post From Farm to Future: Thoughts on Food Security, Farmers’ Prosperity and Fiscal Stability in Nigeria appeared first on Dataphyte United Kingdom.

This briefing paper delves into the driving forces behind foreign influence in West Africa’s security sector, examining the impact of established external powers on the region. With a focus on economic partnerships, trade relations, and the growing presence of non-state actors, the paper aims to uncover the motivations and implications of these influences on security dynamics in the region. By analysing the evolving alliances and investments in security, the paper seeks to provide insights into the complexities of addressing non-state actors and maintaining regime security in West Africa.

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The post Illegal Chinese Mining in Nigeria and its Political Implications appeared first on Dataphyte United Kingdom.

The post #DailyDataCards: World Environment Day (Part 2) – Percentage of plastic produced that are eventually recycled or incinerated or discarded globally appeared first on Dataphyte United Kingdom.

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