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How a creator-led news network is amplifying voices from the Global South

Ismael Akwei is the editor of Global South World (GSW), a news brand founded in 2023 to build a more informed and nuanced understanding of the Global South. Its mission is to ‘counter parachute journalism and condescension’ with news and opinion from a network of journalists and creators that live across Asia, Africa and South America.

Speaking to GSW editor Ismail Akwei, based in Accra, Ghana, I was struck by the parallels between the work GSW is doing and the work of the Kyiv Independent, who we spoke to back in November last year. Both are focused on publishing in English to the rest of the world, both trying to balance a news narrative set by people who live elsewhere.

Akwei’s concern is that there is no one reporting the stories of the people who live in the Global South. “We’ve heard the comments about ‘shithole countries’ being used to describe Africa. We’ve had the same for Venezuela and other South American countries,” he told The Publisher Podcast this week. “The Western media will not come down and say, ‘How do you feel about your country being called [a shithole]?’”

Akwei sees Western media reduce whole continents to their most negative news stories, saying there are still people in the Global North, in the US, in Europe, in the UK, who think Africa is ‘a jungle’. “Those are the stories that are selling,” he said, “and if those are selling, then they go with that. We are trying to show them that this is not a jungle. South America is not filled with gangsters and criminals abducting or kidnapping people.”

Shifting to social

To counter the dominance of news produced through a Western lens, GSW’s guiding principle is to amplify the voices of people in the Global South, publishing their stories from their perspective.

When the news brand launched in 2023, it was focused primarily on producing text-based articles. “When we started we were very heavy on the web,” explained Akwei. “Then we started working in video… videos reach more audiences than the web – way more.”

When the Iran-Israel-US war broke out, GSW took the decision to live stream news conferences across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn and YouTube. “The live streams just blew up,” Akwei said.

“We would get a notification that Trump was going to have a press conference. We’d start the live stream 30 minutes before and discuss what we thought… give [our audience] some background to what happened earlier, give them a perspective before the press conference started.”

Immediately afterwards, the GSW team would come back to talk about what had been said, breaking it down for the audience to help them understand what it might mean for them.

Engagement was very high at the height of the conflict, but Akwei said numbers started to drop off when things calmed down. “Sometimes it’s about the stories, other times it’s about the format. You just have to try them out and then see which one works at which time.”

Repurposing for platforms

GSW still publishes on the web, but also distributes an array of formats – video, photo galleries, infographics – across a huge range of social platforms. “We streamline the content for each platform,” said Akwei. “You need to create content to suit the audiences on each.”

He gave the example of a long-form interview, which could appear as text on the web or as a photo gallery; on YouTube as a 20-minute video; or as short-form video with a voiceover.

“We may have a story – an interview with someone in Congo or someone in Cameroon – we have the video on YouTube, which is a full video, maybe 15 minutes or 20 minutes. Then we have a photo gallery that could go on Facebook with a link saying ‘watch the interview’. And then we also have the website, which has the story and the video, and a photo gallery. If there’s audio, it also goes there.”

He explained how being on the widest possible range of platforms allows GSW to reach multiple audiences. “These platforms have different audiences. Some have millennials, some have Gen X’s and we have the Gen Z’s coming up. With all these audiences, who are different, we need to repurpose it for each of them.”

More voices

GSW has staff around the world, from Ghana to the Philippines and Bolivia, and a network of freelance contributors. It also partners with creators on the ground in the countries that it covers through a project called Global South Voices. “Social media is leading, so you need to work with the creators. You can’t leave them out,” said Akwei.

Akwei explained how GSW has recruited a number of news content creators, some journalists, but not all. “We reached out to the creators and said, ‘Hey, you guys are creating content. We want to do it with you, and want to give you our platform to get a bigger and wider reach’. They loved the idea. We have creators from Ethiopia, from Panama, from other parts of South America, Asia and also Africa.”

GSW commissions work from creators around global issues like the Iran-Israel-US war or the US action against former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. “I [spoke] with some journalists and some creators in neighbouring countries in South America. They all had different perspectives. These are things we hardly get from the Western media.”

Creators are also pitching local stories directly. “They come to us, they tell us, ‘Hey, there’s this story that we are very concerned about and we think it needs to go out there.’”

Akwei acknowledged the effort involved in checking the background of creators who want to use the GSW platform to get their stories out. “We need, first, to check their background. We see the kind of content they’re creating, we have an idea as to their leaning. We reach out and explain to them how and what we want to do and, if they are interested in being part of the network, we go through an interview process.”

Akwei said the focus is on finding creators who align with GSW’s mission, but also on being inclusive. “Because it’s on a freelance basis we don’t leave anyone out. If there’s a story and the person has a perspective, they share it. We accept all perspectives so far as it doesn’t go against journalistic ethics and standards.”

Together through tech

GSW takes full advantage of widely available technology to fulfill its mission.

Akwei explained that ‘for less cost’ than traditional media would spend, platforms like Zoom or Riverside allow his team to have conversations across continents. “Then we work to repurpose this content, reformat it for the various platforms, and then we get it out,” he said. “In a day, we could spend two hours on a story and have it on all these other platforms.”

The majority of GSW’s audience is in the Global North. “That is part of the mission,” said Akwei. “We need people in the Global North to understand the Global South and the things that are going on there, not only take their narratives from Global North media platforms.”

Although most of GSW’s audience come from outside GSW’s coverage areas, comments from local people add value. “You can see two different kinds of reactions on our social media platforms… those from the Global South agreeing with what we are saying, and those from the Global North, sharing disbelief. It really creates a balance for our audiences; they get it raw and unfiltered.

While GSW’s coverage is geographically broad, stretching from South America to Asia and Africa, Akwei explained that there are similarities that strengthen the brand’s position. “It’s economic, it’s technological. If we come together, bring all the voices together, it makes us much stronger.”

Listen to the full episode in this week’s episode of The Publisher Podcast, available wherever you find podcasts.

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