Building a Strong Future for African Newsrooms

I want to thank our president, Danlami Nmodu, and our deputy president and chairman of the Conference Planning Committee, Olumide Iyanda, as well as all our members for letting me share my thoughts on Wednesday, October 7. My talk was called ‘The Sundiata Post Model: Building the African Newsroom for the Long Term in the Age of Zero-Click’. This article is based on that lecture.

The story of modern journalism is partly a story of change.

Print news was changed by online publishing. Online publishing was changed by social media. Now, digital publishing is being changed by artificial intelligence.

Each change has affected how news is made, shared, and read. Each has changed how audiences behave, how ads work, how money is made, and how publishers relate to their readers.

But the latest change brings up a bigger question: what should a newsroom be to survive not just the next tech change, but for many years to come?

This is not just about adapting to digital. It is about the purpose of the institution, making money, and the future of journalism itself.

THE ZERO-CLICK CHALLENGE

The old way of making money from digital news was simple: create content, attract an audience, get traffic, and make money from attention.

Social media took away some control from publishers by moving news discovery to other platforms. Artificial intelligence is pushing this separation further.

Readers can see headlines without going to websites, get summaries without reading articles, and find answers through AI systems without going back to the original publisher. Content can be consumed even if the publisher does not get a visit.

The SquirrelPR RANKED Report for 2025, released in April 2026, gives a good starting point for understanding the effects. The report says audience traffic across Nigeria’s digital media dropped by 26.2 percent, from over one billion visits to about 769 million.

These numbers should worry publishers, but they mean more than just fewer visits to websites. They ask us to think again about how audiences find information and how news organisations measure their importance.

A drop in traffic does not mean a drop in influence. An idea can spread through professional groups and social networks without the original publisher knowing how far it has gone.

Traffic and influence are connected, but they are not the same.

Clicks still help measure audience activity. But they are becoming a less complete measure of the value journalism provides.

This raises a hard question: what are we building that still matters when the click does not come?

FROM CONTENT PRODUCTION TO KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION

The answer starts with rethinking what a newsroom can create.

What else can it produce besides stories, headlines, and traffic?

A newsroom can report on insecurity. But can it also look into the reasons behind ongoing insecurity?

It can report on institutional failure. But can it also create ways to understand how that failure happens?

It can report on the decline of state authority. But can it also build tools for looking at how the state, land, institutions, and sovereignty relate to each other?

These questions do not take away from journalism. They open up more possibilities.

The difference is between a group that just keeps making content and an institution that also builds knowledge.

A story might be relevant for a short time. But a framework developed through ongoing research can stay useful long after the event has faded from public focus. An archive keeps what happened; original research can help explain why it happened and how similar situations could be understood.

So, journalism does not have to be the end of inquiry. It can be the start of a broader knowledge-building process.

This is the idea behind the Sundiata Post Model.

At the end of 2025, after more than thirty years in the media, I began asking a key question: What else can a newsroom create beyond news and commentary?

That question influenced the current path of Sundiata Post Media Ltd. It shaped the growth of The Sunday Stew, my weekly column, and the creation of the Sundiata Post Intelligence Unit (SPIU), our research and knowledge-building arm.

The work includes the Insecurity Triad, a framework for looking at the links between money, land, and mind; the Trinity of Sovereignty Decay, a theory for understanding the loss and recovery of sovereignty; and the Decoupling Sovereignty Index (DSI), a tool created to look at the link between formal sovereignty and its lived reality.

These outputs show a clear expansion of the newsroom’s purpose: from reporting and interpreting events to creating new frameworks, theories, and analytical tools for understanding the conditions that create them.

The main question remains the same: if a newsroom can document the world, can it also create the tools needed to explain it?

The central idea is simple: a newsroom can build value from the knowledge it creates, not just from the audience it draws in.

TWO ENGINES, ONE INSTITUTION

At the heart of the Sundiata Post Model is what I call the Dual Engine Architecture.

The first is the Media Operations Engine:

Report, publish, and distribute.

This is the newsroom’s usual way of operating. It collects information, checks events, creates journalism, and shares it with audiences.

The second is the Knowledge Operations Engine: Research, analyse, develop, and preserve.

This engine takes questions from journalism and digs deeper. It spots patterns, builds concepts, tests explanations, and keeps the resulting knowledge.

The two engines work together. The media engine keeps the institution connected to current events; the knowledge engine helps it learn from what it sees.

A report on insecurity can inform the public today. Continued research can show ongoing patterns. Research can organize those patterns into a framework that future work can refine and test.

The result is a newsroom that builds on its past work instead of starting from scratch every time.

But knowledge production alone cannot keep an institution going. The newsroom also needs the financial, human, and organizational resources to keep its work alive.

SEVEN PILLARS OF THE REALM OF THE LONG TERM

The Sundiata Post Model is based on seven important pillars.

1. Financial Sustainability. The institution must create an economic base that can support its long-term goals. Making money from traffic is still key, but it cannot be the only part of the plan.

1. Human Capital and Leadership. For the institution to last, it needs skilled people, good judgment, leadership, character, and the passing on of knowledge through generations.

1. Knowledge Stewardship. Research, frameworks, intellectual property, archives, and learning must be organized and kept so the institution can build on what it has learned.

1. Governance. Accountability, clear decision-making, and the right structures help the institution work beyond the personality and time of the current leader.

1. Innovation and Adaptation. Technologies, distribution systems, and business models will change. The institution must adapt while keeping its purpose.

1. Trust and Reputation. In a world full of content and increasingly affected by AI, credibility becomes a vital asset. Trust must be built through consistency, transparency, and integrity.

1. Mission Continuity. The institution must know its lasting purpose and the ways it uses to achieve that purpose. Methods can change, but the mission should stay.

These pillars answer a key question: can an institution keep its knowledge, relationships, and skills alive after its founder is gone?

An organisation built around one person's energy and memory is at risk if that person is not around. An institution that documents its work, keeps its knowledge, sets up governance, and passes on skills has a firmer base for continuity.

The goal is not just to create something that works today but to build something that will keep providing value tomorrow.

WHY THIS MATTERS FOR AFRICA

This issue is especially important for African journalism.

Many African newsrooms work under tough economic conditions. Money is tight, infrastructure is inconsistent, technology changes fast, and political and commercial pressures can complicate independent journalism.

Losing experienced staff can weaken institutional memory, and financial worries can push publishers to focus on short-term survival over long-term growth. But survival cannot be the only goal.

Africa needs news organizations that can generate knowledge about African societies, institutions, and conditions. We need analytical frameworks rooted in our realities and the ability to contribute original ideas to global discussions.

This does not mean rejecting outside research or ignoring international cooperation. It means building the ability to add to the wider knowledge pool based on Africa’s experiences and investigations.

A newsroom can be a place from which this contribution comes.

Years of reporting can raise questions that need deeper exploration beyond the immediate news cycle. The chance is to develop systems that turn those questions into ongoing inquiry.

This work needs serious methods, documentation, critical thinking, and a willingness to change ideas when the evidence requires it. A framework is not valuable just because a newsroom creates it; its worth depends on how well it is reasoned, the evidence behind it, and how useful it is to others.

The aim is not to label journalism as academic. It is to build the capacity for original knowledge production within the newsroom itself.

For African media organizations, this is a strategic path worth exploring, including by smaller independent newsrooms ready to build step by step from the resources they have.

THE DESK IS ENOUGH, BUT CANNOT BE THE END

One idea that has come from my experience is The Desk Is Enough.

This does not mean that a desk is all an institution needs. It means that important intellectual work can start with what is available.

A journalist does not need to wait for a big office before they can develop an idea. A researcher does not need to wait for a fancy institution before starting serious research.

The desk can be the start. But it cannot be the end. What begins as individual effort must grow into institutional ability if it is to last.

This brings us to what I call the Four Enoughs:

The Desk Is Enough to Begin. The work can start with what is at hand.

The Institution Is Enough to Sustain. Individual effort can turn into organized capability.

The Archive Is Enough to Preserve. Knowledge can be stored instead of fading with its creator.

The World Is Enough to Test. Geography does not have to limit intellectual reach.

The order matters. The desk is where the work begins. The institution provides organization and continuity. The archive keeps the work. The world becomes the space where it can be tested, modified, challenged, and accepted if found useful.

For African researchers and media entrepreneurs, this shows the difference between starting small and thinking small.

We can report, research, develop ideas, and create knowledge from here. But reaching out internationally does not happen just by wishing. It requires quality, discoverability, preservation, sharing, and engagement beyond our local area.

The task is to build the ways through which locally generated knowledge can travel.

BEYOND THE CLICK

The zero-click environment is not the end of journalism. Websites, traffic, audiences, and revenue still matter. Newsrooms must keep attracting readers, maintain their credibility, and adapt to tech changes.

But these actions cannot be the whole picture of the institution.

What happens when technology shifts again? What if another intermediary controls access to the audience? What if information can be consumed without visiting the original publisher?

An institution that only relies on immediate content consumption will be at risk when these changes happen.

An institution that also builds original knowledge, keeps its intellectual capital, and creates systems for continuity has other ways of holding value over time.

The article can be read somewhere else. The idea can move through another channel. The information can be summarized by a system the publisher does not control.

But the institution that produced the knowledge can keep developing it, preserving it, and adding to the next stage of inquiry.

This is the strategic chance ahead for the African newsroom.

The Sundiata Post Model offers one way to look at this: journalism can lead to research, research can create knowledge, knowledge can turn into intellectual capital, and intellectual capital can provide lasting public value.

The newsroom must do more than just report events. It must learn from them, explain them, keep what it discovers, and build on that knowledge.

The click might open the door to an audience. But it cannot, by itself, build an institution.

The African newsroom must learn to outlive the click.