BBC angered many black Africans last week after publishing a story that wondered why Covid-19 had not killed as many people on the continent as the broadcaster and many other Western news outlets had projected.

As the Covid-19 pandemic was infecting millions and killing tens of thousands in Europe and America over the past few months, many Western media, think tanks and influential people had apocalyptic projections on Africa.

They claimed that the general overcrowding, poverty and some underlying conditions among Africans, especially HIV and Aids could lead to high numbers of coronavirus infections and fatalities in Africa.

BBC headlines such as “Coronavirus in Africa: Contained or unrecorded?”, “Coronavirus in South Africa: The lullabied before the surge?, Coronavirus: Could African countries cope with the outbreak?” made some in Africa ask whether the global news network, which generally represents British and Western thinking, was unhappy that Africans were not dying enough from an infection that has battered the US and Europe.

Read the full article on the Chronical website here.