Is CNN Trying to Destabilize East Africa? 

CNN has long operated less as a news organization than as a missionary arm of a particular ideological worldview, one obsessed with power, grievance, and the perpetual division of humanity into a familiar binary: oppressor and oppressed.

That rigidity does not stop at America’s borders.

It becomes the lens through which CNN interprets the world.

An American industry thrives?

Its workers are portrayed as modern-day slaves.

Americans want affordable gas?

The "Global South" is framed as collateral damage in environmental destruction.

President Trump shut down extremist-led Gaza protests and demonstrations?

CNN labeled it fascism, a word that quickly filled its chyrons.

CNN applies the same framing globally.

Like any ideology left unchecked, it travels, reshaping foreign realities to fit domestic narratives.

European leaders who buck liberal orthodoxy, such as Viktor Orbán, are condemned.

And now CNN has turned its gaze to East Africa, a region it too often lectures rather than understands.

Most Americans are not closely watching events in Tanzania.

CNN is.

And too often it arrives with its conclusions already written.

Following Tanzania's October election, CNN's Africa coverage focused obsessively on three days of unrest, portraying it as evidence of national collapse.

The reality was far more familiar and far less dramatic.

The Tanzanian government won by a wide margin, one the opposition contested.

Activists took to the streets, violence followed, and public property was burned.

Some protesters were armed with rudimentary but dangerous weapons.

Security forces responded forcefully, arguably too forcefully in hindsight.

But order was restored quickly.

No serious analyst doubts the government’s majority support, and reconciliation efforts are now underway. Tanzania has returned to its trajectory of stability and growth.

That reality did not suit CNN's narrative.

Under the leadership of correspondent Larry Madowo, violent protesters were recast as "freedom fighters" and "pro-democracy activists," echoing the network's treatment of unrest in Portland following the death of George Floyd.

The government was reduced to a caricature of authoritarianism.

Tanzania itself became a stage for CNN's preferred morality play.

This pattern is not new. CNN has long relied on an "Africans as victims" framework.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, early reporting predicted catastrophic mortality across Africa, citing weak infrastructure and presumed incompetence.

Instead, many African nations responded with speed and ingenuity. Post-pandemic studies later found mortality had been dramatically overstated.

The most recent escalation came with CNN’s unsubstantiated claims of "mass graves" linked to the unrest.

These allegations were made without evidence but delivered with certainty, reflecting a network increasingly dependent on manufactured catastrophe. Sensation drives viewership. Accuracy, apparently, does not.

In reality, Tanzania's government has launched a commission of inquiry to investigate the events, a fact CNN rarely emphasizes.

The commission is expected to report in the coming months.

Step outside Western media's echo chamber and a different Tanzania emerges.

Tanzania is among the more stable countries in East Africa, politically, socially, and economically.

Its economy grows at roughly six percent annually.

It hosts refugees fleeing regional conflicts. It possesses significant natural resources, including major gold reserves.

And more than 400 American companies operate there successfully.

No American business benefits from instability in East Africa.

Misrepresentation carries real consequences.

At a time when China is expanding its footprint across the region, CNN's distortions are not merely journalistic failures, they are geopolitical liabilities.

No U.S. interest is served by undermining a region emerging as a commercial and security partner.

Fortunately, the Trump administration is not playing this game.

Its policy toward Tanzania is clear.

Bilateral relations will be judged on actions, not media narratives.

As the State Department has stated, the relationship will be grounded in measurable outcomes, mutual respect, and shared prosperity.

This approach was reinforced in the National Security Strategy, which rejected the export of "liberal ideology" in favor of trade and investment-based partnerships.

"The United States is committed to a partnership based not on aid dependency but on shared prosperity," Ambassador Andrew Lentz said in a recent statement on Tanzania.

He confirmed that three major U.S.-Tanzania projects will continue, including a $42 billion offshore gas development.

This is welcome news for the hundreds of American companies operating in Tanzania.

They should ignore CNN’s reporting. CNN may continue portraying Africa as a perpetual victim.

But Africa, and the Americans who partner with it, are writing a different story, one rooted not in grievance or spectacle, but in stability, growth, dignity, and truth.

Adelle Nazarian is a communications director for several non-government organizations. Her work on national security, foreign policy, human rights, and religious freedom is respected and recognized globally.