For the staff of the digital news service AllAfrica, this has been a typically frenetic season. The platform is the premier producer and aggregator of content from and about Africa. It reaches tens of millions monthly with news in English and French, coverage usually absent from most Western media.

A rare exception was President Trump’s May 21 Oval Office ambush of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa with a propaganda video. Trump claimed South Africa’s white Afrikaners were subjects of widespread land confiscations and “genocide.” Seasoned negotiator Ramaphosa deftly referred questions to his team’s Afrikaners: a cabinet minister, a billionaire businessman and a former world golfing champion.

The White House confrontation was a “developing story that isn’t going away, and poorly covered — without context — by all major media,” said Dr. Tamela (Tami) Hultman, AllAfrica’s co-founder and chief content officer.

In fact, many Afrikaners whom the administration has deemed “refugees” have admitted to accepting free repatriation to find easier jobs. South African polls showed most Afrikaners are uninterested in leaving South Africa. AllAfrica provided that deeper context.

Reed Kramer, another co-founder, told me South Africa’s concern about Afrikaner disinformation continues as Trump’s team uses it to undermine the country’s current G-20 inter-governmental economic group presidency.

“We’re valued for comprehensive African coverage, not just what U.S. media see as the issue of the moment,” said Hultman. (Full disclosure: Hultman, Kramer and I were classmates at Duke University in the 1960s.)

AllAfrica reported on less-noticed news, such as cancelled U.S. funding for HIV and drug-resistant tuberculosis research by South Africa’s world-class scientists. Most recently, Hultman said........

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