"In 2018 the fictional country Wakanda from the film Black Panther was the fourth most mentioned African country on Twitter, after Egypt, South Africa and Kenya. The fact that Africa’s 4th most talked about country doesn’t exist tells us two things: pop culture is a powerful tool for narrative work and we need to do more to make Africa’s 51 remaining real countries more compelling. This data point was unearthed during a literature review to understand what insights already exist about narrative in Africa in the media. The review was part of our mission to unpack narrative and give some real substance to that well used phrase “we need to change the African narrative!’ We analysed 56 documents of literature (post 2000) including research reports, books, chapters, and academic journal articles [...] So, what did we find? A few surprising facts like the one about Wakanda, but admittedly nothing we didn’t already suspect. Things you need to know Western narratives about Africa in the media are around two narrative strands, i.e. Afro-pessimistic and Afro-optimistic. The main themes we found were: Poverty is rife, how this narrative has shifted the most however, is with a rise in business reporting; African leaders are depicted as poor leaders, who exercise weak governance, leading to failing or failed states; Incomprehensible violence is prevalent; Africa is rife with diseases, especially HIV/AIDS and Ebola; Africa is mostly a place of wildlife and nature, but this is being rapidly eroded by urbanisation and poaching ..." (Executive summary)