"We want to keep a balance," Pang Xinhua, CCTV's managing editor, who runs a network of correspondents in a dozen African countries, told AFP. "We are not only talking about war, diseases or poverty, we also focus on economic development."

Africa Live is put together by a team of 60 or so people in Nairobi - about 50 of them Kenyans. It holds a prime time slot in east Africa but is also televised worldwide.

"We opened this bureau in order to be able to tell the real Africa story, the real story of China and the real story of Sino-African relations," CCTV Africa chief Song Jianing said, echoing remarks by China's ambassador to Kenya when the switchover started in January.

Nairobi was CCTV's first regional bureau to produce and broadcast its own hour-long news programme. Its cousin CCTV America soon followed suit.

Chris Alden of the London School of Economics said CCTV Africa is "part of a wider strategy to combat what can be seen as a negative relationship" between China and Africa.

"Chinese officials start from a diagnosis that too many Africans rely on Western-based news services," said Alden, who is certain CCTV "will have an impact."

"Where there is deep unhappiness among local African businesses experiencing displacement due to competition from Chinese companies, it won't eliminate that, but it could lessen a negative effect," he said.