The Media Missionaries

6. AFRICA (CONTINUED)

AFRICA COUNTRY REPORTS

ENGLISH-SPEAKING WEST AFRICA

English-speaking journalists in West Africa are, for the most part, relatively sophisticated, compared with other countries on the continent. In Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation, and Ghana, the first country to attain independence in 1956, the British left a legacy of a vibrant media. Although both countries have experienced many years of dictatorship and repression, the media scene today is quite strong. In contrast, Sierra Leone and Liberia have been devastated by civil wars that have destroyed media. Gambia has a repressive president. There are manpower problems since most good journalists went into safer professions, such as advertising, in the 1980s. Media need to be developed now as a business, but those in charge don't have media management training. Most media carry specific ethnic, religious or political agendas. "They may have some public information functions, but they have other agendas. They are not really media as (independent) media," says Nigerian journalist Dapo Olorunyomi of the Panos Institute.

GHANA:

Africa Institute of Journalism and Communications (AIJC). Knight fellows Remer and Virginia Tyson were impressed with director Kojo Yankah and his intensive training courses and two-year diploma program.
Ghana Institute of Journalism. Director: David Newton. This is the primary post-grad school for journalists in Ghana. Standards are relatively high-many courses are taught by working journalists. The facility is run down, with few resources such as computers.
Ghana Journalists Association. This is an organization of private and public journalists. It is active and represents the journalists well. The government has recently given GJA a building. The organization needs money to make improvements. The goal is to turn the building into a press center-and to run training programs and workshops. Contact: Gifty Affenzi-Dadzie, a one-time journalist and entrepreneur, is the president.
West Africa Journalists Association (WAJA). This is a regional press freedom group, formerly headed by Kabral Blay-Amihere, one of the region's best-known journalists and a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Kabral recently left to become the ambassador to Sierra Leone, which may leave WAJA without leadership. WAJA received a $100,000 grant from Ford Foundation in 2001.
Media Foundation for West Africa. Headed by Kwami Kari-Kari, this group strives to do media analysis in the region. Kari-Kari, a former academic and journalist, is a good guy, but his group needs money, according to Mower. They held a major regional conference in Burkina Faso in 2000.

LIBERIA:

Search for Common Ground (http://www.sfcg.org) operates Talking Drum Studio, which produces 30 hours a week of programming in Liberia. SFCG also has a Media Against Conflict project.
The Liberian Institute of Journalism is an independent group that has done a series of various workshops in recent years, including computer training funded by the Freedom Forum. In the past, it has received money from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). It is run by a very solid Libero-American, Vinicius Hodges.
The Press Union of Liberia received $35,000 from NED for workshops in 2001. The quality of their work is undetermined.
The Association of Liberian Journalists in the Americas is based in Boston. It represents Liberian journalists in exile and is headed by Isaac Bantu, a courageous former BBC reporter.

NIGERIA:

Unlike most other countries in West Africa, Nigeria started with a free press in 1859 until 1966 when media were nationalized. Nigeria is one of the richest countries in Africa, with the largest middle class. There are 45 journalism schools, including 18, which award degrees. Even under colonial rule, they had a professional, investigative journalism tradition through 1960, when they won independence. In 1966, a military coup brought very repressive laws, including restrictions on media and information access. After a brief democratic period again in 1976-80, Africa's most virulent military regime took power. The repressive military were educated and sophisticated; they benefited from the oil boom. Now there is a veneer of democracy but ethnicity and religion are strong pulls. The private media sector has not succeeded, despite liberalized laws and new business investments in it. The need here is for management training for media companies, rather than journalism training per se, according to Dapo Olorunyomi of the Panos Institute. said there is a lot of media development money in Nigeria, but not all of it has been well planned. "You need to have a very clear strategy about what you want to do. Not all the organizations have that." (15)

The Independent Journalism Centre (IJC), which publishes the Nigeria Media Monitor, is the best-known group. Babafemi Ojudu, the editor of The News and Tempo, is popular internationally. He is a key player.
The Institute for Media and Society (IMS) is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organization based in Nigeria. They've done some programs-one funded by The Freedom Forum-along with the indigenous IJC. It is run by Akin Akinbulu, who is a cartoonist in Nigeria. The Ford Foundation gave them a $100,000 grant in 2001.
Note: Ford has also given $280,000 to the Independent Television Producers Association of Nigeria and $140,000 to Inter-press for conflict resolution.
Panos Institute has also run some diversity training workshops for Nigerian journalists. They are funded by Soros OSI West Africa, World Bank Institute, Ford Foundation, and U.S. Institute for Peace. Their "covering diversity" training manual is now used in most of Nigeria's journalism schools.
ICFJ, together with Cassals and Associates, is working on a USAID-funded anti-corruption training project. ICFJ will send two trainers across the country for a series of workshops on how to use investigative reporting techniques to cover corruption.
Internews recently expanded its Media Rights Agenda organization in Lagos (http://www.internews.org/mra) to add a lawyer from its global network working for open Internet policies.

SIERRA LEONE:

Search for Common Ground has a Talking Drum studio here.
The International League for Human Rights (http://www.ilhr.org) has run some monitoring and training programs in Sierra Leone. ILHR has a UN tie.
The International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES) (http://www.ifes.org) is planning some election/media training in Sierra Leone.
NED has given money to Radio Bo for its equipment.

FRANCOPHONE AFRICA

MALI:

The Maison de la Presse is home to the Freedom Forum library. It is very well used and has three computers with Internet acess. USG has also funded training programs at the Maison, which has a strong director at present, Sadou Yattara. The Maison receives some government money.
Panos runs an office in Mali.

NIGER:

NED gave $20,000 to Radio Anfani, an independent radio, for programming.

SENEGAL:

African Women's Media Center, created by IWMF, is based in Dakar. It is housed in the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung building.
ISSIC is a Senegal-supported training center for journalists. It is funded by Senegalese money for the most part.
Open Society Institute: Kakuna Kerina, former director of the International League for Human Rights, is new executive director for OSIWA (kkerina@osiwa.org) in Dakar.

EAST AFRICA

BURUNDI:

This is a very dangerous place for journalists and trainers. Talking Drums of Search For Common Ground has been very successful under the circumstances.

ETHIOPIA:

Ethiopia is a special case. Journalists desperately need help here. For anything Ethiopian, the expert is Jennifer Parmelee, ex-Washington Post, and ex-AP, Princeton grad who now runs the VOA's Horn of Africa service. jparmele@voa.news.com. She is married to an Ethiopian and was a Knight fellow in Ethiopia. There have been a number of programs, including:

The U.S. government spent $120,000 between 1996-98 on journalist training.
Duke University has a program that brings Ethiopian journalists to the U.S. for a period each year.
The Freedom Forum sent Neil Henry, a UC/Berkeley professor, to Ethiopia on two occasions to develop journalism programs at Unity College, the only private school in the country and the only school with real journalism courses
World Bank Institute did some economic training.
ICFJ and NED did a survey of the journalism scene in the early 1990s.
The Ethiopian Free Press Journalists' Association is run by Kifle Mulat, a heroic journalist who is a familiar face on the press freedom scene. It's not known whether he does much training.

KENYA:

Nairobi is one of the international media developers' favorite venues. Kenya's plethora of media organizations include:

Network for the Defense of Independent Media in Africa (NDIMA). Run by Sam Mbure. They do good monitoring and are a member of IFEX.
The Media Institute. David Makali, a former journalist, is the executive director, and he took off last year to study at Columbia University and it is unclear whether he has returned. The Freedom Forum once gave them money but they didn't do the workshops, Mower said.
The East African Journalists Association. (This used to be run by former Nation editor Tom Mshindi, who has moved to NYC. It may not be operating.)
The Mohammed Amin Foundation. This is a good group, which focuses on training broadcasters and photographers. This foundation was inspired by one of Africa's best-known journalists, Mo Amin, whose early pictures of the Ethiopian drought led to the famine coverage in the 1980s. He was killed on an Ethiopia Airlines flight hijacked over the Indian Ocean a few years ago. The foundation is run by his son, Salim Amin.
World Free Press Institute. This SF-based group did a workshop in Nairobi.

RWANDA:

The US government gave some money post-genocide, but it wasn't much, Mower said. She did training there in 1996, mainly for the English-speaking radio and print people. The University in Butare is trying to get communications going. There is no daily newspaper. (The paper is trucked in from Kampala.) There is a need for printing presses, but not used presses that will fall apart. Rwandan journalists found out only by chance when a new media law was about to be passed in their country. "Ten million people have no daily paper because there's no one who will lend money for a printing press," Mower says.

Internews has done some creative work here. Their documentary of the Rwanda War Crimes Tribunal has been shown to audiences throughout Rwanda, including prisoners in jail who allegedly participated in the massacre. "For the African continent, seeing a former minister sitting in a cell, that in itself is sending a very powerful message. It means this is real. Now we are answerable," said Agwu Ukiwe Okali, registrar for the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. (16)

TANZANIA:

The Tanzania Journalists Association is good. Contact: Joe Kadhi, who teaches journalism at the United States International University, a good private school that did impressive Tanzania workshops for the Freedom Forum.
In Arusha, Internews' office supplies English-language coverage of the International War Crimes Tribunal for Rwanda and does other media development work.

UGANDA:

The Uganda Journalists Association represents independent journalists and does a good job. Contact: Charles Onyango-Oddo of the Monitor newspaper. In Uganda, most of the good journalists attend Makerere University. There is a vibrant print press but broadcasting needs development. The USG gave about $350,000 for media training in the mid-1990s.

ZAMBIA:

Zambia's newspapers are relatively bad, in Mower's opinion. They are either hostile to the government or pro-government with no semblance of balance.

Mike Daka, the executive director of the Zambia Institute of Mass Communications (Zamcom), is "the strongest person I worked with in Africa," says Mower. "He is smart, organized, honest and incredibly nice." Andy Mosher, deputy foreign editor of The Washington Post, was a Knight Fellow at Zamcom. Zamcom has received money from a number of funders, including the U.S. and Zambian governments. Daka runs a full range of training programs. Zamcom has a beautiful building, with many computers. Daka would like to start an independent radio station in Zambia, which focuses on news.

SOUTHERN AFRICA

Much of the region seemed to go backward in the cause of media freedom during 2001. ICFJ inaugurated a new fellowship, the McGee Journalism Fellowship in Southern Africa, which is based in Botswana and will send a fellow to southern Africa each year.

ANGOLA:

This is a very perilous place for journalists. The government is not open and an ongoing civil war makes it very dangerous. As one of Africa's richest countries (in oil and diamonds), this country needs more coverage from the international community, as well as indigenous journalists.

NED has given a small amount ($20,000) for media/peace training to be done by a peace group.
The U.S. government gave about $2 million to VOA and World Learning in the 1990s to do training workshops and strengthen media organizations.
UNESCO collaborated with Foundation Hirondelle to do radio workshops, primarily for women.

BOTSWANA:

The government of what had been one of Africa's most respected liberal democracies in 2001 stirred a furore by cracking down on the press. Proposed legislation would allow the government to decide which newspapers can operate and to seize any publications it doesn't like.

Joyce Barrett, Knight fellow helped to create the media studies department at the University of Botswana's Gaborone campus. "Just a few years ago, the Gaborone campus was the largest construction site in the country. It is well regarded in the region and aims to build one of the best journalism departments in Africa," she said.

Lucinda Fleeson recently was the first McGee Journalism Fellow in Southern Africa, a new ICFJ fellowship program based in Botswana.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO:

This is another difficult country for journalists. There is a good group, Journalists in Danger, which keeps up with abuses against journalists.

The U.S. government also has an ongoing Central Lakes media project to try to bring together journalists from diverse areas to communicate with each other.

NAMIBIA

Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), headed by Luckson Chipare, is the top monitoring organization in the region. They got $800,000 from the US government. Based in Windhoek, they have chapters in all countries in the region. They have put on conferences, published reports and contributed to various journalists' legal defense funds. It is not clear how much training they have done.

SOUTH AFRICA

The Institute for the Advancement of Journalism. (http://www.iaj.org.za) is an excellent organization set up by Allistair Sparks and the late Donald Woods. They have a nice building at the University of Witwatersrand. It is now run by Hugh Lewin, a well-known South African, although he has expressed a desire to leave at some point. This is the premier training organization in the region, Mower says. They bring people from all over Southern Africa for courses. They receive money from everywhere (USG, other governments, foundations etc.). They have a permanent relationship with the Poynter Institute.
Open Society Institute has an office in Johannesburg. They were handing out about $5 million in grants per year, including some to community radio and other media projects. Jean Fairbairn (jean@ct.osf.org.za) is the program officer who helped develop community radio throughout South Africa. Jerri Eddings, formerly of the Freedom Forum, has formed a media foundation in Johannesburg. Her partners in the Foundation for Media Excellence are Edward Boateng of CNN and Doyin Abiola of Nigeria. FAME will take over the Freedom Forum offices in Johannesburg for the next two years.
Rhodes University in Grahamstown has been moving aggressively to bring Africans into the journalism field. Guy Berger, the head of the school, is brilliant at getting all kinds of international support. He's got a lot of funding. Betty Metzker went on a Freedom Forum assessment trip. Adam Powell and others have also worked with Guy on "Highway Africa."

ZIMBABWE:

Journalists and democrats are under siege right now. It is probably not the best place for training, although international attention is always helpful. The World Press Freedom Committee went last spring on a trip to Harare with a press freedom group (IPI, WPFC, et.al.) delegation and found that a "Freedom of Information Act" was not that, but rather, a press law to control the news media through licensing of journalists and a two-tier press council system. Violence against journalists was increasing. Government ministers are verbally abusing journalists in public and using criminal defamation laws. They are rushing new broadcasting legislation through Parliament to preclude independent broadcast news stations, in advance of presidential elections in early 2002. Geoff Nyarota, editor of the independent newspaper The Daily News, was charged with criminal defamation for an article he wrote on a U.S.-based lawsuit against President Mugabe. The paper also has been bombed and two foreign correspondents, Joseph Winter and Mercedes Sayagues, had to leave the country.

KEY MEDIA DEVELOPMENT CONTACTS IN AFRICA

Salim Amin, Mohammed Amin Foundation, Kenya camperapix@iconnect.co.ke
Joyce Barrett, former Knight Fellow, Botswana, joycebarrett_2000@yahoo.com
Kabral Blay-Amihere, Ghana's Ambassador to Sierra Leone, formerly head of the West Africa Journalists' Assn. waja@africaonline.com.gh
Isaac Bantu, Association of Liberian Journalists in the Americas, Boston. Bantu is a former BBC reporter 781-581-8018, koukoul@juno.com
Luckson Chipare, MISA, Namibia.
Mike Daka, Zambia Institute of Mass Communications 260.1.251.811, mdaka@coppernet.zam
Jeri Eddings, former Freedom Forum, now Foundation for Media Excellence, Johannesburg 2711.788.5781, joeddings5@aol.com
Joseph Gitari, Ford Foundation director in East Africa
Vinicius Hodges, Press Union of Liberia hvinicius@hotmail.com
Kwami Kari-Kari, Media Foundation for West Africa. Mfwa@africaonline.com.gh
Joe Kadhi, United States International University, Tanzania
Hugh Lewin, Institute for the Advancement of Journalism, South Africa
John Marks, Search for Common Ground, Washington, D.C. http://www.sfcg.org
Sam Mbure, NDIMA, Kenya
Joan Mower, International Broadcasting Board of Governors 202.240.0167 jmower@ibb.gov
Kifle Mulat, Ethiopian Free Press Journalists' Assn. 2511.555.021
Babafemi Ojudu, Editor of The News and Tempo, Nigeria, babajudu@alpha. linkserve.com
Dapo Olorunyomi, (from Nigeria), PANOS, Washington, D.C. felarada@aol.com
Jennifer Parmelee, former Knight fellow who runs VOA's Ethiopia service. 202.619.3669, jparmele@voa.news.com
Bill Siemering, OSI Philadelphia 215.836.7686 Siemering@attglobal.net
Babacar Toure ISSIC, Senegal
Sadou Yattara, Maison De La Presse, Mali syattara@yahoo.fr

The Media Missionaries