The Media Missionaries

6. AFRICA (CONTINUED)

KEY MEDIA DEVELOPMENT ORGANIZATIONS IN AFRICA

1. African Eye News Service (AENS) Nelspruit, South Africa eyenews@iafrica.com Contact: Justin Arenstein. In 2000 they received ICFJ's Knight award.

2. The African Women's Media Center (http://www.awmc.com) is the Dakar, Senegal-based women's organization started by the International Women's Media Foundation several years ago. An anonymous donor provided funding for the center; IWMF is trying to raise money for its continued life.

3. AMARC-Africa. Based in South Africa, they've done community radio training around the continent. AMARC is a global membership organization based in Canada.

4. Bridges, Capetown, South Africa. 021-671-4616. This project, started by Prescott Low, former owner of the Quincy Patriot Ledger, helps independent media learn management and business practices. Contact: Jolyon Nuttal, sabridge@web.co.za (27-021-671-4616)

5. Bush Radio, Capetown, South Africa. Contact: Zane Ibrahim, bush@gem.co.za 27-21-448-5450.

6. The Ford Foundation (http://www.fordfoundation.org). A longtime funder of diverse Africa media projects, they've recently moved aggressively into supporting media projects in Nigeria. Joseph Gitari is East Africa director. Together with UNESCO, they gave startup funding for African Public Radio in Burundi, modeled on America's National Public Radio.

7. Foundation Hirondelle, (http://www.hirondelle.org) a Swiss NGO, has done work in some African countries, including Liberia.

8. The Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (http://www.fes.co.zw), the German-based foundation, has offices in several countries (Senegal, Botswana, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, among other places.) Although FES is not a media organization, it often runs programs for reporters centering on election coverage. It recently did a program on election reporting prior to Zambia's presidential contest.

9. The Freedom Forum (http://www.freedomforum.org). Their presence in Africa is ending. They funded scattered programs across the continent on an as-needed basis.

10. Institut Superieur des Sciences d l'information at de la Communication (ISSIC), part of the Sud Communications Empire in Senegal, is headed by Babacar Toure and Dr. Abdou Latif Coulibaly. They may charge for courses now. They are also teaching new media courses, including CAR and Internet skills.

11. ICFJ has sent 27 Knight fellows to nine countries in Africa, including three to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to strengthen the local journalists' association and develop curriculum at the country's only journalism school; another project to reform the technical universities (Technikons) throughout South Africa where most future journalists learn their skills; and create the first journalism curriculum at the University of Botswana, which now serves five southern African countries (base for the ongoing McGee Journalism Fellowship in Southern Africa); multiple fellowships to strengthen media centers in Zambia, Kenya, Ghana, Senegal and Uganda, and four fellowships to help develop community radio throughout South Africa. (17) They are also active Nigeria, where they are part of a USAID anti-corruption training project.

12. The International Federation of Journalists (http://www.ifj.org), the Brussels-based group of union journalists, runs the Media for Democracy in Africa program. Supported by the European Commission, the group is setting up independent press houses in Gambia, Togo, Tanzania and Burkina Faso. The press houses are supposed to become independent. Training will be conducted there, although little has happened so far, Mower says.

13. International Women's Media Foundation: The group has worked to created women's media associations across Africa. It has done training in health reporting, women's management roles etc.

14. Internews (http://www.internews.org) has organizations in Nigeria, Rwanda and Tanzania. In Nigeria, their Media Rights Agenda organization supports local independent media and has a lawyer working for open Internet policy. In Rwanda and Tanzania, the focus is on providing news content about the Rwanda war crimes tribunal for African newspapers and international media via Africa News Online.

15. Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA). This is the top monitoring organization in Africa. They got $800,000 from the US government. Based in Windhoek, they have chapters in all countries in the region. Contact: Luckson Chipare.

16. National Endowment for Democracy (NED) (http://www.ned.org). Congress earmarks these funds for specific initiatives, including grants to some media projects.

17. Network for the Defense of Independent Media in Africa (NDIMA). Founded in 1993, this pan-African human rights organization represents both local and international media groups, fights for freedom of expression, monitors violations, trains journalists and operates the Recasu program for sheltering stateless journalists. Contact: Sam Mbure. Supporters include UNESCO, Ford Foundation, Norwegian Human Rights Fund (NHRF), World Free Press Institute, Friedrich Ebert Foundation, and IFEX.

18. Nordic/Southern African Development Community Journalism Center (NSJ) in Maputo, Mozambique offers training in business and economics reporting. The Freedom Forum funded them to hold a course for publishers several years ago in Malawi. Mower "was underwhelmed" by the results.

19. Open Society Institute (http://www.soros.org) OSI's media emphasis in Africa has been on community radio projects, funded by three regional OSI foundations serving 27 countries. (18) Jean Fairbairn (jean@ct.osf.org.za) was the program officer largely responsible for developing community radio in South Africa. Her training on election coverage at the community radio stations paid off: the stations were cited by monitoring groups as having the the best election coverage, Siemering said. OSF-SA (South Africa) spent $668,000 on media. OSF-SA says it is South Africa's single largest donor in community radio, providing grants and operational support and assisting stations in the development of programming and information-sharing networks, which use email and Internet-based technology. The foundation produced a manual for use by radio stations who had never covered elections before, and provided grants to "develop the capacity of radio staff" to cover the local elections. Ongoing support also was given to organizations promoting freedom of expression and access to information.

Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) serves Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Its $7 million budget includes media and other initiatives, including funding for communications projects about HIV/AIDS and assistance for rural community radio stations.

Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) covers 18 countries, including Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Cote d'Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo, Cameroon and Chad. Its $1.6 million budget includes supporting independent and diverse media and other nonmedia projects. Since most of the population in West Africa has no regular access to print journalism or television, OSIWA works on developing community radio, building on lessons learned from public health information dissemination, truth commission reporting in South Africa, and the tragic example of hate radio in Rwanda. OSIWA experimented with regional and sub regional democracy radio projects in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. In Nigeria, OSIWA supported a media and diversity conference, including the role the press plays in covering ethnic strife

20. The Panos Institute has a range of media-related programs. With offices in Zambia, South Africa, East Africa and Senegal and elsewhere, the institute has produced a range of publications and promotes better radio, communications and media laws in many countries in Africa. Each office seems to function somewhat autonomously. Despite its good intentions, the offices Joan Mower visited (Lusaka and Dakar) never seem very busy. Contact: The Washington office is headed by the well-respected Nigerian journalist Dapo Olorunyomi. He has done ethnic diversity workshops with Nigerian journalists.

21. Population Reference Bureau (http://www.prb.org) is USAID funded. They're supporting a group of African women journalists to improve health coverage. They've worked in West Africa and in Southern Africa

22. The Reuters Foundation (http://www.foundation.reuters.com) offers a range of programs in writing, broadcasting, reporting for journalists from around the continent. Generally, journalists travel to the London headquarters.

23. Search for Common Ground creates media programming and journalism training around the world to ease conflicts and find common ground. Founded by John Marks, it is co-directed by his wife Susan, who is South African. In 1995 they created Studio Ijambo, using Hutu, Tutsi, Sanwa and Muslim journalists to create 15 hours of programming each week, including a popular soap opera, to bridge ethnic divides. This is a highly regarded organization supported by numerous foundations including Mott, MacArthur, Kellogg, Eurasia, Hewlett, OSI, and Rockefeller.

24. UNESCO (http://www.unesco.org) set up press houses in Rwanda and Burundi. It has funded training programs in those countries and in Angola and other places. Contact: Alonso Azna is communications director for UNESCO East Africa in Nairobi.

25. World Bank Institute (http://www.worldbank.org) WBI has done training programs in Ethiopia and in East Africa, and funded diversity training in Nigeria.

26. World Free Press Institute (WFPI ) has tried to convene locals who have a stake in East Africa journalism training. They got into Africa four years ago when NDIMA saw their website and asked them to do election coverage training. Ford Foundation and Frederich Ebert invested $30,000 and they trained in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

WFPI has raised about $45,000 toward the construction of a $150,000 Media Resource Center for African Journalists in a rural area outside Nairobi. The proposed center would house and enlist as teachers stateless journalists expelled from Ethiopia, Rwanda and Burundi who are temporarily in Kenya seeking repatriation. UNESCO has supported the Recasu program (Refugee Care and Support), which has served 63 journalists over the past three years.) But they live in dispersed rented rooms, in fear that they will be arrested by Nairobi police demanding bribes. The residential center would be a safe haven and would allow the refugee journalists to stay together and hold training workshops.