Lagos — In the global market place of ideas, Africa can no longer be pushed aside nor will its perspective on any issue be ignored. Max Amuchie encountered Amadou Mahtar Ba, president of AllAfrica Global Media, which is involved in changing the misconception.
He was named after his maternal uncle, Dr Amadou Mahtar M'Bow, who as Director-General of UNESCO in the 1980s, championed the cause for a New World Information and Communication Order. The struggle for a new international information order pitched M'Bow against some western countries led by the United States and culminated in the withdrawal of the US from the UN body in 1985.
But today, Amadou Mahtar Ba is also doing something to bridge the information gap in Africa. But he is doing it in way that is not political. Four years ago, he and two of his American friends founded the AllAfrica Global Media Group of which he is president. The popular website on African news, allAfrica.com, is a project of AllAfrica Global Media. It is a site that has become a reference point for anybody seeking information on Africa or the African perspective on any world issue.
THISDAY had encountered Mahtar Ba early last month in Uyo during President Olusegun Obasanjo's visit to Akwa Ibom State. Like other journalists that came for the presidential visit, he was running all over the place, trying to get every aspect of the visit, every move the president made, the responses and reactions of his hosts and the various projects the president visited or commissioned. Thereafter he would rush to the nearest cybercafe to send the pictures to allafrica.com.
A few days later at the American compound in Ikoyi, Lagos, Mahtar Ba was seated with his American Foreign Service wife, Jessica. Their son, Badou, who will be two years old next month, was running all over the house.
He said AllAfrica Global Media was incorporated on February 9, 2000 in Delaware, United States to carry on the online activities of Africa News Service.
"Africa News Service was the first news agency to specialise in reporting African news and affairs and it was created in 1973 in North Carolina. Using the opportunities created by the new International information and communication technology and Internet especially we now created a new company called the AllAfrica Global Media and AllAfrica Global Media has three founders, two Americans and myself. That's how we started All Africa and since then it has been incorporated in South Africa, Mauritius, Senegal, Nigeria.
"I am president of the group which includes allafrica.com, AllAfrica Inc., and Xymbol, which is the technology division. The other co-founders are Reed Kramer and Tamela Hultman, who are chairman and chief strategy and content officer respectively. There are other Africans including a Nigerian, Akwe Amosu, the executive editor/producer," Mahtar Ba said.
One issue that has worried many Africans is the negative portrayal of Africa by the western media. Considering that his uncle fought a titanic battle with the West in his campaign for a new world information order, what is Ba's position on this? He acknowledged M'bow got him interested in communication even though he (Ba) is a marketer and banker by training and not a journalist.But he has different perspective. "The world has changed a lot but then there was so much imbalance in information between the North and the South. Actually in some instances you still have that imbalance because if look at the world today you have some majors and those majors like Reuters, AFP, CNN etc.
"What allAfrica.com is trying to do is simple, anywhere in the world today, we as Africans have the opportunity to state our own side of the story and telling our own side of the story means that somebody who is in Mongolia for example if he wants to know what is happening in Nigeria, he doesn't have to go through AFP or Reuters. But the person should be able to have the opportunity to read what THISDAY, Vanguard, Guardian etc are saying about one particular event in Nigeria. That's what AllAfrica is for. That's why when we go to a country we try to get a diversity of newspapers including government media so that people will for instance know what is the position of the Nigerian government on an issue because if you base on private newspapers alone you will get one side of the issue but if you get the government angle, the story is balanced. So we are addressing this issue of New International Information and Communication Order in a way that is neither political nor ideological.
"If issues are political or ideological they cannot go far. We need a balance of information between the North and the South. People today from across the world access information on Africa but the problem is that they cannot get it when they need it. We say we have an answer to that and that is what we are doing. We have been successful so far; AllAfrica is the largest electronic distributor of media concerning Africa worldwide. Everyday we distribute an average of 900 stories both in French and English throughout the world through several networks and terminals in the same medium where you have stories coming from the Financial Times or the New York Times for instance", he declared.
He said the three of them who founded AllAfrica Global Media agreed that the company should be both non-political and non-ideological in orientation because that's what the way it should be. He asked: "What good does it make to address the situation politically. For example, PANA (Pan African News Agency) was established in 1979 but the idea was mooted in 1963 when the (defunct Organisation of African Unity) OAU was formed in Addis Ababa. So it took 16 years for the idea to come to fruition. And when PANA was created it died very quickly because of its political slant. And now that it has been commercialised and privatised I hope it becomes a viable organisation"
Mahtar Ba was involved in the recovery plan for PANA. For somebody whose background was banking and marketing, involvement in PANA marked the beginning of interest in media and communication. By the end of the 1980s, the continental organization was practically dead. It was even starved of funds, as member-countries were no longer meeting their financial obligations to it.
In 1990/91 the OAU made a request to UNESCO to help in reviving the agency. UNESCO drew a recovery plan, which was adopted by African Heads of States in 1991. When the plan was adopted, OAU asked UNESCO for experts to implement the recovery plan. UNESCO seconded one of its senior communication advisers, Babacar Fall, who put a team of five people to work with him.
Mahtar Ba was a member of that team in charge of marketing and development. He worked at PANA from October 1993 to July 1997 to pave the way for privatization of the agency. "When I finished at PANA I naturally went back to the banking industry. But in banking, especially in Africa there are not much challenges, just to collect money, place money, that's all.
"I did that for about two years and I got tired and I decided to go where the challenges existed, the opportunities of the moment. The opportunities of the moment if you go back to 1999 we were still in the boom of information technology, and I saw that using this new technology with the experience I had acquired could boost the way Africa is producing news content and delivering it.
"I had to discuss with my friends at Africa News Service. We agreed that it was a good idea and to look for investors. That's how I came back to the news industry. In the news industry especially in Africa there are so much challenges that anybody can deal with and we had the opportunity to see that new information and communication technology could create a niche with which we could make a difference".
Mahtar Ba's wife, Jessica, is an African-American. He said they first met in 1993 in the United States. She was then a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania working on media in Africa. Mahtar Ba continued the story: "That's how we met and we continued seeing each other in different circumstances till 1997. We met in professional circles. I was already starting my work with PANA. My wife is actually one of the very few people who can say they are from Washington DC, the federal capital.
"Washington is a very small place but there are many people coming in and out of Washingto. All her family come from Washington DC and that's rare to see. We are lucky to have our house in Washington though she's posted to Lagos to work in the US Consulate-General in the position of political officer. We have a son who is almost two years and by God's grace we are expecting another son".
It was in 2000 that they eventually got married and three years later, Jessica decided to make a career change. She had been teaching at Georgetown University in Washington DC. She decided to go into the Foreign Service of the US and on the basis of that decision, she is now in Lagos. Mahtar Ba said one of the first countries she wanted to serve in was Nigeria.
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His reason? "We are blessed to have many good Nigerian friends. Though I'm Senegalese, Nigeria was the right place for her to begin her diplomatic career". Mathar Ba's mission to Lagos is actually to put finishing touches to the take-off of the headquarters of the West and Central Africa region of AllAfrica Global Media.
Is his choice of Nigeria as regional headquarters a factor of his having many Nigerian friends? His reply was immediate: "One of the countries in the world where my wife could begin her diplomatic service is Nigeria, one, because we have a lot of friends who are Nigerians. Definitely that was an aspect in deciding where to cite the regional headquarters but if you look at the figures for West Africa alone out of 230 million people about 125 million are Nigerians.
"If you want to do business it should naturally be in Nigeria. That was also an aspect in deciding where to put our headquarters for West and Central Africa. Indeed we feel at home here".
Mahtar Ba said he has not naturalized in America. "I'm a citizen of Senegal. I grew up in Senegal and schooled partly in Senegal (he was in France and Spain for university education). I work in the United States. My wife is American; my son is American. He also has Senegalese citizenship because I'm from Senegal. I work in the US and I like the US way of life.
"As an African I see a lot of opportunities in the US. The USA is a country where you find tremendous amount of love, people who are sensitive to whatever is going on around the world. Whatever people say today about America's arrogance I can assure you that's not the real America. Of course in any country you can find all extremities but the soul of America is friendship, hard work, love. I'm still in my heart and in my mind a Senegalese. Maybe one day I will change. I don't know what will happen tomorrow", he concluded.
