Dakar — The media have a central role to play in improving the human condition in Africa, and should collectively address a range of issues to enable them to fulfill their potential.
This was the substance of a paper by Eric Chinje, Manager, Africa Region External Affairs of the World Bank, in Dakar on November 3. Chinje was delivering a "donor's perspective" to the founding meeting of the African Media Leaders' Forum, co-sponsored by allAfrica.com and the World Bank.
Welcome to the African Media Leaders' Forum, the single-largest gathering of media leaders on the African continent. We are beginning a dialogue, a conversation on the transformative power of ideas, on the spread of those ideas, and on mass media's potential to drive social change.
This may be a defining moment in human history. We are faced with three crises that threaten the very fundamentals of our civilization and co-existence: food, fuel and finance. The financial crisis is exacting a heavy toll and roiling financial markets, food prices are soaring, triggering hunger, malnutrition and civil unrest even as the environment is under growing stress. From most perspectives, the view is of a glass half-empty.
But it is also a time of opportunity, a glass half-full as it were. Sub-Saharan Africa – a region encompassing 48 countries with a combined population of 800 million – is on the cusp of far-reaching change.
Economic growth rates are up across the region – on par with most developing countries. School enrollment rates are up, as are other health and education indicators. On ease of doing business, African countries were among three of the world's top 10 reformers this year.
The information and communications technology (ICT) revolution is opening up new opportunities – for economic growth, improvements in health, nutrition, distance learning, and service delivery, e-commerce, and social and cultural advances.
The percentage of Africans living within range of a GSM signal has risen dramatically, from five percent in 1999, to 57 percent in 2006. Over the same period, more than 100 million Africans became mobile telephone subscribers. The ubiquitous mobile is no longer restricted to just carrying voice signals -- it is now powering e-commerce, allowing small traders to exchange information, transfer money, and keep businesses humming.
But along with these and other hopeful signs, challenges still loom, and Sub-Saharan Africa remains the only continent not on track for the achieving the global development compact contained in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
It is against this backdrop – a glass half-full and a glass half-empty– that we must begin to look anew at the African media agenda. And perhaps, it will help to take a look back, draw some lessons, and then look forward.
The 1960s and 1970s were a time when many African nations were gaining independence. William Hachten, a prescient observer, noted that "Journalism in free Africa was ready to take off. Instead, in many cases, it crashed and burned."
In identifying the malaise, he wrote that the newly independent one-party governments were hostile to newspapers they could not control. Even small African papers that led the fight against colonialism became enemies of the new class that ruled Africa. Politicians who controlled the destinies of fragile new states began to persecute African journalists, a process that "created dull, obeisant and uninformative newspapers."
Unsurprisingly, the number of papers shrank; there were fewer daily newspapers in Africa during the early 1980's than during the 1960's. According to his data, in 1980 there were only 124 daily newspapers on the continent. Of these, South Africa, Nigeria, and Morocco accounted for almost half the total among 38 nations.
Fast forward to the 1990s, a period marked by the liberalization of political space and growing "hunger" for information and new ideas. Private entrepreneurs – many of you in this room – overcame the odds of low investments, inadequate capacity, poor policy environments, ill-defined libel laws, and oppressive regulations to create vibrant media industries
The shadow of these shortcomings continues to this day.
The fourth estate has been varyingly described as an essential pillar of democracy, of participation, and a force multiplier of ideas for beneficial social change.
Mass media have a central role to play in improving the human condition. According to Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, no country with a free press has suffered from famine, quite simply because the existence of such a dire condition would not escape media scrutiny and precipitate public action.
Indeed, for the marketplace of ideas to function well, critical issues of capacity development, financial support, strengthening of private sector participation, and a fundamental realignment of donor engagement with Africa's media industries need to be addressed.
This dialogue seeks to kick-start that process of self-examination, followed by a commitment to take mediated communications to a higher level.
To this end, I would like to suggest three points:
First, we need to strengthen training opportunities for journalists. The rapid expansion of media industries has been not been in lock step with investments needed for training and strengthening of human capacities. Practicing journalists need on-the-job training, access to knowledge resources, and exposure to world-class specialists.
Second, we need strengthened financial support. In this regard, I am hopeful that this Forum's deliberations will serve as key inputs into the design of a pan-African media support facility, with tentative plans for a launch early next year. A group of public-private donors have expressed strong interest in supporting this initiative, and I am hopeful that we will be able to persuade more donors to join.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
Third, we need to move to a more strategic mode of engagement between the donor community and African media industries. By this I mean that ad hoc activities such as media junkets and staged media tours would be supplanted by a more dynamic and upstream partnership, with African media industries being engaged as equal partners, to address emerging issues on the continent particularly as they relate to the public good, economic growth and opportunity.
These are some initial thoughts about the need for elevating the agenda of African media, in development discourse and for societal advance. It is important that we aim big, but begin small, adopting a "learning by doing approach" that allows us to take risks and build on successes.
In closing, my hope is that this meeting is only the beginning of a necessary conversation about the role of mass media in promoting social change in Africa, a new compact for new times that will help the mass media to become a force for sustainable development on the continent.
Your voice – the true voice of Africa's media – will go a long way in determining the hoped-for outcomes that will put mass media at the heart of the development process in Africa.
