The trial of journalist Ramiro Aleixo began on 11 May, 2012, at the Luanda Provincial Court, in Angola. Aleixo stands accused of the crimes of defamation, slander and injury against the military justice system, namely its Supreme Court and office of the military attorney. In September 2007, the defendant wrote two articles in the now defunct weekly newspaper Kesongo, about the trial and conviction of the former director of the Angolan Intelligence Services, general Fernando Garcia Miala, exposing the judicial process as a farce. Initially, it was publicly revealed that there was an investigation of general Miala for an attempted coup.

To the journalist’s surprise, and to the surprise of the Angolan public at large, the general ended up in court accused of insubordination, for refusing to attend a public ceremony in which he was to be demoted from the rank of three-star general to lieutenant-general. He was convicted to four years in jail, while three of his closest aides were sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail.

Read more

The African Platform on Access to Information (APAI), an intercontinental initiative to promote Access to Information on the Continent, took the campaign a step further in its address to the 51st session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

The APAI working group, composed of MISA, AFIC, Article 19, IFJ, TAEF, MRA, MFWA, ODAC, and Highway Africa, called on the Commission to recognize September 28th as International Right to Know day, as well as for an expansion of article IV of the Declaration of Principles of Expression in Africa to incorporate the principles of the African Platform on Access to Information Declaration.

Read more

As Malawians celebrate Joyce Banda’s appointment as president on sites, like Facebook and Twitter, the increased use of social media in Malawi comes full circle as her new government takes office.

For it was during the country’s civil society mobilisation against the former government that social media first gained popularity as a platform for airing grievances here.

Now, as Banda begins to purge the Malawian government of corrupt officials and woos international donors back in an attempt to ease the country’s economic woes, users on social media have increased.

The news of President Bingu wa Mutharika’s death began circulating as rumours on Facebook newsfeeds in Malawi two days before it was officially confirmed by government officials on Apr. 7.

The subsequent appointment of former Vice President Banda as the new head of state, and the first female president in southern Africa, only amplified the level of online activity as messages of support and optimism sprouted up all over Twitter and Facebook.

read more

When a financial crisis threatened the existence of Africa’s oldest community station, Bush Radio, an outpouring of sympathy and appeals went viral on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. In the end, it was this outspoken support that showed financial backers that the station was worth saving.

"It got the message out there to the decision makers, and because it was in their faces all the time… there has been offers of assistance," said Adrian Louw, programme integrator at Bush Radio.

The emergence of social media has opened new opportunities for community broadcasters in Cape Town, South Africa. Not only are they able to interact more effectively with their audiences, but they can now do so cheaply.

Bush Radio broadcasts to at least 260 000 listeners, predominantly in the poor Cape Flats, formerly an apartheid housing area for people of colour.

But thanks to social media such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and a blog, Bush Radio now maintains a strong presence in the community.

"The use of social media has been important for us because it has allowed us to do stuff without getting a specific designer on board that knows our internet protocols," said Louw.

read more

The African Media Initiative (AMI) and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) have launched an ambitious strategic partnership to provide professional training and other forms of technical support to develop media businesses across the African continent.

The partnership will include a series of joint projects aimed at strengthening media business in Africa, expanding access to finance and development of new revenue streams, harnessing the digital revolution through technological adaptation and innovation, and building a competent leadership of the media sector through a commitment to improved ethics and management.

The two organizations will work together specifically on developing digital innovation for the African media industry, the development of pan-African curricula and training in media management, joint research activities, and advocacy of press freedom, quality reporting and other areas.

WAN-IFRA (http://www.wan-ifra.org) is the global organisation of the world's press, representing 18,000 newspapers, 15,000 online sites and more than 3,000 companies in 120 countries.

AMI (http://www.africanmediainitiative.org) is the continent's primary umbrella association of African media owners, top executives and other key industry stakeholders.

read more

The media has been refusing to responsibly cover elections - which could incite violence.

Journalism, he said, is like a mirror. This - from a senior Ghanaian newsman trying to justify the media's kneejerk coverage of homosexuality's boiling points, such as British Prime Minister David Cameron's recent call for international aid recipients to respect gay rights, or an earlier incident when Ghana's Western Regional Minister Paul Evans Aidoo called on landlords and tenants to help police round up and arrest gays and lesbians.

According to the mirror concept, some people and politicians can work themselves into a state of caustic agitation, and the media, an impartial sheet of glass, merely reflect the mood.

Too bad. Journalism can more responsibly be considered a searchlight.

With a national vote set for 2012, Ghana is already in pre-election posture, and this concept of purely reflective media could prove increasingly dangerous as the vote draws nearer. Politicians have been boiling over with dangerous remarks - that the election period will be like the Rwandan genocide, for example - and the media is over-reporting these statements, handing out public platforms without adequate consideration for the consequences. While there is debate and dialogue about all the inflammatory rhetoric, no one has seriously implicated the media in the overall mix.

read more

The right to information is at the heart of CPJ's advocacy for press freedom, so we naturally support legislation granting that right, whether it is to journalists or ordinary citizens (or those in the expanding area between).

But laws purporting to uphold the people's right to information are only as good as their implementation. Today, The Associated Press published an in-depth look at freedom-of-information laws around the world and the extent to which they are followed. During one week in January, the AP submitted requests to 105 countries with right-to-know laws and the European Union, the agency reported. Among its findings:

- Only 14 countries gave complete answers within their own deadlines. Another 38 countries eventually came up with data or answers to most of the AP's questions.

- Younger democracies were on average more responsive than older ones. "Guatemala confirmed the AP request in 72 hours, and sent all documents in 10 days. Turkey sent spreadsheets and data within seven days. Mexico posted responses on the Web. By comparison, Canada asked for a 200-day extension. The FBI in the United States responded six months late with a single sheet with four dates, two words and a large section blanked," the AP reported.

- More than half of the countries did not disclose any information, and three out of 10 did not even acknowledge the AP's request.

 Read More

A community’s participation and trust – the latter a product of transparency and accountability - are essential for the financial survival of community broadcasters, the findings of a new study suggest.

Sustainability eludes community broadcasters throughout the world, not least in Africa where, two decades after broadcasting reforms prompted a mushrooming of community radio and, to a lesser extent, television stations, most struggle to make ends meet.

Faced with this quandary, community broadcasters in Namibia, one of the first African countries to legislate for community broadcasting, and the media programme of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Africa (fesmedia Africa) decide to investigate further.

The subsequent study found that, in their struggle to generate the income for day-to-day running costs, stations become detached from their communities, and end up competing – usually unsuccessfully - with better-resourced commercial broadcasters.

Read More

It used to be enough to know how to read and write — not so long ago, these were skills that would help you move a few steps towards success in the world. This is still the case but these days there’s a whole new dimension to literacy that perhaps no one could have foreseen even just a decade ago.

Personal computers have changed the way that we work, and lovely as they are it does mean that developing countries now have to worry about their ICT sector and technology adoption the way they used to worry about roads and schools.

Click here to read more

AU Human Rights Commission Urged to Combat Impunity for Crimes against journalists

The Federation of African Journalists, the African group of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), and the Eastern Africa Journalists Association (EAJA) in a statement supported by the International Trade Union Confederation of the African Region (ITUC-Africa) today told the 50th Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and People's Rights (ACHPR), sitting in Banjul, The Gambia, that African continent is experiencing renewed and aggressive premeditated attacks on journalists, and media organisations in an attempt to control, manipulate and censor the free press and free speech.

"Journalists continue to face deadly attacks, criminal charges, intimidation and harassments by security forces and, in some cases, with manifest support of judicial authorities," said Omar Faruk Osman, FAJ President, who is also the Secretary General of EAJA, during his address at the 50th session of the African Union's human rights body. "We address this august gathering of AU members States, National Human Rights Institutions and Civil Society to highlight the repressive and precarious conditions in which journalists work in Africa and to call on the African Commission on Human and Peoples" Rights for urgent actions to secure effective protection for media professionals," said Osman. To elucidate the concerns, FAJ and EAJA stated that Somalia still remains the most deadly country to be a journalist and practice journalism in Africa as media professionals continue to pay the ultimate price. Two journalists were killed within one month in Mogadishu and the African Union peacekeeping troops in Somalia (AMISOM) are the prime suspects of these killings, though AMISOM admitted the murder of one journalist.

click here to read more

Reporters Without Borders visited Cameroon from 26 September to 2 October to assess the degree of media freedom during the campaign for the 9 October presidential election and to promote a series of reforms that are needed to improve media freedom, including a new media law and the decriminalization of press offences.

Communication minister and government spokesman Issa Tchiroma Bakary said a national conference on media and communication will be held in 2012.

“The media’s coverage of the campaign is trying to be balanced but the campaign itself is not,” Reporters Without Borders said. “President Paul Biya, who is running for reelection, and the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Rally (RDPC) are everywhere. Biya is the only candidate to be seen on campaign posters. The opposition is hardly managing to make its voice heard. Everyone agrees that there is little political debate and this is reflected in the media.

“It is clear from the diversity of the media and the outspoken reporting style that press freedom is a reality in Cameroon. But much needs to be done to improve the media, protect journalists and enable them to work effectively. We stand ready to help the Cameroonian authorities carry out these reforms. They showed a readiness to listen. We are now waiting for them to act. The statements of good intention must be followed by action.”

Click here to read more

On July 9th the South Sudan state was born. However, this birth is mediated by global and regional media outlets. This is because the media in the New State is ill-equipped, undeveloped and least supported. The situation did not change much even with the progressive 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

The all-important self determination agenda has not fairly been grounded in the development of the other fundamental issues of rights to information, media diversity and plurality. It is already an irrefutable truth that a free and independent media can protect people and promote sustainable development. So why hasn't the media sector taken off in the South Sudan?

Perhaps because the existing media is still seen not as a critical sector necessary for not the New State's collective development but also for the individual South Sudanese growth and self-actualisation, the media in the South Sudan is still seen just as a lapdog. Consequently, the Government of South Sudan starts a new era without a comprehensive media and information policy. In fact, most states, except Western Equatorial State, lack any policy and legal guidelines on freedom of information and freedom expression in general and media freedom in particular. They have continued to operate in the Pre-CPA era.

Read more

The season of giving has started — and it not even Christmas yet. Leading international aid agencies, including the United Nations, Oxfam, Save the Children and Islamic Relief UK, have launched massive campaigns to save the thousands of Somalis who are facing hunger in their own country and in refugee camps in neighbouring Kenya and Ethiopia. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has asked donors for $1.6 billion in aid for Somalia and the World Bank has already pledged more than $500 million towards the relief efforts.

The appeals for food aid have been accompanied by heart-wrenching images: children with swollen, malnourished bellies, emaciated mothers with shrivelled breasts that no longer lactate, campsites bursting at the seams with hordes of skeletal refugees. Almost all the large humanitarian aid agencies are rushing to the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya to witness, photograph and film the crisis. We have seen these images before — in the mid-1980s when Mohamed Amin filmed the famine in Ethiopia that triggered the trend of rock stars becoming do-gooders. Since then, famine has become the biggest story coming out of Africa — and one of the biggest industries.

Click here to read more

Until the other day, a small transistor radio competed for space with penholders and diaries on desks in many offices.

The radio was a must-have item for most Kenyans then. For those keen to keep abreast of what was going on, it was the ultimate link to the outside world through news bulletins aired by the State broadcaster.

This was a time when it was, largely, the main means of delivering news from within the country and beyond.
One only needed to tune in to find out the latest on cabinet reshuffles, what the President had been up to and, of course, events across the borders.
So precious and popular were these broadcasts by the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) that many would not miss them.

Of the service's seven bulletins, four were during the day, when most people were at work -- the reason why radios were carried to the office.

Read More

New Platforms for Democratic Debate in Africa

Much has been said and written in recent years about the potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for international development cooperation and the new media landscapes they have helped shape around the globe. In an initial phase, the sheer scope of practical applications of ICTs in the development context sent experts and laymen alike into a state of euphoria. This excitement, however, died down soon enough and gave way to the realisation that crucial obstacles on the technology-powered road towards development had been ignored. A stage of disillusionment and re-assessment followed.

A recent working paper from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) evaluates the organisation’s work in the field of ICTs and media and reaches a series of conclusions that amount to a paradigm shift. According to the authors of the study, technology itself is not suited to make a difference in the practice of international development. It is rather “the economic and social processes behind the technology that drive […] the change. Thus, ICTs are instrumental, not a goal in [themselves].” This realisation represents a shift away from previous thinking which underscored the significance of new technologies to the development context without providing relevant strategies to implement them in a meaningful manner.

One phenomenon which has been linked to both the proliferation of new technologies as well as an underlying social change in human societies is the rise of social media. Karim Khashaba, an Egyptian political analyst and researcher, traces a shift towards a greater degree of openness in the relationships of young people in Egypt. Research conducted under the auspices of the British Council showed that “some [young Egyptians] were seizing the virtual space to better express themselves away from the ‘restrictions’ they faced in reality, or ‘offline’, especially in terms of politics and opposite-sex relationship issues. Research also showed that such practices online could have knock-on effects in the real world.”

read more

The front-runners in the race to make the transition to digital broadcasting are now facing a range of issues including: who runs the signal carrier?; how those who can’t afford a decoder will pay for it; unrealistic deadlines and the absence of any public campaign to explain the process. The politicians seem scared by a process that could affect their citizen’s ability to watch television and are seeking to control the discussion about what’s going to happen. Russell Southwood looks at the early news from the front-runners.

Making the transition to digital broadcasting was never going to be easy for any African country. In effect, the Government has to ask those of its citizens who own a television to pay US$50-100 for a decoder/set-top-box and ostensibly all they will they will then get is the television they are watching. Of course, there are potential benefits and you’d think that African governments and regulators might make a better fist of explaining them. Although the agreement to go digital was signed at an ITU meeting in 2006, most countries seem to be determined to avoid doing anything until the last minute.

The following issues have begun to emerge in some countries and are worth knowing about so that others can avoid them:

Click here to read more

An information revolution is quietly unfolding in Kenya, potentially allowing the public greater access to government data and independent local news. This month, the nation became a regional leader in open government with the launch of a website providing easy access to volumes of public information. Journalists can tap into public budget data with relative ease through the government portal.

"A lot of the information was actually already out there but it used to be very difficult to extract data from the government," says Alex Gakuru, a proponent of open information and chairman of the ICT Consumers Association of Kenya. Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Information Bitange Ndemo said he believes the data will help journalists report on issue-based politics rather than personalities.

"The data release will completely change the way the government deals with the public and will strike a huge blow against corruption," Ndemo said. Numerous media reports have documented alleged government corruption in Kenya over many years.

But launching the site has not been easy. Ndemo told me it took five years of pushing and a request for the president's intervention to make it happen. Some may argue that poor Internet penetration allows the government to "safely" reveal data online without subjecting itself to much scrutiny. But fiber-optic connectivity is expected to grow quickly in sub-Saharan Africa over the next two years, so this online data will likely be seen by ever-growing numbers of people.

read more

An increasingly crucial part of our daily lives, social media is changing the way we interact, work and live. As a truly people-oriented medium, it is even altering our concept of society and democracy. Governments, from Iceland to Nigeria, are coming up with innovative solutions for meeting the needs of their citizens.A fair amount of discussion at a recent World Economic Forum annual meeting held in Davos focused on the future of governance: “Governments today are operating in an environment where citizens’ expectations are communicated through digital means to global audiences in a matter of minutes, with incredible ramifications, as evidenced by the revolutions across the Middle East,” Borge Brende, the fund’s managing director, writes in a report titled The Future of Government.Smart governments know they need to connect with their citizens on a grassroots level and eGovernance is becoming a buzz word in many cabinet meetings. This changing shape of democracy is best demonstrated in three inspiring case studies:

Click here to read more

Long awaited legislation will aid anti-corruption, improve the efficiency and effectiveness of public institutions, support justice and ensure more open society

The signing by Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan of a Freedom of Information (FoI) law is a victory for democracy, transparency, justice and development, the Right to Know initiative, Media Rights Agenda and Open Society Foundations said today.

"With the new law, Nigerians finally have vital tools to uncover facts, fight corruption and hold officials and institutions accountable," Ms Ene Enonche, Coordinator of the Right to Know initiative, said.

Under the new legislation, all institutions spending public funds will have to be open about their operations and expenditure while citizens will have the right to access information about their activities.  Whistleblowers who report malfeasance by their employers or organisations will be protected from reprisals.

"The new law will profoundly change how government works in Nigeria . Now we can use the oxygen of information and knowledge to breathe life into governance. It will no longer be business as usual"," said Maxwell Kadiri , Associate Legal Officer, Open Society Justice Initiative .

Nigerians have fought a long battle to institutionalise transparency and accountability as pillars of governance in Nigeria. The FoI bill was first submitted to Nigeria’s 4th National Assembly in 1999 when the country returned to democracy but it did not make much progress. It returned to the legislative chambers in the 5th National Assembly in 2003 and was passed by both chambers in the first quarter of 2007. However it was vetoed by President Olusegun Obasanjo. It returned to both chambers of the 6th National Assembly in 2007 and was finally passed on 24 May, 2011.

A broad coalition of Nigerian civil society groups has long worked and advocated for the passage of the FoI Bill under the leadership of the Right to Know Movement, Nigeria, Media Rights Agenda and the Open Society Justice Initiative in partnership with its sister organization, OSIWA.

Edetaen Ojo, Executive Director, Media Rights Agenda said: “The signing of the FoI Bill into law is the clearest demonstration ever of the power of civil society working together to influence public policy and initiate reform. We are committed to continuing our concerted efforts to ensure that the new law achieves its ultimate objective of making government work for the people.”

Click here to read more

Though Freedom of Expression is guaranteed in the Constitution, private media in Mauritius and ordinary citizens continue to practice self-censorship. This is revealed in the recently launched African Media Barometer report 2010.

The report states that Mauritians do not have a culture of contesting the state and that the media submit to financial pressures by the government and tow the line.

Considering the small population of Mauritius of approx. 1,2 million, the country boasts a multitude of media outlets. But its smallness and the fact that everyone knows everyone else prevents people from speaking out as they must fear that critical opinions will reach those that can harm them politically or economically.

The state broadcaster, the Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation, is accused of a clear bias for the government and of political manipulation.

The African Media Barometer report 2010 reflects the discussions of ten Mauritian panellists, five of whom work in civil society organisations and five of whom are from the media sector along 45 indicators based on African norms and instruments. It is implemented every two or three years by the media project of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) and the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA).

Click here for the AMB Mauritius 2010

La Commission africaine des droits de l’homme et des peuples (CADHP) s’est déclarée préoccupée par la sécurité des journalistes en Afrique et a appelé les pays membres de l’Union africaine à protéger les journalistes dans l’exercice de leur profession.

Dans une résolution sur la sécurité des journalistes et des professionnels des médias en Afrique adoptée à l’issue de la 49-ème session ordinaire de la CADHP à Banjul vendredi, elle a noté avec préoccupation la dégradation de la situation sécuritaire des journalistes et des professionnels de la presse dans certains pays africains.

"Des assassinats, agressions et enlèvements de journalistes, qui sont contraires au droit humanitaire et aux principes des droits de l’homme, sont souvent commis dans un environnement d’impunité", selon le CADHP. Pour assurer la sécurité des journalistes, elle a invité les Etats membres de l’Union africaine "à respecter leur obligation de prévention et d’enquête sur les crimes commis contre les journalistes et à traduire leurs auteurs en justice".

La résolution a également invité toutes les parties impliquées dans des situations de conlit armé à respecter l’indépendance et la liberté des journalistes et des professionnels de la presse à exercer leur profession et à garantir leur sécurité conformément au droit humanitaire international

Click here to read more

The Internet acts like a new global commons, but crucial platforms are privately owned and subject to corporate rules. A year ago, after learning of numerous friends who had "lost" content on social media platforms - or had found their accounts "disappeared" for terms of use violations, I started writing a paper on the subject. That paper, Policing Content in the Quasi-Public Sphere, was released in September 2010 during an Internet freedom conference in Budapest hosted by Google. It touched on examples from five American social media companies and the myriad ways in which they control and police content on their platforms.

Egypt, Tunisia bring troubles to light

Though the paper received positive feedback, its impact was minimal: at the time, there were simply too few prominent examples of account deactivation to catapult the subject into the greater public sphere.

Click here to read more 

The Kenyan media today largely continues to operate in a philosophical framework inconsistent with that envisaged by the Constitution. A media survey sponsored by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung in 2010 noted the following developments: Media freedom had expanded exponentially, a fact verified by the proliferation of electronic, print and online media outlets and, there being no official Opposition in parliament, media, through reportage that exposed corruption and other malpractices, had assumed the critical role of Opposition.

However, the same report also found that politics still enjoyed an overwhelming share of coverage, and reporting on women continued to perpetuate gender stereotypes.These two latter tendencies clearly violate, not one, not two, but all the values the new Constitution proposes as our guiding principles in all our actions.It would seem, reading and listening to our news, that politics defines what is newsworthy. Click here to read more

Quite often when you read newspapers, listen to radio and watch television in the West you learn how poor Africans are and how corrupt African leaders are. But you will never watch, read or hear anything in these media outlets about the role being played by Western banking institutions; property development and estate companies; the big corporations; and the western political and business elite in promoting corruption in Africa. When it comes to Africa and the developing world the Western media pretend to be doing a good job only when there is an embarrassing story or a scandal that undermines their credibility as the watchdog of the state. It is not uncommon to see poverty stricken Africans in poor living conditions being shown in documentaries, movies, and television screens in the West but the same documentaries and movies are always silent on the role play by the institutions in the West. Bribery as we all know involves a giver and a taker but it is always the taker who is reported in media. In many instances as we shall soon see bribes are offered in order to secure contracts, secure official favour or to induce officials in order to influence the out come of a government decision. In other instances people become corrupt because of the existence of favouring conditions as can be seen in most western countries with their banking secrecy laws. Click here to read more

For the past few weeks the world has been gripped by news from North Africa. First Tunisia and then Egypt are in the throes of change brought on by people power, with social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook being exulted by the international media as the catalyst for these historic events. Now that Hosni Mubarak has resigned and events in Egypt appear to be reaching an endgame, commentators are debating where, not if, this wave of mass action against entrenched and unrepresentative leaders will move next, with many believing sub-Saharan Africa to be fertile ground. As a politician from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where many question the legitimacy of President Joseph Kabila and discontent grows over corruption, it seems understandable that a "Facebook revolution" could take root in Africa. Indeed, sub-Saharan Africa would appear to offer rich pickings for mass movements -- there is no other region on Earth where so many leaders have outstayed their welcome and hold on to power through the most dubious of political mandates.

Click here to read more

Africa may not have the numbers of Facebook users that more developed continents do, but the continent is rising fast. According to Facebook-analysis site, Socialbakers.com, the number of users on the continent grew by over 27% in the last three months, and by over 50% in the last six months. Reasons for the rapid growth in Facebook use are not given but the deepening penetration of mobile devices, a growth in disposable income and the unprecedented political upheavals in the the north of the continent are all possible reasons that have contributed to this rise.The uprising in Egypt unleashed a wave of devotees to the social media powerhouse, and that country now has the most Facebook users in Africa with over 5.6-million, of which 1.6-million joined in the last few months. South Africa is in second place with strong growth of 9% taking the total to around 3.76-million.

Click here to read more

A social media boom has begun in Africa and rural areas are joining the global conversation

In the 1990s, Africa was the global underdog when it came to technological innovations. The developed world was already experiencing a mobile boom. It had matured much faster there than in the developing world. Things now though are very different. The world, you can say, has changed. Today, Africa has more than 450 million subscribers, boosting a mobile market larger than the US, and it continues to grow faster than any other region in the world.

Click here to read more

Many crystal-ball gazers in 2011 point to what they see as the low penetration rates of African mobile telephony as an indication that there is plenty of room for future growth in the sector. On the face of it, the statistics for individual countries give some support to these optimistic prognostications. Taking the overall population as the potential target market, the penetration rate of mobile telephony in Uganda is now only 35%, while in Liberia, it was around 31% in 2009. In Cameroon, where MTN and Orange have a duopoly, the penetration rate was around 38% in June 2010. In Kenya, it just passed the magic 50% level at around this time, while in Rwanda, it was about 25% in early 2010. It is nonetheless worth asking whether it is realistic to infer vigorous future growth on the back of calculations that see the whole population as a vast untapped market. Isabelle Gross cautions that for the foreseeable future, other factors, such as demographics and related economic aspects will keep penetration rates in sub-Saharan Africa lower than those in developed countries. This in turn implies both opportunities and challenges for African telcos.

Read more

Tunisia is in a state of unrest and protesters are using blogs, Facebook, Twitter, WikiLeaks documents, YouTube and other methods to mobilize themselves and report what is going on.The catalyst for the demonstrations, which have ranged from peaceful protests to violent clashes, was the suicide attempt made by Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old university graduate in Tunisia who couldn't find work. The North African nation's unemployment rate is about 14%, and about 30% of those without work are between age 15 and 29.On Dec. 17, Bouazizi poured fuel on his body and lit himself on fire in the city of Sidi Bouzid in protest of the economic conditions.Bouazizi died from his injuries Friday morning. He reportedly was his family's only source of income and was unable to provide for his family after police confiscated an unlicensed produce stand he ran.President Zine el Abidine ben Ali, who had been in power for more than two decades and was a major focus of about four weeks worth of massive demonstrations against widespread unemployment and corruption in the African country, has reportedly fled Tunisia.Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi  is taking over the president's power on an interim basis.

Reports on how many people have died vary from at least three to as many as 20, and the weeks of demonstrations have been largely ignored by the majority of media outlets until recent days. [To read more click here]

The ICT4Peace Foundation, in collaboration with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and GeorgiaTech, is pleased to release, on the occasion of the anniversary of the devastating earthquake in Haiti, the first in a series of papers looking at the increasingly important role of information and communication technology (ICT) in conflict prevention, peacebuilding, peacekeeping and crisis response.

It is hardly necessary to emphasise the impact of modern telecommunications in human life. The growth of the telecommunications sector has tremendously revolutionised all spheres of human interactions. To illustrate, according to available statistics, there are more than 20 million mobile telephone users in KenyaIt is hardly necessary to emphasise the impact of modern telecommunications in human life. The growth of the telecommunications sector has tremendously revolutionised all spheres of human interactions. To illustrate, according to available statistics, there are more than 20 million mobile telephone users in Kenya. It is estimated that this number will increase by an additional five million in just two years.

The growth in the mobile telephony market is not only characterised by the increase in numbers but also by the development of mobile cellular networks. Some mobile telecommunication companies have already rolled out fourth generation networks and compatible telecommunication devices. This has led to the emergence of new services and applications for mobile cellular services  [read more]

‘What we are seeing is conversations that are theoretically open to the world but in practice highly restricted’ Ethan Zuckerman of Global Voices/Harvard University 

Is the Internet a force for development and democracy or is it a digital dead-end? Big questions for just two days at the Salzburg Global Seminar on media and development. There is a lot of healthy scepticism around at the moment fuelled by people like Nicholas Carr, Evgeny Morozov and Malcolm Gladwell.

Some of this is just conservative reaction against specious cyber-utopianism, so it’s always more interesting to hear doubts expressed by people like Ethan who has already done wonderful things with the Web.

Ethan’s presentation here cited evidence that people are not talking to each other beyond their own close groups. Black and White Americans on Twitter, for example, often don’t share trending topics. [read more]

Four big conglomerates dominate South African media. Small independent organisations provide information to disadvantaged communities, but they lack resources and qualified staff. In 2006, the Eastern Cape Communication Forum (ECCF) was founded in East London to address such challenges. 

Compared to their international counterparts, national media in South Africa perform well. Their reporting is fair and balanced, the press is free. It makes sense to speak of “the fourth estate”, which acts as a guardian of the public interest.

South Africa’s national media, how­ever, are dominated by major corporations and predominantly serve urban and peri-urban markets. Communities in rural and disadvantaged areas not only lack access to these media, their issues and concerns are typically not covered by mainstream media. They thus have to rely on local, community-based media organisations. [read more]

In most repressive countries, government censors like to toil in the shadows, maintaining a cover of deniability as they block citizens’ access to information. It is gratifying to see that the Internet and Google are making their job tougher.

Four months ago, Google unveiled a tool that allows users to monitor the requests received from governments to take down material or report data on the users of their search engine and other services. This month, it released another tool that will expose less overt attempts by governments to curtail its various services, including YouTube and Gmail. [read more]

The banning of SMS messaging in Mozambique is but one of several signs that both SMS and the Internet are changing the way media creates a national conversation in African countries. Governments can police SMS and the Internet by closing it down but this is a “nuclear” option that cannot be kept in place (except in Ethiopia) for any length of time. Mobile companies are not used to thinking of themselves as media operators and are vulnerable to having their businesses squeezed by Government if they prove unco-operative. Russell Southwood looks at this emerging brave new world. During the food price riots in Mozambique, both mobile phone operators in Mozambique, M-Cel and Vodacom, bowed to pressure and suspended their text messaging services but then said that they had not done so, according to Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (AIM). As from 6 September people who used pre-paid M-Cel and Vodacom cards found it was impossible to send text messages. Since the Maputo riots of 1-2 September had been mobilized via text messages, it was immediately suspected that the government had ordered the companies to halt the text message service. [read more]

The digital transition is not simply a technical changeover but an opportunity to provide better broadcasting for Africa’s citizens. The best of the continent’s telecoms policy-makers and regulators have been innovative in how they have tackled the issues they have faced. But in an area like broadcasting that is closer to the “powers that be” and potentially more threatening, there has been little sign of much needed innovation. Russell Southwood thinks the time has come to re-examine how public broadcasting works (or perhaps more accurately, doesn’t work) in Africa. Public broadcasting in Africa had a poor start in life. The colonial administrations who set up radio stations often exerted a strong control over their media so for newly-independent Governments, the former colonialists were in a poor position to be giving lectures about public purposes: the views expressed on the colonial radio stations reflected those of the administration and sometimes settlers in the country in question.

[Read More]

Journalists worldwide face grave dangers when they expose societal ills and injustice. Currently, there are 454 journalists in exile and 26 have been killed already this year. The United Nations and other organizations are taking action to protect the rights of journalists whose lives are threatened as their mighty pens battle mighty swords.The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is a New York-based non-profit organization founded in 1982 to promote international press freedom and journalist’s rights. Robert Mahoney, Deputy Director of CPJ, told MediaGlobal , “Most journalists are targeted. They aren’t caught in a cross fire. They’re killed intentionally. It’s a form of censorship which is exercised by powerful people, whether officials or criminal gangs, to silence journalists.” Ensuring the safety of journalists is essential in countries of the global south. Reports by press personnel on the ground are important to democracy and instrumental in rooting out corruption. With their news coverage, attention is drawn to critical areas of societal infrastructure, including economic development and environmental issues that may be overlooked by privately funded media or other governmental organizations.

[Read more]

When on 18 March this year the Daily Nation, one of Africa's biggest and most successful independent newspapers, celebrated its 50th anniversary, Charles Onyango Obbo, a columnist for the Nairobi, Kenya, paper, wrote, "It has mostly been hell on earth for the African media for most of these 50 years. In fact the freest period for the African media generally has been the 15-year period between 1990 and 2005."

At independence in 1960 most newspapers were privately owned, organs either of the nationalist political movements and parties or of businesses mostly established by European investors.

But by 1970 most newspapers of any signifi­cance across the continent were government-owned. Any newspaper expressing independent editorial attitudes was censored, banned or so controlled that most of the owners gave up publishing.  One man, the Liberian journalist Kenneth Best, started the first daily in both Liberia and Gambia in the 1980s. Mr. Best eventually had to flee both countries.  [read more]

If you’re in downtown Nairobi before the 4th of August, be sure to pop in to the Barber Q Hair Studio and get yourself a free head massage. The studio is on the 2nd Floor of El-Roi Plaza, close to the Odeon Cinema. This is just one example of the thousands of snippets of information that are at the heart of Mocality, a free-to-list, hyper-local mobile business directory in Nairobi, Kenya.

Mocality offers a free business suite of tools to all listed businesses, such as the ability to upload customer mobile numbers into the Mocality platform, a free mobile website and 400 free SMSes each month to message their customers about new products and promotions.

Mocality’s CEO Stefan Magdalinksi sees Mocality as becoming “the largest, most successful, business directory in sub-Saharan Africa by expanding the market via internet technology to include millions of businesses that previously never appeared in a directory, offline or online”.  [read more]

I’ve been on the Mo Ibrahim Governance for Development in Africa (GDIA) Fellowship at the University of London for the past two months, but, trust me, I’ve kept a close tab on events in Nigeria. As I was putting finishing touches to my research, news broke that President Goodluck Jonathan had reversed his decision to withdraw Nigeria from international football for two years. At first, I said: “Another Yar’Adua is born!” The late President Yar’Adua was popularly known for changing his mind every second.But, on a second thought, I was pleased that Jonathan changed his decision. His spokesman, Mr. Ima Niboro, said the president decided to reverse the decision because of the opinions expressed by a broad range of Nigerians on the social networking website, facebook. Why was I pleased? It helped my research! Rather than condemn the president, I would rather say “good move”. It is always good to listen to public opinion on some issues – public debate could be very useful. Read more

The fifth annual Digital Citizen’s Indaba (DCI) [www.dcindaba.com], held on July 7 at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, will draw together citizens, advocates, bloggers and activists to discuss how new media can revolutionise development work and give a voice to the unheard or silenced. This year’s theme, Africa’s underdevelopment: Digital Citizens. Talk Back, will explore citizen media and the exploitation of natural resources, disasters, climate change and mega events. The DCI is a project of the Highway Africa Conference www.highwayafrica.com which takes place on July 5 and 6. Our theme will be explored through three topical panels entitled, ‘Natural Resource Exploitation’, ‘Citizen Media on Disasters and Climate Change’, and ‘Mega Events—Whose Voices are Heard?’. The panels will involve activists who use new media to make their voices heard, or those who play a supporting role in development work. The Indaba has attracted the attention of major international figures like Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who will give the closing addresses for both DCI and Highway Africa. Read more

Journalists are having to get used to working in an "attention economy", where the proliferation of new media platforms has created an increasingly bitter struggle for smaller and smaller slices of audiences' attention. Having spent around eight months working in the office of the Reuters editor for ethics, innovation and standards, Wits and Columbia graduate Jackie Bischof considers the place of ethics in the brave new world of journalism.

It was impossible to write this column in one sitting. In front of a computer, my attention is spread across several browser tabs, automated news aggregators and rolling applications like Tweetdeck and iGoogle, instant messaging systems, and the hundreds of stories summarized and condensed into newsletters that land in my five e-mail inboxes throughout the day. I’m frequently tempted to turn to paper, pen and an Internet-free zone – a forest perhaps?

We’re living in a so-called attention economy , where the fight for attention has changed the way journalists report the news. Attention is in short supply. Google’s chief economist, Hal Varian writes that , on average, readers spend around 70 seconds reading news online a day compared to 25 minutes poring over a physical newspaper. This finding - terrifying to journalists - was cited recently in an Atlantic article on "How to Save the News ". [read more]

Citizen participation, access to information and action usher in much needed reforms. The process to engage citizens is easy to describe but hard to achieve. So how do you grab and keep the attention of community stakeholders and keep them informed? This week’s answer is “Participedia.”

"Participedia is a wiki-based platform with an ambitious goal: strengthening democracy around the world. The website consists of a user-generated library of examples and methods of participatory governance, public deliberation, and collaborative public action. From citizen involvement in budgeting to oversight groups that ensure better health care and social service delivery, government initiatives that encourage democratic participation demonstrate powerful results." Launched in 2009, Participedia is a project of Stanford University, Harvard University, and the University of British Columbia. Participedia uses the same wiki platform as Wikipedia except they use it to tell democratic reform stories. [read more]

With a few developments in recent times, Nigeria is still setting the pace in technological developments in Africa and indeed the Middle East and African emerging markets. This is as Nigeria can now join a few other countries of the world to provide its citizens the opportunity of watching the 2010 World Cup LIVE broadcasts on their cell phones.

This opportunity was facilitated by a recent partnership between DStv Mobile, Nokia and MTN Nigeria to push the boundaries of entertainment by making compelling live TV available to Nigerians on their mobile devices. [read more]

Until Twitter came along and blew the lid off news coverage of the Iranian elections last year, many of us were scratching our heads wondering just how social media could help journalism to be more interesting. Sure, Facebook helped you market a story to your buddies and you could pick up a story or two on Twitter but what else was there? Then the Iranians, armed with cellphones, beat the pants off the international news organisations covering the June protests in Tehran and we all sat up and took notice. In South Africa, social media also steals the spotlight from traditional media from time to time. Here are my favourite examples: [read more]

There are 40 names on this year’s list of Predators of Press Freedom – 40 politicians, government officials, religious leaders, militias and criminal organisations that cannot stand the press, treat it as an enemy and directly attack journalists. They are powerful, dangerous, violent and above the law. Many of them were already on last year’s list. In Latin America, there is no change in the four major sources of threats and violence against journalists: drug traffickers, the Cuban dictatorship, FARC and paramilitary groups. Africa has also seen few changes. But power relationships have been evolving in the Middle East and Asia. [read more]

I was passing through Accra recently and while walking through the lobby of the hotel was stopped by a poster for a regional conference on Freedom of Information and at the same time ran into several colleagues and old friends. It was an interesting exercise to be very aware of an issue and personalities but be on the outside looking. The conference was well attended, drawn by the start power of former US president Jimmy Carter, his center and high level activist and political figures from Africa. The Carter Center which has been at the forefront of this work is able to draw attention to and raise the profile of the issue in West Africa.

But what did it all mean to local people? When I asked Ghanaians working or staying at the hotel about the conference, there was very high recognition but mostly it was linked to former President Carter. But the issue drew little recognition or excitement. Ghana did announce that after years of languishing on the books an FOI bill would be introduced into Parliament. But to the people outside of the conference this would have little impact on their daily lives. Their worries were much more about food, shelter, safety, schooling and the actions of the government in power on their lives. [read more]

WRITING crooks your back, it dims your sight, it twists your stomach and your sides,” a monk wrote in the margins of a manuscript he was copying in a medieval monastery. Printing had much more evil potential. It was attacked on aesthetic grounds. Shortly after Gutenberg’s 15th-century invention of movable type, a great copyist, Vaspasiano, said “a gentleman would never foul his library with a roughly inked, manufactured book on coarse rag paper”. More seriously, those who had controlled the flow of information — notably the church — feared losing their hold on people’s minds and beliefs.

As late as the 1660s, England’s chief book censor, Sir Roger L’Estrange, was asking “whether more mischief than advantage were not occasioned to the Christian world by the invention of typography”. Poet Andrew Marvell wrote: “O Printing! How thou has disturbed the peace of Mankind!”   [read more]

Johannesburg — SA's first bilingual "m-novel" - a novel written for publication via cellphones - was so successful that sequels would be released this year, the Shuttleworth Foundation, which published the novel, said last week. In two months 63 000 people - 28 000 of them teenagers - signed up to read the m-novel, Kontax, written in English and Xhosa, after the launch in November. The novel, written by a "mobilist" called Sam Wilson, describes the experiences of a crew of young graffiti mural artists and their search for a girl who goes missing in suspicious circumstances. [read more]

In a meeting last week in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the African Union Commission (AUC) and the European Commission (EC) announced that they no longer intend to create a Pan African Media Observatory (PAMO) due to opposition from the media community, and African and international organisations - including a number of IFEX members, reports Media Rights Agenda (MRA). PAMO was proposed by the AUC and the EC in 2009 to mediate disputes within the media and enforce professional standards and conduct for the media. But the project ignored the reality of brutal state repression of the press as it was set up to give African leaders control over the media environment, reports MRA. MRA and other IFEX members at the meeting, including the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ), the Media Institute of Southern African (MISA), the Center for Media Studies and Peace Building (CEMESP), the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) and ARTICLE 19, rejected presentations of the PAMO project.

[Read more]

In an unprecedented move a few dozen bloggers lead by Sipho Hlongwane have posted a message condemning Floyd Shivambu’s alleged intimidation of journalists. Here’s the rolling blog: Last week, shocking revelations concerning the activities of the ANC Youth League spokesperson Nyiko Floyd Shivambu came to the fore. According to a letter published in various news outlets, a complaint was laid by 19 political journalists with the Secretary General of the ANC, against Shivambu. This complaint letter detailed attempts by Shivambu to leak a dossier to certain journalists, purporting to expose the money laundering practices of Dumisani Lubisi, a journalist at the City Press. The letter also detailed the intimidation that followed when these journalists refused to publish these revelations.[ Read more http://fesmedia.org/african-media-news/detail/datum/2010/03/24/-651043ccb3/ ]

Media freedom is not only a fundamental right but also a basic necessity for a multi-party democracy to thrive and blossom. President Robert Mugabe was dead right last Thursday when he told editors from various stables of the need for an open media if the inalienable right to a free press is to be upheld. Mugabe’s words on the media should now be put into action as a matter of urgency to exhibit his government’s sincerity on reforms and to build a nation whose foundation is copper-bottomed in an unfettered press.

The first step is for the newly constituted Zimbabwe Media Commission to immediately set up shop. It needs to have a secretariat and start issuing newspaper licences to applicants who have waited patiently to launch new media houses. The country’s electronic media has been dominated by the publicly-owned, but state-controlled, ZBC since Independence and it’s now time that the monopoly came to an end.   [read more]

On March 19 and 20, the Nation Media Group and the Africa Media Initiative will hold easily the most high profile African media conference ever witnessed on this fair continent (http://panafricamedia2010kenya.com). The conference will be one of the events to mark Nation Media Group’s 50th anniversary.What interests us is the conference theme: “Media And The Africa Promise: Reflections On The Past, Present, And Prospects For The Future”. How will the media in Kenya, or the wider Africa, look like by 2020?

One place to begin finding answers is the Internet edition of the Daily Nation (www.nation.co.ke). The Nation website is the most read news and current affairs site in eastern Africa, and when I last checked, the seventh highest ranked in that category in Africa.

[read more]

Only 24% of persons seen, heard, or read about in the news are female. This is one of the key findings of the 2010 Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP). The preliminary report is being released on 2 March 2010 at a panel discussion and debate on the occasion of the 54th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York. 10 November 2009 was an ordinary day at work for newsroom staff around the world. It was, however, a special day for volunteer groups in 130 countries across the world who were poring over their national newspapers, listening intently to radio newscasts and closely watching local television. Pencils and coding grids in hand, their objective was to observe, analyze and record their findings on selected indicators of gender in the news for the Global Media Monitoring Project - the world's largest research and action initiative on gender in the news media. The project's overarching purpose is to bring about fair and balanced gender representation in and through the news media.   [Read more  on fesmedia.org/statements-and-reports/detail/datum/2010/03/02/who-makes-the-news-2010-global-media-monitoring-project-preliminary-report-2/]

When I was asked to compile this column, I thought I had to be particularly careful not to overlap with other forecasters by talking about the interaction between social networking and media - but it's impossible. Social networking has impacted onto every form of communication, especially media. With just a cellphone you can be aware of what's happening anywhere in the world - virtually as it's happening...

The impact of social media is increasing daily. Whenever people turn on their computers, they're likely to receive a message that could change their thinking on a particular issue or make them aware of a new product. In other words, a blurring of the lines between public relations, advertising and straightforward news and editorial.

[ Read more]

Traditional media - mainly newspapers - still generate the bulk of the information that reaches the public, according to a research report by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism. A study into the 'news ecology' in Baltimore, US, found that new media platforms and services like Twitter mainly repeat information generated elsewhere.

An overview of the research on the Pew Research Center's website reads:

Where does the news come from in today's changing media?Who really reports the news that most people get about their communities? What role do new media, blogs and specialty news websites now play?How, in other words, does the modern news "ecosystem" of a large American city work? And if newspapers were to die -- to the extent that we can infer from the current landscape -- what would that imply for what citizens would know and not know about where they live?The questions are becoming increasingly urgent. As the economic model that has subsidized professional journalism collapses, the number of people gathering news in traditional television, print and radio organizations is shrinking markedly. What, if anything, is taking up that slack?

[read more]

After setting up an Nairobi office in early 2008, Article 19 now issued the first newsletter of a monthly newsletter series on media developments and freedom of expression in East Africa.

Article19 Newsletter

This month has certainly been busy for the staff at A19 in Nairobi, Kenya. At the forefront of the month’s agenda has been the implementation of The Kenya Communications (Amendment) Act1. Where does A19 come in? Well, in Kenya there are between four and six dominant media groups which hold most of the broadcast frequencies and radio stations posing a threat to the plurality and diversity of Kenyan voices and opinions heard over our airwaves. The Kenya Communications (Amendment) Act aims at tackling this problem as well as the issue of lack of regulation of the ICT sector.

[read more]

A new report entitled: Public Broadcast Services in Africa Series has urged the government of Zimbabwe to commit to media reforms. Citing the highly controversial Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA), which established the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Commission, a body that has immense power to make or break all media in the country; the report, launched in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, urges the government to place top priority in ensuring that: ‘Laws inhibiting the free operations of the media are repealed without delay.’

[read more]

Governments and development agencies have devoted many years and hundreds of millions of dollars developing democratic governance in countries around the world. The idea of creating democracies is still the primary driver of many governance improvement agendas. Clearly, democratic systems often bring with them improvements in governance and economic development, but simply putting a democracy into place is not enough.

[more]