Africa's media landscape narrative, ', ficAfrica'', Afric negative Nigeri chang tHo

Africa’s media landscape has come of age. Given where it all began, we cannot but say there have been a couple of improvements when compared to what obtains today. The only challenge is that the media narrative is still being dominated and controlled by the advanced or western media.

Africa’s stories had not enjoyed the kind of attention one expects. The simple conclusion one can draw is he who pays the piper dictates the song. Africans had long awaited a change in its media narrative but it is obvious not much can change until Africans take the drivers’ seat of their own media.
While we envisaged our pioneering work in this business of changing the media narrative in Africa will not be easy, there are other issues we take for granted. We had hoped everyone will see the urgency in this agenda. There had been other basic issues we are grappling with as we progress in the second year of our operations. Despite these, we see a new day and we are more determined to pursue our goals. We will like to document these challenges we had encountered on our ways to the ideal environment.

It is no longer news majority of our work is focused on the next generation of media practitioners across Africa beginning with Nigeria. Students of media and communications need a new perspective, direction in their training.

‘Gown and town’ experience must be balanced if we must achieve significant progress. In doing this, we also work hard on what we have now: present crops of media professionals, so they can help in the process of shaping the right future for Africa’s media landscape.
Our ultimate operations’ environment is Africa with Nigeria as the starting point. Here are some of the challenges we have faced in Nigeria.
Government’s commitment: if media narratives in Nigeria and Africa at large must change. Government at all levels need to change its commitment to funding media infrastructure, policy and engagement. When speed is required, a carefree commitment will not suffice.
Media training institutions’ leadership: our observation and experience with media institutions where students are trained show some of the leaders: teachers, lecturers, faculty or whatever names they are called must embrace a new level of attitude.
We all understand the challenges in the environment can be overwhelming. But it is clear leaders in media training institutions can also do a lot of damage to the quality of future media practitioners that are being trained now.

They need to see the big picture despite the challenges. Other stakeholders, like ours, are partners in progress. The moment some hear a nonprofit wants to help in building capacity of the students, the first impression is that such nonprofits had gotten funding from somewhere and therefore they need ‘a piece of the cake’ otherwise the efforts will be frustrated.
Learners’ attitude: here we still have a long way to go. Attitude of many learners towards developing right skills necessary for the future can really be discouraging. Quite a number of media and communications students do not see any need to put in all the efforts required. Many need to be pushed.

There is also a sense of entitlement we feel from some these students. Some of the students have the mentality the society owes them so much before they can be what they have to be. They must appreciate real success begins with a level of personal sacrifices.

Unstable school calendars: Since 70% of our activities is focused on the next generation of media and communications practitioners: students across campuses in Nigeria and Africa, our work is hampered by unstable school calendars, strike actions by lecturers and other important associations that can help us move faster.
Even though we are ready and prepared, when schools are on strike we need to wait until they resume. In few instances, when school resumes after strikes, it may mean exams will commence immediately. This implies we have to wait a bit longer before we can do anything. We do hope as we move around Africa, we can achieve more.
Funding: of course, a good stew is a product of good investment. Our activities had been majorly self-funding by the idea initiators. Since Africa is our market, we could have moved faster to other African nations when we experienced a level of delays in Nigeria.
Our board of advisers are some of the best and known media professionals in Africa.

We have them in all the major Africa regions. We also have their unalloyed support and commitment and they are willing to support this initiative in their countries. We are therefore appealing to corporate organizations, media (skills) development international Agencies to consider supporting this initiative.

But despite the challenges, we are poised to make the difference. Our first long term goal is 2025. By that time, we hope our engagement will have produced a few Pulitzers winners and ensure Africa’s media landscape is becoming a reference for the world to copy.

N.B This piece was first published here and later shared with other media platforms for visibility

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *