On Monday (December 16, 2024), I participated in a vigorous and interesting webinar on how digital media may very well be used to form Africa’s views in worldwide media. It was organized by The Pan African Dialogue Institute (TPADI), a assume tank of African lecturers, civil society professionals, college students and grassroots leaders who’ve come collectively to advertise Pan Africanism within the continent and the Diaspora.
The theme was ‘’Utilizing Digital Media to inform the African Story’’. Martin Oloja, former Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief of The Guardian; Chijioke Amu-Nnadi, poet, veteran journalist and PR specialist and I introduced papers and led the discussions. Within the viewers have been African professionals from throughout the globe and throughout the continent. They included Dr. Effiong Udo, affiliate professor on the College of Uyo who can also be the President of TPADI; Prof Mutombo Nkulu-N’Sengha, Vice President of TPADI and a professor of Non secular Research, Dialogue and Egyptology at California State College, Northridge, Los Angeles; Luciano Hanson, language instructor, mentor and chief, from Tanzania and Viviene Abara from Jos, Nigeria. It was an eclectic assortment of Africans from throughout the globe who spoke on Africa’s challenges, its unbalanced and unfavourable protection in worldwide media; the roles of digital media and the unfavourable influences of individuals like Kemi Badenoch in selling these jaundiced refractions on Africa.
After a quick welcome assertion by the institute’s president, I opened the session with an summary of the issue. African tales in worldwide media have all the time been dominated by studies of illness, poverty, corruption, battle and political instability. These views are rooted in colonial histories and so they proceed to affect world perceptions and coverage selections. This sort of reportage informs persisting perceptions which different areas of the world has about our continent, and why Africa continues to be seen because the ‘troubled baby’ in want of international saviours. There may be additionally an enormous gender disparity in information protection of Africa. Males, highly effective elites like politicians and businessmen, dominate the African story, whereas the voices of atypical Africans, ladies and marginalized teams are notably unreported. Overseas media’s slant of the African story usually follows international insurance policies of their nations, which for many years, usually seen Africa as support recipient, and never equal associate in commerce bilateral relations. Moreover, the illustration of Africa is supposed to satiate home audiences who’re already prejudiced by many years of misrepresentations on TV and tabloids.
Though Africa has its justifiable share of issues, identical to different locations, worldwide media pay scant consideration to miserable information tales somewhere else and focus solely on those in Africa. But, Africa has much more to supply. Botswana; Rwanda; Angola; Ethiopia; Ghana; Senegal; Kenya; Tanzania; and plenty of different African nations are making spectacular strides in lots of financial indicators and HDIs, but they don’t seem to be adequately reported. The African story will not be solely about battle, corruption, poverty, poor management, unhealthy politics and illness. It’s additionally about tourism, the youth demographic dividends; the abundance of its pure assets; traditions and cultures; lovely climate; its vegetation and wildlife and its unicorns.
Eminent journalist, Martins Oloja was subsequent to talk. He famous that digital media gives a platform for African voices to be heard globally, difficult dominant Western narratives and selling a extra nuanced understanding of Africa. Digital media diversifies Africa’s narratives by enabling African media retailers to diversify Africa’s experiences, cultures and slants, transferring past stereotypes and monolithic shows.
Oloja emphasised that digital media can empower our story tellers and foster Pan Africanism by enhancing a way of shared id, tradition and expertise amongst Africans throughout the continent and in Diaspora. Such tales embrace these of African innovators and entrepreneurs, who’re utilizing know-how to unravel urgent issues and drive financial development; African ladies who’re preventing for equality, justice, and human rights, highlighting the significance of gender equality and girls’s empowerment; and African communities, who’re preventing to guard their pure assets and environments, highlighting the significance of sustainability and local weather justice.
Digital media, Oloja argues, needs to be used to inform the tales of African writers comparable to Imbolo Mbue, the Cameroonian-American creator who writes on perseverance and success, highlighting the significance of training and cultural trade; Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi, the Nigerian creator’s story of feminism and activism, highlighting the significance of girls’s rights and social justice; Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian Nobel laureate’s story of creative expression and activism, highlighting the significance of freedom of speech and cultural heritage. Digital media gives African storytellers with unprecedented alternatives to reclaim and amplify their narratives. By leveraging digital platforms, African media retailers can showcase the continent’s wealthy historical past, various cultures, and modern achievements, difficult stereotypes and selling a nuanced understanding of Africa. He concluded that the ability of storytelling in reshaping world perceptions and guaranteeing that the African voice is heard loud and clear within the new world order.
By preserving heritage, selling justice, and fostering innovation, digital media may also help Africa write its personal story for the long run. Chijioke Amu-Nnadi’s presentation drew on his years of expertise as a Head of Division of Digital Media at NDDC, a authorities company that focuses on the event of the hydrocarbon-rich delta area. Though know-how has created new media platforms that make communication quicker and simpler, Amu-Nnadi warns that resistance to alter might impede the speed of assimilation of the digital media within the inhabitants. ‘’The ability of the brand new media is its ease of accessibility, its social nature, potential to problem orthodoxy and its world attain at unimaginable pace,’’ he stated.
There was a vigorous session of discussions and commentaries from the worldwide viewers. Prof Mutombo of Carlifornia State College stated retelling Africa’s story doesn’t imply suppressing or mendacity concerning the unsavoury components of the narratives. Relatively, ‘’what you say will not be as necessary as the way you say it’’, he stated, an allusion to the controversy that has trailed the feedback made by Kemi Badenoch, chief of the UK’s Conservative Celebration. Prof Mutombo notes that throughout the realm of Pan-Africanism, Nigeria looms giant as “the China of Africa.” From the demographic standpoint, Nigeria is to Africa what China (or now India) is to the world. For years, Nigeria has been the primary or the second largest economic system in Africa (by GDP account). Most significantly, Nigeria has some of the assured, dynamic, inventive populations within the World. He stated: “As an African born and raised within the Democratic Republic of the Congo, I keep in mind my pleasure in discovering that there are African writers. In Highschool we learn Achebe and Soyinka in French. After I moved to Europe after which the US (the place I’ve been dwelling for 30 years and now educate at California State College Northridge in Los Angeles), I found that Nigerians are scattered all over the place and have produced sensible scientists, Physicians, Businessmen, and many others. In a single phrase, Nigeria makes us proud, from the Pan-African standpoint.
“For sure that in a world dominated by Hollywood and Bollywood, Nigeria’s Nollywood motion pictures have supplied necessary African different. Nigerian motion pictures are present in each nook of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in French translation and they’re beloved by individuals who see in Nigerian actors, individuals who act like their very own uncles, nieces, cousins, sisters, aunts, moms or fathers they know in cities or of their villages. The influence of Nigerian motion pictures is big and a significant contribution to Pan-Africanism. Pan-Africanism as a drive of survival in a world dominated by highly effective international powers requires that Africans get to know and admire one another. It is usually by the data of African historical past and ancestral values that Africans can admire their continent and their communities. Nobody wish to be related to one other neighborhood simply to be bullied, despised and exploited. As Julius Nyerere put it in an interview, it’s not sufficient to evangelise that we should overcome tribalism, “we should make unity engaging.”
Mutombo’s highly effective mental enter gave the members the fireplace to name out Badenoch for her denigrating feedback about Nigeria earlier than her election as celebration chief as an indication of insecurity complicated. ‘’She simply wished to pander to the intense proper wing of her celebration; she wanted some type of validation by attacking Nigeria, a rustic she as soon as praised when she was working for Parliament years in the past’’, I stated, asking rhetorically, “Why didn’t Rishi Sunak should disparage India and Barrack Obama castigate Kenya or Africa earlier than they have been each elected into the very best political workplaces of their nations’’?
TPADI’s President, Dr. Effiong Udo introduced the webinar to a detailed, thanking the panelists for his or her sensible shows and the members for his or her engagements. He regretted that whereas many journalists make fortunes out of unhealthy information for the sake of their pockets, we’d like journalists with the Pan-Africanist mindset. Such journalists will care extra concerning the impacts of their tales on the African society and fewer about their pockets.
For, because the Ibibio elders say, anie ufok okot ufok omo ataha, mboho esin ikan (for those who name your own home a thatch others will set hearth on it). Subsequently, the great facets of, and information about Africa and Africans have to be emphasised deliberately and constantly to recapture the African tales from additional international destruction. The president introduced that the institute is organizing a world workshop on Pan Africanism in Might 25-27, 2025 and invite everybody to arrange for additional engagements on themes such because the one on digital media.
