Voice of Africa a vision of hope for continent
Salim Amin
August 27 2007

In 1984 images of the famine in Ethiopia changed the world. They prompted the greatest act of giving in the 20th century. They changed the way governments and non-government organisations operated in Africa and other developing continents. More importantly, they saved the lives of more than 3 million people.

I grew up with those images. They were taken by my father, Mohamed Amin. He covered this famine, and every other disaster in Africa, for four decades. He died negotiating with terrorists aboard a hijacked Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed in the Comoros 11 years ago.

My father had to struggle to get his images covered in the international media; a media with no interest in Africa, even in the catastrophic famine and desperation of the Ethiopians. Twenty years ago, when making a speech in the United States while receiving one of his many awards for the famine coverage, he said: "You may find it hard to believe now, but when my first report about the famine in Ethiopia was offered to Europe and America's broadcasters they turned it down … but when the viewers saw it they proved beyond all question they were not as small-minded as some of the people who run the media.

"The power of television news could not be demonstrated more clearly … but there is a responsibility that goes with that power. We fail in that responsibility if we do not report the often horrendous problems of development facing the people of Africa.

"We must report them courageously, without favour … if we can do that we can then trust the people of the world to see that their governments will take their responsibilities to the Third World seriously."

Twenty years on, I am asking Africans, and anyone interested in Africa, to take our responsibility to our continent seriously by raising the voice of Africans. I have a vision for the first truly independent pan-African 24-hour news and information channel. To be called A24, it will be a voice for Africa by Africans. This commercial entity that will prove we can set up a successful business model will not only tell the real story of Africa but be a financial success.

The channel will train hundreds of journalists, set a new and balanced African news agenda, communicate relevant information about health care, the environment, business, art, music and other cross-border issues. The channel will be transmitted into rural Africa on a variety of platforms including direct-to-home satellite platforms, the internet, radio and mobile phones.

In a world with perhaps too many 24-hour news channels you may ask: "Why do we need another one?" The answer is that Africa does not have one and we continue to have to rely on the international media to determine what is newsworthy in Africa, to shape our own vision of ourselves. India alone has 32 such 24-hour networks.

Al Jazeera in Qatar changed the way the Middle East saw itself, as well as how the rest of the world viewed the Middle East. It provided a platform and forum for Arabs to tell their own stories and comment on the issues that affected their lives.

There has been much talk about the damaging impact of the stereotypical portrayal of Africa in the media. The photos my father took still represent much of what people think of Africa, reflecting the typical images of Africa that we continue to see on international news channels - starving children with flies in their eyes, executions, genocide.

Overcoming these stereotypes is one of the key challenges that we in Africa face. We can only combat that trend if we have true influence on what is reported, covered and said about Africa.

We are different in each corner of Africa; we have different histories, cultures and many different languages. But we need to talk to each other, we need to understand all these differences, we need to share our successes, and jointly fight our problems and failures - many of which are similar - HIV, malaria, corruption, poverty, human rights and education.

We will empower Africans with the most powerful tool in the world - knowledge. And we hope the channel's presence and reporting will create an impetus for good governance - both in public life and in commerce. For many Africans for many years it was almost embarrassing to own up to being an African. No more. We are proud of what we have built and achieved.

Salim Amin is a photojournalist and entrepreneur based in Nairobi. A24 is due to be launched next year.
SMH
Copyright © 2007


His hearts in the right place, it'd be a monumental achievement to get it off the ground and producing news as an independent, I thought I'd post it here because such things probably won't register anywhere else as far as being 'newsworthy' goes. Which is a pity, Africa deserves bipartisan information as much as anyone else does and I'd hope that it's presence might cause a lot of things to stop happening when placed under a spotlight, as well as highlight the fact that it's not all negative there.

As a testament to the truth in this article every other thread today has recieved posts except this one. Africa truly is the forgotten continent. So many people dying of famine, of AIDs, of war and the rest of the world looks the other way. China, the Arabs, the Persians, all more important apparently. As long as Africa doesn't explode some western property people won't care. But we've covered our ass on that one too, there isn't much in the way of western property in Africa anyways.

___________________
Poetry>Byron//Blog>TheMean

quote:

Orbax At that point you kind of crossed the rubicon and you might as well lay siege to Rome

Sad article.

Why is it that if 'The West' doesn't care, nobody cares?
Where's the rest of the world when things need to get done?

___________________
"...End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path...one that we all must take.
The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all change to silver glass...and then you see it...
...white shores...and beyond...the far green country under a swift sunrise."

Awesome.

quote:

Originally posted by Fir3start3r Sad article. Why is it that if 'The West' doesn't care, nobody cares? Where's the rest of the world when things need to get done?

Well most of the money and international diplomacy capital is accumulated in the west. China is investing heavily in Africa, but there style is not the best one, although there is something to be said about their investment in infrastructure around the places where they have other investments and their initiatives on establishing factories in African countries for value added products such as cement. Apart from that I'm not aware of many other countries doing anything to help African countries progress.

___________________
Poetry>Byron//Blog>TheMean

quote:

Orbax At that point you kind of crossed the rubicon and you might as well lay siege to Rome

quote:

Originally posted by Fir3start3r Sad article. Why is it that if 'The West' doesn't care, nobody cares? Where's the rest of the world when things need to get done?

Because it is the fault of the West that Africa is so fucked up?

Why do you always need to find someone else to blame?!

Only the West can help Africa because it's the West the African countries owe shit loads of money too...

quote:

Originally posted by venomX As a testament to the truth in this article every other thread today has recieved posts except this one.

The fact it got any replies at all restores a little bit of faith in things. I honestly didn't expect it to get any interest in it what so ever and sincerely thought it would be well and truly buried under US domestic affairs, republican shennanigans, conspiracies and the middle east threads.
Which would be ironic how often we criticise our (often biased) sources of information here in the PDD, but I also understand that people have very little emotional, economic or personal stake in the place.
We're all kind of guilty of that at some level even if it is a nothing more than a polite, curious interest, I for one just simply don't have any emotional, economic or personal interest about the middle east at all, even less with US domestic politics.
I don't even live in Africa any more, but I was born there, travelled fairly widely through it (mostly the south, some of the north and eastern coast) and have something of an emotional interest in seeing the place start to rise above at least the stereotypical opinion most westerners tar anyone from there as being the first step.

quote:

Because it is the fault of the West that Africa is so fucked up? Why do you always need to find someone else to blame?! Only the West can help Africa because it's the West the African countries owe shit loads of money too...

It would be very easy to say yes, yes and yes to all 3.
If you think it's that easy, history shows that the continent was widely colonised by the English, German, French, Belgium, Holland and a couple of other countries as well. Those countries in particular owe a great deal of their economic strength to Africa, they could simply move resources out off the continent without having to pay any tariffs or taxes and didn't need to put anything back into their colonies short of basic assurance the supply chain would keep flowing. I won't go into the debate about the slave trade, but needless to say a lot of those former colonial countries also owe a fair amount of their development to workforces that didn't need to be paid and could do the very heavy, manual labour that was required in the pre-industrial era.

What essentially turned Africa into what it is today is a case of those colonial powers in charge deciding to leave, often under duress, very recently and leaving a vacuum of power.
By that you would have to imagine what would happen to your own country which was functioning for many years, possibly several generations of people under say, an extremely totalitarian government which just literally disappeared overnight.
No one is paying the cops, the military, shopkeepers, corporations, the public servants, all the politicians left and you're down to what exactly?
Personal survival, family unit, extended family or tribal unit.
No infrastructure what so ever to buy food (the money is worth toilet paper anyway) there is no law, no protection for you, your family or and friends.
I can get you a 30 year old M16, FN-SLR or AK for about $15-30US that was left behind by the departing government or for a little less something even older and that's all that's standing between you and anyone wanting to take away your home, kill you or your family or for your possession and food.
24 hours a day
Every day

It's not that people want to be shooting each other over there, but when you're down to nearly nothing and you don't want to die or lose what you have it's a case of literally do or die. What that produces from the vacuum of power is attrition for awhile, the toughest, meanest and most organised end up at the top over a pile of corpses and zero accountability for their actions. No one will arrest them, no ones going to see the UN fly in to save the day, the army or national guard isn't going to stop them and it isn't going to be on TV, the radio or newspaper.
After the dull roar of gunfire dies down, things are pretty rotten, mostly because all the medical professionals and what infrastructure there was is gone, along with even basic subsistence farming which was disturbed by powers trying to fill the vacuum of control over the country. You'll have sporadic in-fighting once in awhile and it's only really pot-luck if the people in charge are naughty or nice and much less competent. Someone who's only real formal qualification of leadership coming from the barrel of a firearm is rarely a good leader so you can understand why things don't work very well and rarely last past their lifetime.

That level of social implosion is very hard to overcome, it's lasted many generations of both internecine warfare and a distinct lack of education, skills above the level of subsistence survival and crippling lack of most everything... except?
Except it seems to be profoundly easy to get your hands on US, Chinese or European personal firepower, you will literally find it easier to get an automatic rifle than it is to find toilet paper or condoms, its quite possible to find an armoured vehicle of some sort before you'll find a tractor or combine harvester and ammunition is far easier to get a hold of than medicine which will stop you or your kids from dying.
The developing world does a very good trade in guns there, especially the US and Russia, some degree China... they aren't selling books, medicine, farming implements in any large amounts and they're more than happy to loan the money because there's still plenty of resources over there to be traded for it.
That is Africa at it's worst and why it ends up like that in some places and I'm not even going to touch on the massive amounts of human suffering which are a result of it. It's overwhelming, someone once asked me about going over there for humanitarian aid if a refugee camp was as terrible as it was on TV or in pictures. I told them it looks like that, sometimes worse and what mostly gets to you after being bludgeoned by the visual and emotional images to the point they don't register, is the smell. They didn't like that I insinuated that they smell because it's not really polite, but frankly the smell of death and illness is something I never really got over.

The successes are there, it's not always a negative as some countries survive their trial by fire and begin to claw their way back up from chaos to subsistence to developing countries. It just takes a lot of time, effort to get there. And as shown by a number of countries in Africa, they're far more happy to send their children to a school rather than a militia, buy rather than steal and certainly more than happy to just know the country will not disintegrate around their ears due to infighting or invasion from their neighbours.
Given a chance, a fair go just like you've been given and probably never truly appreciated and never will truly appreciate until you have literally seen the worst life can inflict. They're not going to be 'savages' or basket cases living day to day off charity like the popular media often depicts them as, they end up just like everyone else you might know living in your country. Some good, some bad, but most everyone just wants to get by where the worst thing they have to face when they get up in the morning is the boss at work and paying the bills on time.

We're all African originally.

quote:

Originally posted by George Smiley Because it is the fault of the West that Africa is so fucked up? Why do you always need to find someone else to blame?! Only the West can help Africa because it's the West the African countries owe shit loads of money too...

Sorry it's the West's fault for a whole continent huh?

___________________
"...End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path...one that we all must take.
The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all change to silver glass...and then you see it...
...white shores...and beyond...the far green country under a swift sunrise."

quote:

Originally posted by DJ Shibby We're all African originally.

Had to be done...

___________________
"...End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path...one that we all must take.
The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all change to silver glass...and then you see it...
...white shores...and beyond...the far green country under a swift sunrise."

quote:

Originally posted by Fir3start3r Sorry it's the West's fault for a whole continent huh?

More or less. Go read Lillith's post, it's pretty accurate I think. Since the slave trade, and everything after it, affected negatively the whole continent. Don't be so amazed, after all about 5 or 6 nations controlled the whole of Africa, large parts of Asia and the whole of America not many centuries ago. So saying that the 'west' is at fault for a whole continent is not that far of a stretch.

___________________
Poetry>Byron//Blog>TheMean

quote:

Orbax At that point you kind of crossed the rubicon and you might as well lay siege to Rome

quote:

Originally posted by Fir3start3r Sorry it's the West's fault for a whole continent huh?

Well what exaxctly is it you want Peru to do about the mess Africa is in?!

IMO there are two factors prolonging the mess in Africa (altho I exclude most of the North African Arab states because I think they fall into a different category):

Bad governance and dependency on the West.

If we want to talk about historical blame, then yes, it is entirely the fault of the West.