Blogging for Dollars $$$: African journalists win top blog awards

It has been awhile since I have written anything about news stories coming out of Africa. Fortunately, Africa’s growing communities of blog authors, citizen and professional journalists and writers who publish their work online have begun to garner the world’s attention over the past few years. This makes my small contribution to blogging about Africa and global issues no less important but it does help to give me and others who write about Africa inspiration.

Just today I made two important discoveries about the success of Africa’s bloggers. Global Voices Online has an update on the first African Blog Awards for Journalists which led me to dig deeper and review the work of a wonderful young investigative reporter in Uganda, Rosebell Kagumire.

Rosebell, who just last year started her personal blog, is one of the winners of the first Waxal Blogging Africa Awards for Journalists. Like Andrew M. Mwenda* and other top African journalists and news professionals who have come to our attention via the CNN African Journalists Awards and the Panos Institute in London, Rosebell Kagumire and the winners of the 2009 Waxal Blog Awards are important new voices in Africa that we should closely follow.

Here is a link to a recent interview with Rosebell conducted by the Financial Times correspondent Christopher Mason:

Radio Slience – a look at efforts to increase access to media in the developing world
The View From Uganda: Multi-platform journalism and more 02/23/09


Be sure to visit the blogs of the winners of the Waxal African Blogging Awards, particularly the work of the award-winning DR Congo radio journalist Cedric Kalonji (Radio Okapi) and the news team at the Lusaka Times. Independent press and news media is under threat in many African countries but thanks to the hard work and diligence of these brave people Africans have a stronger voice on the world stage.

Note*: Some of my readers may remember the Ugandan journalist and newspaper editor, Andrew M. Mwenda, from his excellent presentation on foreign aid to Africa made at the 2007 TED Africa: The Next Chapter conference. Following his talk in Arusha (Tanzania) Mwenda’s popularity soared in the blogosphere and in the international press. Andrew had to fight against arrest on trumped-up charges by the Ugandan government in 2007 and interference by the government with the launch of his new newspaper in Kampala, The Independent. Here is an example of the type of reporting that keeps Andrew in hot water with Uganda’s longtime ruler (23 years and counting), President Yoweri Museveni:

Museveni walking same path of African dictators by Andrew Mwenda, 02/18/09

Kevin Sites, independent war correspondent and the first video correspondent for Yahoo! News (see Kevin Sites In the Hot Zone) wrote an article for Parade Magazine about Andrew Mwenda and the difficulties and dangers faced by independent investigative reporters in Uganda.

Parade.com (Parade magazine online)
'They Can Kill Me, But They Can't Kill My Ideas' by Kevin Sites, 02/01/09


Related articles and resources

PANOS London – promoting dialogue, debate, and change
Global Voices Online – Berkman Center @ Harvard University Law School
Highway Africa – Citizen Journalism, Journalism for Citizens
TED Conferences – where the world’s leading thinkers and doers gather
TED Africa Director Emeka Okafor announces new TED Fellows Program
An Introduction to Africa 2.0 and the TED Africa Conference (Ethan Zuckerman)
Deutsche Welle Best of the Blogs Awards (the BoB’s)
Reporters Without Borders – English site
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)

Technorati tags:Africa journalism blogging citizen journalism free press media global voices rising voices

Seven Questions: an interview with the author of Jewels in the Jungle about Africa, Europe and the U.S.A.

In July my dear friend Ana, an economist who lives and works in London, invited me to write a guest post for her blog Koluki. Since Ana and I communicate regularly about a wide range of news and issues it was a pleasure for me to accept her invitation. Some of my regular readers may remember Ana from a previous post at Jewels about the 2007 EU-Africa Summit held in Lisbon.

We agreed on a personal interview based upon the popular 7 Questions format used so successfully in interviews with leading thinkers of the day. Since several of my answers are a bit longwinded (lengthy) I shall waste no more of your time with a long introduction. Part 2 and 3 of this interview will follow over the next weeks and will be posted at Koluki as well as here at Jewels in the Jungle.

Part 1________ Questions Nr. 1,2, & 3 (published Sep 1, 2008)
Part 2________ Questions Nr. 4 & 5 (published Sep 6, 2008)
Part 3________ Questions Nr. 6 & 7 (coming soon)


1. How and why did you get started blogging about Africa and why the title 'Jewels in the Jungle'?

I have had a deep interest in the continent and people of Africa for much of my adult life since my own family heritage is so closely linked to the history of Africans in the New World (the Americas) starting around the beginning of the 18th Century. ‘Jewels in the Jungle’ was launched back in May of 2004 when the blogosphere was still relatively small (approximately 7 million blogs vs. the 100 million+ blogs worldwide today).

After watching the rapid development and growth of online publishing tools and blog authors from a technology point of view since 2001-2002, I felt that using a weblog to share information and news online about Africa with people around the globe was an idea worth pursuing. When I started ‘Jewels’ I didn’t have the slightest idea that it would gain popularity and a global readership of more than 90,000 visitors.

Re: the blog title ‘Jewels in the Jungle’

Sort of catchy, ain't it? Love it myself___ I need to get the name trademarked or something. The title gets its name from a phrase that I used to describe a project organized by a photographer friend in Germany. My friend, Susanne Behnke, decided one autumn day in 2002 that she was going to do something to “help out the poor, helpless orphan children of Uganda”. When she broke the news to me about her project idea for Ugandan children I was filled with dread that this was going to turn out to be a nightmare. Susanne, a professional photographer and high school teacher, is a real go-getter with a big heart for young people. Susanne had never traveled to the African continent but she has visited several countries in Europe and North America. Somehow she was able to pull it off despite the many adventures encountered along the way both in Uganda and here in Germany.

Working together with her friends in Uganda and organizations and companies in Germany Susanne managed to plan, organize, and launch a project to build new schoolrooms for children of the Iganga District (near Lake Victoria and Jinja). The project team also awarded thirty scholarships to young schoolchildren to help them pay their school fees for one year. Jewelry design students from one of Germany’s best known art & design academies (the Pforzheim School of Design) donated their time and work in support of the project. Auctions for the sale of handmade designer jewelry created specifically for this project were held at three locations in Germany. Money collected from these auctions plus generous private donations was used to begin construction on new school classrooms in Iganga District, Uganda. Hence the story of the origin of my blog title ‘Jewels in the Jungle’.

Note: I’ve uploaded photos from the project to my Flickr.com portfolio. Sotheby’s Amsterdam used a similar concept in 2007 for the ‘Jewels for the Jungle’ auction to help raise money for the World Wildlife Fund.


2. To what extent do you think that blogs, social networks, and other online publishing and collaboration tools can contribute to Africa's development?

I feel that blog authors coming from the global pool of private citizens, citizen journalists, news and media professionals, educators and scholars, students and so forth have already contributed a great deal to Africa’s development, especially over the last 4 to 5 years. I haven’t spent much time investigating social networks and online forums so I cannot speak about their impact on Africa’s development.

There is more information about Africa, much of it written and produced by Africans, available to the global public today than at anytime in world history. The simple, easy-to-use technologies behind online publishing tools i.e. Blogger, Wordpress, and Typepad combined with the power of blog search engines and blog aggregators has helped to make it possible for millions of people to participate in the World Live Web, the live or near real-time global online communications and collaboration around a variety of news events and issues. Blogs in combination with the array of online communication and collaboration tools and platforms that make up what some refer to as Web 2.0 technologies has helped the world to understand that “Africa is in the House!” Africa and Africans are an integral part of the global community and the young people of Africa today refuse to be ignored and left behind.

Users of these new web-based applications are transforming how local, national, and international news is gathered, analyzed, and delivered. Leading international and national news media companies have started using blogs and reader-generated content on their websites. It is standard practice for the best online news sites to offer reader feedback to editorials and feature articles in the form of comment tools. What is also interesting to watch is the growing impact that blog authors and citizen journalists (and their readers) are having on national politics and elections around the world. This is happening from the U.S.A. to Russia, from Egypt to Ecuador, South Africa to South Korea___ blog authors and their readers are making a significant contribution to news coverage worldwide as well as having an impact on politics and social issues. Jay Rosen, associate professor of journalism at New York University and author of PressThink, goes into more detail about this subject in his August 2007 editorial for the LA Times ‘The Journalism that Bloggers Actually Do’ .

Africa’s bloggers and people around the world who write and report on Africa via blogs and citizen-generated news sites are having an effect on how heads of state, political figures, business leaders, and public officials operate. It is especially difficult these days for many of Africa’s longstanding despots and dictators and thieves of the public wealth (corrupt officials) because they can no longer hide their dirty deeds and deplorable actions from an enquiring world. Some regimes continue to intimidate and persecute journalists, editors, and publishers by keeping a tight stranglehold on a free press and free speech___ but these leaders can no longer easily control the growing sources of reliable information or the delivery channels for news. News today can be delivered from anywhere___ the Internet, mobile phones, miniature storage devices, video cameras, you name it.

This is true not only for Africa but for leaders in regions and countries around the globe. Case in point: Look east, look east to China and the difficulties that the government in Beijing is having with outraged journalists over press freedoms and Internet access. Bloggers were the ones to break the story about 'The Great Firewall of China' first, long before the world’s press and media professionals caught on.

Bloggers are everywhere and just about anyone with access to a computer and a reliable Internet connection, an ability to communicate well through the written word or voice (audio) or imagery (photos, video, graphics), combined with credibility and some authority on a given subject can become a blogger with a worldwide audience.

From the election turmoil in Nigeria and Kenya to the exposure of the despotic rule of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and murderous rule of Omar al-Bashir in Sudan to the headquarters of the African Union and the United Nations, bloggers are having an impact on the way we live and the choices of information that we consume daily.

3. As an American living abroad for many years (Europe), what has been your experience with Africans in the Diaspora?

One of the most vivid images of Europe that will remain in my mind forever will be the day in 1986 that I saw three young African men sitting on a dock in a small harbor town in northern Germany looking out across the North Sea. These were not the first black Africans that I had encountered in Europe or Germany but for me they defined the plight of so many African immigrants to Europe that I have met in the closing decade of the 20th Century and right up to this very day.

At the time I was working for an aerospace engineering firm that had defense contracts with the German government to assist the German Luftwaffe and Marine. My assignment was to support German scientists, naval officers and technical staff on a naval air station at the ass-end of the world. Here in the middle of nowhere, at the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc countries whose armies were amassed on the East German border just a stone’s throw away were these African ‘asylum seekers’. I couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t believe my eyes.

To make a long story short, I soon befriended these young men and shared in many great conversations about Africa and America and Europe until my departure from the area about 4 years later. I still have many fond memories of those days and I miss them dearly, I really do. Unfortunately I no longer have contact to any of those young Africans from that time but I have learned that one of them returned to Ghana and is today a successful Internet radio entrepreneur. I would like to think that our heated discussions and debates about all kinds of subjects combined with my encouragement to maintain a level of self-respect and demand respect from others, to always work hard to improve oneself through education and learning inside and outside of a classroom, that these shared experiences had a positive effect on their lives and their futures.

Of course not all Africans that I have met in Europe have been asylum seekers or economic refugees. Many of my African friends and acquaintances came to West or East Germany (GDR) on academic scholarships back in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Over the years I have had the privilege to know a number of young African students, professionals, and just ordinary people from every corner of the African continent who live and work in Germany. These Africans are integrated into European society to the extent that their communities and co-workers will accept them. Based upon my own observations and personal experiences the better educated and skilled African Diaspora in Germany is building a solid foundation for themselves and their families. They are ‘paving the way’ and breaking the ice of racial discrimination, prejudice, and fear to open up new career opportunities for the educated and skilled African people who will follow.

It is evident that immigrants and economic refugees who are arriving in Europe today from Africa and around the globe without a good education and modern job skills are upsetting the apple cart, causing resentment and fear within traditional European society and even within some elite African-European circles. A report released by the German Economics Ministry in August 2007 showed that Germany was suffering from an acute skilled labor shortage costing the economy more than €20 billion Euro per year. A 2008 report by the Washington DC-based Center for Transatlantic Relations (John Hopkins University SAIS) showed that the “vast majority of foreign migrants settling in the EU are poorly qualified ( 85%)…” where skilled foreign workers make up about 55% of the U.S. foreign labor market compared to only 5% in Europe. When it comes to the education and skills needed to fill highly-skilled positions in the medical, technology, and services professions, foreign workers make up less than 1% of the entire labor market across the 27-member European Union. This acute skilled labor shortage is cause for some EU parliamentarians to consider instituting an EU Blue Card program to fill the growing labor gaps in EU member countries.

This acute skilled labor shortage combined with fears over terrorism from abroad, increased illegal immigration and other woes does not bode well for the 10’s of thousands of unskilled immigrants from African countries who have been fleeing poverty on the continent for a better life in Europe. It will be interesting to see what impact these challenges will have on a growing African Diaspora in Europe over the next decade or two.

The path to better job opportunities and acceptance and integration of Africans into European society will be a long and hard fought road, not unlike the problems faced by African-Americans and many other ethnic groups in the United States, Canada, and throughout the Americas over the past few hundred years. It has already taken nearly two millennia for Africans from Saharan and sub-Saharan countries to be accepted as an integral part of European history, culture and society. Let us hope that it doesn’t take much longer because time is running out.

Link to Seven Questions Interview: Q&A Nr. 4 (next page)


References and related articles:

Germany – Die Zeit Online
Europa: Zuwanderer gesucht! by Joachim Fritz-Vannahme, 07/02/08

Germany – DW World (Deutsche Welle Online)
Skills Shortage Could Dent German Economy, Study Warns – 08/20/07

Germany – Spiegel Online International (English edition)
The World from Berlin: Fortress Europe is Taking Shape – 06/19/08
Africa’s Plight: How Europe Lost Africa by Dominic Johnson – 02/28/08
(article re-published from International Politik – Global Edition)
The Onslaught of the Poor: The New Mass Migration by Klaus Brinkbäumer – 01/24/07
An African Odyssey: John Ampan’s Four Year Journey from Ghana to Germany by Klaus Brinkbäumer – 01/25/07

BBC News (UK)
Malta fears 71 migrants drowned, 08/27/08
Migrant Crisis: Destination Europe: maps, graphics and articles exploring migration from Africa to Europe, 07/02/07

Mother’s battle against Senegal migration by Tidiane Sy, 11/06/06

Technorati tags:Africa Angola Europe Germany USA America African American politics economic development migration immigration diaspora

Africa: New Media and Information Technology Updates from Africans for the World

I must apologize to my regular readers for not posting as frequently to Jewels in the Jungle as I would have liked over the past few months. I’ve been extremely busy with work on new business initiatives and projects for emerging markets with a special focus on key African countries open and ready for foreign investment and business development.

I’ve recently had some very interesting communications with U.S. and European technology companies about new Web 2.0 tools and SaaS offerings (Software as a Service) that are the present buzz in the IT press and media. Having followed these often confusing developments and trends in IT over the past decade it looks as if many new startups and established technology companies are finally getting their act (and apps) together for use by SME businesses, government and the public sector, and other workgroups (i.e. bloggers) worldwide. There are many interesting new tools for networked-based and web service based (online delivery) productivity, content creation and publishing, communications, and collaboration.

For more about what is going on in this hot technology space see the Office 2.0 Conference 2007 that just ended last week in San Francisco and the O’Reilly/CMP Web 2.0 Expo held earlier this year. Berlin, Germany will be hosting the European launch of the Web 2.0 Expo 2007 and Tokyo, Japan will be home to the Asia Web 2.0 Expo. Both shows are scheduled for November 2007 so stay tuned to the news about these conferences and trade shows if you cannot attend.

The tech savvy folks at South Africa’s Rhodes University New Media Lab are wrapping up the 2nd Annual Digital Citizen Indaba (DCI). This year’s conference featured several impressive presentations by leading figures in the African blogging community who spoke and wrote about the use of new media technology in Africa. Don’t miss the latest news posted to the Digital Citizen Indaba 2007 blog (sponsored and hosted by South Africa’s Mail & Guardian) and the official DCI conference wiki.

Global Voices Online’s regional editor for sub-Saharan Africa Ndesanjo Macha delivered the opening address. Melissa Gardnier of the Rhodes University New Media Lab summarized Ndesanjo’s opening address in her post “From Rock Paintings to Blogging”. Top Kenyan blogger Daudi Were of Mentalacrobatics delivered a presentation titled Fractured Identities and then followed-up with a hammer titled “Who Owns the African Blogosphere”. Daudi’s piece is a Must Read for many of us who write about Africa as he addresses the heated global debates about who is African, what is African, who is an African blogger, where is Africa, who owns Africa and other nonsense from some people with an African identity crisis. Heck, the last time I checked with the experts on human origin and migration over the past 40,000 years every human being on Earth is an African. It’s just that some people are more African than others and race and skin color and geographic location and culture are simply pieces of the great human puzzle.

Here is the introduction to Daudi’s post because he lays it out so beautifully:

“Colonialists would often turn up at an African community and ask, “Who does that land belong to?” pointing to the vast fields around the village. Many times the reply from the villagers would be, “It does not belong to anyone.” The colonialists would then promptly set about fencing and craving [sic] up the land amongst themselves, which would enrage the Africans, which, in turn, would confuse the colonialists as after all they had been told that this land did not belong to anyone.

These exchanges highlight the differences in the cultures involved and the different understandings of what initially looks like a very simple situation. When the Africans tell the colonialists that this land does not belong to anybody, the colonialists would take that to mean that the land is unoccupied. “It does not belong to anyone” is taken to mean it is ownerless. That was a misunderstanding of what they had been told. For when the African said, “This land does not belong to anyone”, what they mean is this land does not belong to any single person or family. This land is the property of the community under the stewardship of those who currently occupy it. The Elesi of Odogbolu*, a Nigerian chief, told the West African land commission in 1912, that he “conceived that land belongs to a vast family of which many are dead, few are living and countless yet unborn”. In other words, “this land does not belong to anyone” meant this land belongs to everyone. It is occupied by us, but we do not own it, we are merely the current stewards holding it for future generations…”

End excerpt: Read more from Who Owns the African Blogosphere (Sep 11th)

Author’s Notes: Damn. The same thing happened in my country of birth, the U.S.A. Our own oft times bloody history of conflicts over land was a big misunderstanding between people from different cultures. A lot of good people died over lands that in essence never belonged to anyone or better stated belonged to those who were the appointed stewards of the land. Boy that could put U.S. real estate markets and the world economy into a downward tailspin if it would hold up in a court of law!

*For detailed information about the history of property rights in 19th Century Nigeria see “The Emergance (or Not) of Property Rights in Land: Southern Nigeria, 1854 to 1914” by James Fenske. Yale University Dept. of Economics has a download of the 170 page document (PDF) at the following URL: http://www.econ.yale.edu/seminars/echist/eh05-06/fenske-061129.pdf

In my recent communications with technology professionals about the use of their new communication and collaboration software I was proud to be able to point to the excellent work by East Africa’s new media & technology pioneers at Kenya Unlimited and the KBW (Kenyan Blogs Webring). The UK newspaper The Independent published a feature article in August about the movers and shakers behind this excellent social networking community and freedom of expression experiment in Kenya. The article highlighted work by our very own GVO pioneer Ory Okolloh on the Mzalendo.com project, the Nairobi-based government watchdog project to help the citizens of Kenya take a more active role in monitoring the activities of their national and regional government. Please read:

FCAEA: Foreign Correpspondents of East Africa Association (source: The Independent)
Boom in blogs gives Africans a voice on the Web, 08/02/07

Ory Okolloh, a Harvard Law School graduate and author of the Kenyan Pundit, M of Thinkers Room, and Daudi Were of Mentalacrobatics were interviewed for the article. Ethan Zuckerman, co-founder of Global Voices Online and a pioneer in providing inspiration and opportunities to bloggers worldwide, was also interviewed. Ethan is everywhere in the mainstream media these days, and that is a good thing for many international blog authors and their respective communities.

Of course there are other noteworthy social networking sites and blogger communities, blog aggregators, and citizen journalist-powered news & opinion websites springing up all over the Africa sector of the Sphere that may not be so well known to international news editors and technology columnists who are supposed to be on top of New Media developments worldwide.

Key Nigerian tech professionals and bloggers have done some remarkable work in supporting their large online communities at home and abroad and there are the new pan-African sites like African Loft and African Path and African Women Reblog which attract top international writers, professional and citizen journalists, and top blog authors that have rapidly growing readership (10’s of 1000’s) that spans the globe.

The UK’s Pambazuka News, where Sokari Ekine of Black Looks serves as Online News Editor has won a number of awards for their content and their technology, including the coveted Tech Museum Award (Microsoft Education Award category). South African startup Afrigator, a new African blog aggregator, was featured in a story last month on hot new non-U.S. startups in the Web 2.0 tech arena: See “It’s a Web, Web, Web 2.0 World” by Eric Schonfeld and Yi-Wen Yen of Business 2.0 magazine (a Time/Warner publication).

That’s it for today 'cause that’s enough for now and it is the beginning of the weekend over here. I promise to get new posts up at Jewels in the Jungle over the next couple (5-7) of days. Lots of interesting news and views and stuff about Africa’s new renaissance in the 21st Century are in the pipeline. Ciao Ya’all.

Related articles and online resources

The Independent (UK newspaper online)
Boom in blogs gives Africans a voice on the Web, 08/02/07

Mzalendo.com (a Nairobi-based government watchdog project to help the citizens of Kenya take a more active role in monitoring the activities of their government)

Ethan Zuckerman (co-founder of Global Voices and Harvard Law School Berkman Center fellow) writes about Ory Okolloh and the Mzalendo.com project in Kenya. Ethan’s personal blog it titled My Heart’s in Accra.

PBS Media Shift (Mark Glaser) on Ory Okolloh and the Mzalendo project

Ory Okolloh of the Kenyan Pundit (Harvard Law School graduate, a Global Voices pioneer blogger for Africans, and co-founder of Mzalendo.com). The UK BBC radio program Outlook has just interviewed Ory re: the Mzalendo project.

Thinker’s Room (M is a leading Kenyan blog author, an IT professional, and co-founder of Mzalendo.com)

Mentalacrobatics (personal blog of Kenyan Daudi Were featured in The Independent article. Daudi is also a key figure in the new media scene and citizen journalism initiatives in sub-Saharan Africa

Technorati tags: Africa sub-Saharan AfricaKenya South Africa Indaba Nigeria New Media technology blogging media journalism news Global Voices Online

Honoring Africa's Best - The CNN/Multichoice African Journalist Awards 2007

Richard M. Kavuma, a 32-year old senior writer for Uganda’s The Weekly Observer is not a household name in the news business, but he should be. I first came into contact with Richard during the run-up to the 2007 G8 Summit at Heiligendamm, Germany. The London based Panos Institute sponsored a crew of 9 journalists and media professionals from the African continent for the AfricaVox 2007 project to cover this year’s G8 Summit and Richard Kavuma was among these professionals here in Germany. I didn’t have the pleasure of meeting Richard in-person; we met via the comments section of his posts to the AfricaVox 2007 blog.

I had quite a bit of fun both welcoming all these fine journalists to the 2007 G8 Summit in Germany and to the rough & tumble world of the blogosphere and my first comment on the AfricaVox 2007 blog was a scorcher in response to Richard’s article about the June 1st frontpage spread on Afrika by Germany’s Bild Zeitung. I had already composed and published a scathing article about the Bild Zeitung Afrika Spezialausgabe before discovering Richard’s piece at AfricaVox.

Since then poor Sir Bob Geldorf and his sidekick Bono have been severely criticized online in numerous opinion editorials and blog posts, but my angle on the story was the overtly negative and stereotypical depiction of helpless, starving, suffering, and clueless Africans in one of Germany’s top selling newspapers (circulation in print over 1 million copies with revenues approximately at Euro 1 billion annually). Geldorf serving as ‘guest editor-in-chief for a day’ at BILD for this despicable characterization of Africa was just a secondary issue for me. Sir Bob should have known better and I’ll bet you he gets the message on his failures at BILD and other media stunts now. Africans can speak very well for themselves in the international media and elsewhere without Geldorf’s public profanity and antics, thank you very much.

Fast forward to July 23, 2007

Tucked away in the corner (Africa news section) of the new CNN.com website was an article about the CNN/Multichoice African Journalist of the Year Awards. I try to keep track of these prestigious awards for professionalism in journalism and media on the African continent because it is a great source of information about Africa’s top news professionals and the award-winning stories they write and produce for print, TV and radio, online news, and photojournalism. This year’s winner of the African Journalist of the Year Award in two separate categories is none other than Richard M. Kavuma!

It’s a bit of surprise because as I stated earlier to the Panos-London staff I personally felt that the AfricaVox 2007 project presented some of the best news professionals in the business and that I was most grateful for being able to communicate with them via the AfricaVox 2007 blog. I had no idea that the Panos AfricaVox crew was that good (like Nr. 1 journalist in Africa good). That Richard Kavuma of Kampala’s The Weekly Observer won this year’s award was also a surprise for other media professionals in Africa as the newspaper where he works has been in publication since 2004. Richards winning entry for the top award was his 2006 8-part series on Uganda’s progress toward the Millennium Development Goals.

So without any further ado I want to extend my congratulations to Richard M. Kavuma (aka ‘Rimkav’) and the staff at Uganda’s The Weekly Observer for bringing home one of Africa’s most coveted professional journalism awards. This is the first time in the 12 years of the competition that the African Journalist of the Year Award has come to the country of Uganda. Yo Uganda, congratulations!

Something else that caught my attention re: the African Journalist of the Year Awards is that up to now it hasn’t received much play in the Africa sector of the blogosphere. Why not? Aren’t these people important sources of information and inspiration to aspiring CJ’s (citizen journalists) and blog authors out there? Have we become so ‘full of ourselves’ that we fail to recognize the hard work and excellent contributions to the profession from Africa’s finest news professionals? I certainly hope not. I couldn’t even begin to produce posts for Jewels in the Jungle without the leads and inspiration of professional journalists who cover the continent of Africa and publish their work to the Internet. And I mean all international journalists and news professionals covering the Africa beat regardless of race, creed, color or nationality.

The African Journalist of the Year Awards is in its 12th season, founded in 1995 by Edward Boateng (Turner Broadcasting Systems) and the late Amin Mohammed. The competition is open to African professional journalists and freelancers who work on the African continent for African media organizations that focus their content primarily on an African audience. This year’s competition attracted 1679 entries from over 40 countries in Africa. CNN has more info about the awards at the official website including the two CNN African Journalist Award press releases below:

Ugandan Richard M. Kavuma named CNN Multichoice African Journalist of the Year

CNN Multichoice African Journalist Award finalists announced

CNN’s Inside Africa aired a short report on the award ceremonies in last weekend’s program. It would be a great idea if Femi Oke, Isha Sesay, and the CNN producers would produce a weeklong TV/Internet special on news reporting and journalism in Africa, highlighting the work and actual reports by some of the journalists and other media professionals honored at the African Journalist of the Year Awards. But that, that would be asking too much of the execs at this renowned international news network, wouldn’t it?

Note: Wait a minute, there’s the problem with these awards right there.
Number One: only “professional journalists and freelancers” who work for a “professional” media organization can participate
Number Two: the content must be primarily focused toward an African audience.

Well, that counts Jewels in the Jungle out and the work of thousands of even better online citizen journalists and bloggers worldwide. Africa’s bloggers are to be found everywhere on the planet and they write for a global audience. Maybe we could talk CNN into sponsoring an African Global Citizen Journalist of the Year Award 2008?

Which brings me to the next subject re: CNN International and the CNN Africa news crew: Where is Jeff? Where is Jeff Koinange? Did he quit or was he fired, is he sick, are the Niger Delta rebels holding him for ransom? With all due respect for CNN Inside Africa program host Femi Oke and newcomer correspondent Isha Sesay, Jeff is the guy who has been the Master of Ceremonies at the CNN/Multichoice African Journalist Awards and this year he wasn’t anywhere to be seen, replaced by his CNN colleague Jonathan Mann instead. What’s up with Jeff? What!? No, you’re kidding? Damn.

While I’m on the subject of awards in journalism and news, Reuters Africa deserves a nod of congratulations for winning this year’s Diageo African Business Reporting Awards for the Best Website category. This is especially interesting for those of us who support the Global Voices Online project at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society as Reuters News is one of the principal sponsors of the project. Here is the lowdown on Reuters winning the Diageo Business Reporting Awards at Global Voices Online and the news article about the award on the Reuters Africa website.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Richard M. Kavuma upon receipt of his award at the African Journalist of the Year ceremonies in Cape Town, South Africa last week:

“In accepting this award, I dedicate it to my colleagues at The Weekly Observer in Uganda, and to my fellow journalists in Africa. This is in recognition of journalism that strives to put people at the forefront. With this award, I give my renewed dedication to act as a voice for the voiceless.”

Right On, Richard. If you’ve got a strong voice for the people of Africa, use it.

Related articles and online resources

The Weekly Observer (Uganda)
Observer journalist best in Africa by Carolyne Nakazibwe, 07/26/07
Mand thirsty for safe water by Richard M. Kavuma, 05/10/06

Punch (Nigeria)
How Kavuma won the African Journalist of the Year Award by Waheed Bakare

IPP (East Africa)
CNN/Multichoice Journalist Award winners announced by Lydia Shekighenda

allAfrica.com (This Day, Nigeria)
Ugandan Kavuma named 2007 CNN Multichoice African journalist, 07/24/07

CNN
Ugandan journalist scoops award, 07/24/07
CNN/Multichoice African Journalist of the Year official website

Panos Institute – London
Africavox 2007: African voices at the G8 Summit
Africavox 2007 profiles: Richard M. Kavuma

AfricaVox 2007 G8 Summit articles by Richard Kavuma:
‘Green’ fuel must not destroy Africa’s forests, 06/08/07
Protesting for/against whom? 06/04/07
Why Geldorf’s image of a rotting Africa is OK by me, 06/01/07

Jewels in the Jungle
Saving the Africa agenda at the G8 Summit 2007 in Heiligendamm, 06/01/07

Africa Media blog
African voices from the G-8 Summit 2007, 06/12/07
What do Africans think of international news coverage of Africa? 07/26/07
African journalists: more than victims, 08/01/07


Technorati tags: Africa Uganda journalism media news CNN CNN African Journalist of the Year Award Global Voices

The YouTube Effect on American Politics: CNN/YouTube 2008 Democratic Presidential Candidates Debate

Millions of viewers of the 24-hour news network CNN International and visitors to CNN.com are aware that the network has teamed up with the popular online video community YouTube to produce two groundbreaking 2008 Presidential Candidate Debates. The first of these debates featuring candidates from the U.S. Democratic Party aired on the evening of July 23rd for the CNN USA network (program re-aired July 24th, 10:00 AM CET for CNN International viewers). The second program for the Republican Party candidates is scheduled to air on September 17, 2007.

National politics and political campaigns are oft-times a very nasty business and I try to avoid writing about them here at Jewels like a rat sidestepping a snake pit, but this week’s CNN/YouTube hookup brought some fresh perspectives to the tried and tired political campaign practice of TV debates.

According to the CNN producers and marketing crew this is the first time in U.S. political history that the candidates had to field questions directly from the American public on both national and international TV and the questions were via homemade video clips uploaded to the YouTube video sharing website. More than 3000 videos were submitted for this first debate from YouTube users from around the world. CNN executives and producers labored for weeks in a secure glass-enclosed room to choose 39 video questions for use on the program, keeping their choices a well-guarded secret. The results of this labor and new media ingenuity on the part of all parties involved, especially the people who produced and submitted the videos, is an overwhelming “Thumbs Up” from American voters and CNN viewers and YouTube visitors from around the world.

Of course not everyone was happy about this experiment between the mainstream (traditional) media and the new media crowd (bloggers, online video producers, CJ’s) and some people are not convinced that the CNN/YouTube Democratic Debate was groundbreaking at all. Writing for the Christian Science Monitor Ariel Sabar says,

“The staid rituals of presidential debates met the hurly-burly of the Internet Monday night, in an event cosponsored by YouTube that saw candidates fielding questions that a set of mostly young Americans had uploaded to the video-sharing website.

YouTube and CNN, the other sponsor, promoted the forum as a radical change that harnessed the freewheeling populism of the Web and gave anyone anywhere a shot at quizzing candidates for the country's highest office.

But the debate came off more as evolution than revolution. While the 39 video questions aired during the two-hour program injected some humor and razzle-dazzle into a tired form, the debate retained many familiar trappings. A panel of CNN journalists chose which of the nearly 3,000 YouTube questions to pose to candidates, angering bloggers and Internet activists who felt the choice should be left to Web users.

And despite a few tough questions about the war in Iraq, race relations, and Hillary Clinton's bid to be the first female president, the candidates proved adept at steering answers back to comfortable territory.”

"I'm not convinced it represented a lot beyond at best giving us some break from the routine of the traditional debate genre," said Jamie McKown, a government professor at College of the Atlantic in Maine. "I strongly believe that new e-mediums and advances in communication technology do have the potential to change politics. But this wasn't it."

(End excerpt)

In the January/February 2007 issue of Foreign Policy magazine online, Moisés Naím (editor-in-chief of the magazine) wrote the following about “The YouTube Effect” as it pertained to the international news coverage of uniformed Chinese soldiers allegedly murdering Tibetan monks, women, and children on a Himalayan mountain pass:

“Welcome to the YouTube effect. It is the phenomenon whereby video clips, often produced by individuals acting on their own, are rapidly disseminated throughout the world thanks to video-sharing Web sites such as YouTube, Google Video, and others. Every month, YouTube receives 20 million visitors, who watch 100 million video clips a day. There are 65,000 new videos posted every day. Most of the videos are frivolous, produced by and for teenagers. But some are serious. YouTube includes videos posted by terrorists, human rights groups, and U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Some are clips of incidents that have political consequences or document important trends, such as global warming, illegal immigration, and corruption. Some videos reveal truths. Others spread disinformation, propaganda, and outright lies. All are part of the YouTube effect.

Fifteen years ago, the world marveled at the fabled “CNN effect.” The expectation was that the unblinking eyes of TV cameras, beyond the reach of censors, would bring greater accountability and transparency to governments and the international system. These expectations were, in some sense, fulfilled. Since the early 1990s, electoral frauds that might have remained hidden were exposed, democratic uprisings energized, famines contained, and wars started or stopped, thanks to the CNN effect. But the YouTube effect will be even more intense. Although the BBC, CNN, and other international news operations employ thousands of professional journalists, they will never be as omnipresent as millions of people carrying a cell phone that can record video. Thanks to their ubiquity, the world was able to witness a shooting on a 19,000-foot mountain pass.

This phenomenon is amplified by a double echo chamber: One is produced when content first posted on the Web is re-aired by mainstream TV networks. The second occurs when television moments, even the most fleeting, gain a permanent presence thanks to bloggers or activists who redistribute them through Web sites like YouTube. Activists everywhere are recognizing the power of citizen-produced and Web-distributed videos as the ultimate testimony. The human rights group Witness arms individuals in conflict zones with video cameras so they can record and expose human rights abuses. Electoral watchdogs are taping elections. Even Islamic terrorists have adapted to this trend. Al Qaeda created a special media production unit called Al Sahab (“The Cloud”), which routinely posts its videos online, with the realistic expectation that they will be picked up by major media outlets and other Web sites.”

(End excerpt)
Note: links to external sites added to the original text for clarification

So I am not going to bore you (or embarrass myself) with an attempt at an in-depth analysis of the two-hour cablecast of the CNN/YouTube Democratic Debate but instead will let you decide for yourself. I posted this piece as a Heads Up for my international readers living outside of the U.S.A. because I felt that many of you may not be aware of this important event. Blog authors and online video journalists and content producers from around the world need to take notes on this joint project as it could be possible to duplicate something similar in your corner of the globe.

Below are links to assorted news articles and blog posts about the debates, plus a link to my personal favorite YouTube video questions submitted by Jackie and Dunlap, two upstanding American citizens from the great State of Tennessee. I’ve included links to the CNN and YouTube websites which offer a full selection of articles, blog posts, and video reports covering every minute of the two hour CNN cablecast.


Everything is in this debate for your viewing pleasure: Iraq, domestic issues, Africa (Darfur), race in America and reparations for slavery, national health care, gay marriage rights and wrongs, religion & politics, U.S. foreign policy, education, the economy, passionate emotional outbursts from the candidates on serious issues and humor from the American voting public. Don’t miss a minute of it!

P.S. Checkout all the new embedded features (interactive, video, story highlights, recommended articles, blogs linking to the story, i-Report video, reader comments) on the overhauled CNN.com website. CNN.com is back with a vengeance to snatch the coveted Webby Awards for best online news site from the teeth of the BBC News.


Related articles and online resources

CNN.com
CNN/YouTube Democratic Debate (complete video downloads, 2-part)
Questions, not answers highlight YouTube debate
CNN.com users sound off on Monday night’s debate (videos)
Clinton, Obama mix it up over diplomacy answer (CNN Political Ticker blog)
Electorate can show true colors in YouTube debate
Anderson Cooper’s 360 blog (Cooper was the debate moderator)
CNN Election Center 2008

YouTube.com
CNN/YouTube Democratic Debate (individual video questions and answers)
Submit your questions for the Republican Debate (scheduled to air September 17th)
YouTube blog: The CNN/YouTube Debate: How did they do?
YouTube behind the scenes at CNN

My Favorite YouTube Democratic Debate video clips
Red State Update's Jackie and Dunlap on John Edwards and Barack Obama
Red State Update’s Jackie and Dunlap on Al Gore
Jackie and Dunlap on the CNN/YouTube Democratic Debate (candidate reactions)

TIME.com
Lessons of the YouTube Debate (Tuned-In TIME TV blog)
Grading the July 23rd Democratic Debate (video slide show of candidates)
Ten Weirdest YouTube Debate Questions

The New York Times
Novel Debate Format, but Same Old Candidates
The Fourth Democratic Debate (full transcript)

The Christian Science Monitor
A debate where citizen is star

Washington Post (posts from the Washington Post’s blogs: The Fix, The Trail)
And this round goes to… (Hillary vs. Obama on foreign relations)
Democratic Debate: a wrap up
Democratic Debate: winners and losers

MSNBC/Newsweek
YouTube Debate: Groundbreaking or Hype?

Yahoo! News
Clinton, Obama clash over diplomacy (AP)
Obama debate comments set off firestorm (AP)

Outside the Beltway
YouTube Debate by James Joyner

The Daily Dish (Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic Online)
The YouTube Debate (full Sullivan coverage)
Hair (candidate John Edward’s YouTube campaign video)

Capitol Hill Blue
Lots of glitz, little substance

Technorati tags:America U.S. presidential campaign politics elections Democrats YouTube debate CNN media news blogging video Global Voices