Sunday
May182008
The Africa Media Leadership Conference in Kampala
Sunday, May 18, 2008 at 10:13PM 
Later this week I'll be going to Kampala, Uganda for the Africa Media Leadership Conference (AMLC) in Uganda.
From Wikipedia:
The Republic of Uganda is a landlocked country in East Africa, bordered on the east by Kenya, the north by Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by Tanzania
The following is from the conference press release:
AMLC is an annual meeting among African media bosses. This year it is focusing on how the continent is embracing new media technologies to serve the changing needs and interests of their customers.
The conference will be attended by 40 senior editors and CEOs of media firms stretching from South Africa, Namibia and Swaziland in the south to Kenya and Ethiopia in the north and from Senegal and the Ivory Coast in the west.
The topic of the talk I am presenting is: How African Traditional Media can Tap Into New Social Media and Blogs.
The conference is co-hosted by Rhodes University’s Sol Plaatje Institute for Media Leadership (SPI) in South Africa and Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Foundation.
“This year’s conference is looking at a range of digital media platforms that have emerged and continue to emerge around the world and the challenges that face media companies in Africa in adopting and adapting these platforms for their competitive advantage,” said Francis Mdlongwa, Director of the Sol Plaatje Institute (SPI).
“Given the breath-taking technological changes which are re-shaping and even redefining the entire media industry, we felt that Africa should pause, take stock, look at what works and does not work in our part of the world and why, and plan ahead,” he added.
The SPI is Africa’s only university-level institution offering high-level media management and leadership training programmes to both practising and aspirant media leaders from across the continent. It runs a post-graduate programme in media management and leadership and a series of certificated management programmes for senior editorial and business media managers.
Frank Windeck, the head of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung’s Sub-Sahara Africa Media Programme, the sponsor of the Africa Media Leadership Conference series, said: “These meetings give Africa’s top media people a unique opportunity to network at the highest level and to examine key industry and other issues which concern them and to seek practical solutions by examining case studies drawn from Africa.”
The conference series was launched by the SPI and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung in 2002 to promote high-level interaction among Africa’s media chiefs and to seek practical, innovative and creative solutions to challenges faced by the African media.
The conference meets annually in an African country, and past conferences have debated topics such as Revenue Generation for Robust African Media (Cape Town, South Africa); South Meets East: Strategic Challenges for African Media (Nairobi, Kenya); Managing Media in Recession (Mauritius); and Policies and Strategies for Media Viability (Maputo, Mozambique).
I'm looking forward to the trip, and to meeting and engaging deeply with the ideas of some of Africa's top media people. I will, of course, be sharing as much as possible of the knowledge I gain with you on this blog.
Reader Comments (38)
What amazes me is the lack of coverage of this event by the organizers themselves. Their sites remain mostly web 1.0 :(
Did anybody blog about this conference?
Just curious
Ph
www.philippe-boucher.com
Hi Phillippe. Good point, I'll follow up with the organizers about this. It was excellent, and as a result Francis Mdlogwa is compiling a book with contributions from some of the participants of the conference.
Kwami Ahiabenu II captured some of the talks on his blog:
http://knowledgechief.blogspot.com/2008/05/day-two-2008-africa-media-leadership_2135.html
Prof. Guy Berger and I Twittered a bit of the conference too.
http://twitter.com/guyberger
http://twitter.com/DaveDuarte
I was wondering if you could invite the Cancer Society of South Africa CANSA to try blogging (instead of sticking only to web1.0).
They just held an event about increasing the media awareness about cancer and tobacco control in Africa but it looks like they ignored the blogosphere...and the coverage was poor. Of course they would be much better off with a blog to distribute their info. In case you have the opportunity to meet them, blogging would make a big difference for their communication
I have put the info about this meeting on my africa news blog but I am not sure I recall the url :(
maybe
http://blogsofbainbridge.typepad.com/africa
Dave,
It will no doubt be an interesting event.
The observations above about the extent to which the conference site reflects extent to which Africa's media leadership are keeping up with changes in global industry made me think that perhaps it would be worthwhile asking you to punt participation in the World Newspaper Future & Change Study 2009, which I'm running with Martha Stone of WAN-IFRA.
Respondents will get a copy of the report, which will also be presented at the WAN-IFRA Congress in Hyderabad at the end of the year.
The survey is available in English, French and Portguese (see below).
Thanks. Merci. Obrigado.
Francois
To take the World Newspaper Future & Change Study in English , please click here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=TyupFuFy_2fY7qDf9WC1XvQA_3d_3d .
Ce sondage est également disponible en Français http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx? sm=X7WQl2rNuZVLK_2bRLwPl4wA_3d_3d.
Esse levantamento também está disponível em Português http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=_2fsbRdMdevj7DFY59d0xowg_3d_3d ]
Perhaps you could ask folks there if they'd want to participate in the
Thanks for your comment, Francois.
I will pass the links on to the conference organisers to mail out to all the delegates. I'm sure it would be well worth it for all to get a copy of that report!
Thought I'd let you know that the book Francis edited, bringing together contributions from last year's conference, is now available on SPI's website (under >Research >>Publications).
You can download 'Doing Digital Media in Africa: Prospects, Promises and Problems' as a free PDF here: http://is.gd/3Y318
A paper or two from last year has also been reprinted in this year's Rhodes Journalism Review. We should have the latest issue up on the RJR website at http://rjr.ru.ac.za within a week or two...
By the way, would appreciate a head's up if there's anything of interest worth picking up for next year's RJR, which is due out in July -- in time for the World Journalism Education Congress to be held in Grahamstown. See http://wjec.ru.ac.za. You can contact me on a.taylor at ru.ac.za
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