From the IWMF Executive Director
Empowering Women in the African Media

The African Women’s Media Center stretches across Africa as the only continent-wide organization working to empower African women in the media.

Launched by the IWMF in 1997, the AWMC connects African journalists by offering them training, publications and networking that are vital to their success. The center maintains a database of African women in the media and in 2003 went online with a comprehensive database of media houses, non-governmental organizations and others working in the African media. The AWMC connects African women with an international network of women journalists through the larger IWMF network.

AWMC publications and its website, www.awmc.com, keep African journalists aware of opportunities for professional training and growth and provide them with resources to build their skills. The AWMC also plays a crucial role by advocating for the concerns of African women journalists through participation with press freedom groups, such as the West African Journalists’ Association (WAJA) and the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX).

AWMC training opportunities give African women journalists the boost they need to become leaders in their profession. The Carole Simpson Leadership Institute — named for the veteran U.S. journalist who initiated the program — has been held four times on the continent and continues to be one of the AWMC’s most popular programs.

The AWMC has also pioneered the use of the Internet to provide substantive training for journalists. Two of the most successful of these “cyber seminars” have been conducted in both French and English on the topic of HIV/AIDS.

Maisha Yetu: Media Campaign for Our Lives

Maisha Yetu means “our lives” in Swahili. It was chosen as the name of the AWMC’s campaign to improve the quality and increase the coverage of HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. The program began in 2003 with a three-year, $1.5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Duing the first year of the project, the AWMC conducted research in five African countries: Botswana, Cameroon, Kenya, Malawi and Senegal. These countries offer a broad sample of media environments, language, religion and ethnicity, as well as different healthcare problems and different governmental responses to those problems. A final research report will be issued in 2004, and based on findings from this original research and existing data, the next step in the Maisha Yetu campaign will be announced.

(To read more about the Maisha Yetu campaign, visit the African Women’s Media Center’s website.

Radio is probably the most wide-ranging and powerful medium in Africa. It is accessible to everyone, even to those who cannot read and those who cannot afford television. In addition, radio has long provided a professional home to large numbers of African women journalists. For those reasons, the AWMC has made training of women radio journalists a top priority.

The AWMC has coupled this priority with another pressing issue facing African journalists: reporting accurately and knowledgeably on the HIV/AIDS pandemic that grips the continent. These two concerns came together in two programs in 2002-2003.

Improving the Coverage of HIV/AIDS in Africa

“We must be able to tell our people, educate them, inform them about everything concerning HIV/AIDS and how they can prevent being infected,” says Blessing Ejiofor, a reporter with Spectrum Broadcasting in Abuja, Nigeria. This urgency, she said, was what prompted her to apply for the AWMC’s five-day workshop on covering HIV/AIDS, held in Lagos, Nigeria, in December 2002. Ejiofor was one of 19 radio journalists who took advantage of the opportunity to learn more about the daunting task of covering the pandemic.

African journalists are given little training about HIV/AIDS, even though the assignment may be one of the most important and complex of their careers. By arming journalists with the facts about HIV/AIDS and helping them improve their reporting skills, the AWMC hopes to improve coverage of the pandemic.

Aulora Stally, a former Zimbabwean journalist who is now a media consultant and trainer, led the workshop in Nigeria. She also led a similar AWMC-sponsored workshop, held in Johannesburg, South Africa, in June 2002, and has worked training journalists throughout Africa. She said that many journalists have come to her programs with preconceived — and incorrect — ideas about HIV/AIDS.

“They were not convinced about HIV causing AIDS. They believed, too, that spiritual beliefs can cause AIDS,” she says. She works to change those misconceptions and to improve what one journalist referred to as the “pathetic” coverage by the African media.

The training, which includes a mix of sessions on the facts about HIV and AIDS, reporting exercises and field trips to report stories, was demanding. It was also rewarding. Said Boma Nwuke, a reporter at Radio Rivers in Nigeria: “I have attended workshops on AIDS, but not any as challenging and enduring as the one organized by the AWMC.”

Positive and Proud CD Brings Stories About Living with HIV/AIDS to African Airwaves

Positive and Proud, a CD produced during an AWMC advanced workshop for radio journalists, celebrates the courage of Africans —especially African women — living with HIV. It is a collaboration among the AWMC, ABC Ulwazi, a Johannesburg, South Africa production house and the six African women journalists.

Positive and Proud contains six stories, including the personal journey of an HIV-positive radio talk show host from Cape Town; a feature on HIV-positive people in Soweto, South Africa, who are preserving their lives and their most precious memories in “memory boxes,” and an interview with Princess Kasune of Zambia, who is HIV-positive and says, “I refuse to die before I’m dead.”

The AWMC made the CD available free of charge to African radio stations so that they can air the stories as stand-alone features or use them to spur discussion about HIV/AIDS. “The CD is a hit with my station,” said Anna Nicodemus of the Namibian Broadcasting Company, whose report on a South African HIV prevention program for young people is included on the CD. “[The station] introduced a special series where they played one story per day. The response from the public was overwhelming, and they actually demanded a re-run.” Other journalists report similar responses to Positive and Proud.

Positive and Proud was co-produced by the AWMC and ABC Ulwazi, a Johannesburg-based radio production house. For more information go to: http://iwmf.org/ewire/7744/7745/ch-7750.

Funders of the African Women’s Media Center include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Open Society Initiative for West Africa, the AOL Time Warner Foundation, the Coca-Cola Company, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Global Fund for Women and the ChevronTexaco Corporation.