FY 2000-2001 Annual Report
Connecting in Africa -- The African Women's Media Center

Launched in 1997 by the IWMF, the African Women's Media Center (AWMC), located in Dakar, Senegal, provides resources and training programs to women journalists across the African continent. In the three years since it's founding, the AWMC has become an innovator, training women journalists in new skills and helping them to upgrade their existing ones. The center's creative use of the Internet has also given many journalists access to training opportunities and to an Internet world that for many is new. Often, these journalists are not able to travel to land-based workshops.

To mark the AWMC's anniversary, the IWMF, using the firm of EnCompass, conducted an independent evaluation of the AWMC and its programs. The evaluation revealed that the center had met and exceeded its goal of becoming a continent-wide resource for African women journalists. "No other organization stretches across Africa in the way the AWMC does," said Sylvia Vollenhoeven, an executive producer at the South African Broadcasting Corporation.

Other members of the AWMC network said that the center fills a niche by offering them training usually reserved for the men in their companies. This includes the leadership training they need to aspire to management roles in the media. It also includes the specialized reporting techniques they need to report on politics, economics and health, and to use the Internet both as a resource and as a "new media" outlet.

Among the AWMC's programs are: The Carole Simpson Leadership Institute, Cyber Forums on Reporting on HIV/AIDS and a Resource Guide on Reporting on HIV/AIDS

The Carole Simpson Leadership Institute

For the third year, the AWMC sponsored the Carole Simpson Leadership Institute (CSLI) for African Women journalists. CSLI was launched in 1998 by the AWMC to help develop women managers for the African media.

For the first time, applications were accepted from across the continent. Most participants were in mid-level management posts in the media, a few held senior level jobs and one was a publisher. The heart of the program was a two-day intensive, interactive leadership development training workshop that took participants through a series of exercises and discussions aimed at helping them explore their leadership qualities, manage personal and work-related stress and conflict, and set goals to achieve their dreams. This was followed by a daylong training session on how to use the Internet.

"I realized during the training that I am a woman with talents who has something important to contribute," said Tammy Foyn, senior sub-editor for Business Day, a South African newspaper.

The CSLI training was "transformative," said Evelyn Abakah, assistant editor at Ghana Broadcasting Corporation. Prior to the program, she had never thought about stress management and creative thinking and how they could change the way she does her job, she said.

One of the senior women at the training, Musi Khumalo, director of marketing for Zimbabwe Broadcasting, said she left with a renewed commitment to helping groom other women for management.

CSLI was named after its initial key donor, Carole Simpson, a veteran American television journalist, anchor at ABC News and a founder of the IWMF.

Cyber Forums on Reporting on HIV/AIDS

During the African Women's Media Center's "cyber forum" on reporting on HIV/AIDS in Africa in September, 2000, Nigerian journalist Dorothy Obgonmwan posted an online message that summed up why the training was needed. "For the past ten years now, the dreaded disease called AIDS has been biting deeper and deeper into Africa," she wrote. "It is unfortunate to know that some Africans still don't believe that this disease exists."

Using the Internet, the AWMC reached more than 250 African women journalists with two, five-day training sessions -- one in English in September 2000 and one in French in September 2001 -- on reporting on HIV/AIDS. Both sessions were designed to provide journalists with the knowledge and skills they need to effectively report on the epidemic in Africa, specifically its impact on women. After five days on the Internet, participants had completed exercises that taught them new research and writing skills. They had learned where people in their countries could go for HIV/AIDS testing, to buy condoms and to receive counseling on HIV/AIDS.

Following the training, the group in Rwanda pledged to start a television series on HIV/AIDS, while the women from Cote d'Ivoire said they would establish a listserve to share current information about the pandemic.

Many journalists were able to take part in the training because the AWMC secured the cooperation of "host sites" that provided computers and office space. These included non-governmental organizations, U.S. embassy offices, The Freedom Forum, corporations and media companies at more than 40 sites. Individuals also logged on from their own computers. The formats for the two training sessions were similar.

Participants in both cyber forums discussed a terrible reality. By the end of 1999 more women than men were infected with HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, according to a report form UNAIDS and the World Health Organization. Why are women so vulnerable to the pandemic?

Some participants cited the number of prostitutes in Africa and the practice of polygamy as culprits. Others pointed out that theroot cause of women's vulnerability is social and economic. "The woman solely depends on her husband to get everything, including all the essential necessities, so she must accept whatever her husband says," wrote one participant at the English session.

Other reasons include women's vulnerability to rape, traditional practices (female genital mutilation), illiteracy, poverty and a physical makeup that makes women vulnerable to the transmission of the virus. In addition, HIV/AIDS is a subject spoken of only in private, if at all.

The journalists who joined the AWMC's Internet seminars on reporting on HIV/AIDS helped to pull down that wall of silence. They learned where to go to get reliable, up-to-date information and how to use the Internet to do research on the pandemic. They also pledged to write credible, life-saving stories about HIV/AIDS. And they learned to stare the epidemic in the face.

The journalists shared personal stories of friends who had died, of relatives who have been diagnosed with HIV. "I was enlightened by certain things I did not know, such as the factors of transmissions and women's vulnerability. I am also encouraged so see how many of my Congolese colleagues are participating in this program," wrote Passy Henriette Makayabu from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, during the French cyber forum. "This proves how much women journalists are determined to fight this disease. As a woman journalist, I have decided to engage myself in raising consciousness about the African woman ...."

Chevron Corporation provided funding for both the English and French cyber forums.

Resource Guide on Reporting on HIV/AIDS

The HIV/AIDS epidemic has potentially devastating consequences for all of Africa, where more than 12 million Africans have died from the disease and where misinformation continues to claim lives.

Accurate, timely reporting has the potential to both promote prevention of HIV/AIDS and reduce the stigma associated with the virus in Africa. Journalists who understand the public policy implications and the medical facts of HIV/AIDS and who are also aware of the myths that surround the disease will be more likely to write and produce stories that hold governments accountable, educate the public on how to cope with the disease and help discredit stereotypes associated with the HIV/AIDS virus.

Following the first cyber forum on HIV/AIDS reporting in Africa, the AWMC decided to follow the training with a guide to help African journalists in their reporting on the epidemic. Reporting on HIV/AIDS: A Resource Guide is another weapon in the fight against HIV/AIDS. The guide contains contacts that every journalist who reports on HIV/AIDS will find useful, including information on international organizations, United States government agencies, African-based healthcare and advocacy organizations, and websites and Internet forums concerned with HIV/AIDS. Each entry includes a short description and contact information.

The Chevron Corporation provided funding for Reporting on HIV/AIDS: A Resource Guide.