Two
years ago, the African Union marked its jubilee celebration
with renewed vigor. As it unveiled its blueprint to guide its mission for the
next 50 years, there were also fresh calls for better integration among its
people. But with all its vigor, the
continent’s most influential organization failed to realize that it lacked a
vehicle to drive its agenda to the one billion people it represents. Africa lacked a continental homegrown TV
station.
Africa
is no longer on the fringe of the world stage. Today, six of the 10 fastest
growing economies worldwide are on the continent. And if you are not a cynic of
modern science, the entire human race has its origin in Africa.
But
all that glamour aside, who is telling the real African story to millions of
Africans? Who is reviewing the history books to remind us of the continent’s
forgotten heroes such as Zambia’s Makuko Nkoloso, Burkina Faso’s revolutionary
leader Thomas Sankara, Kwame Nkurumah of Ghana among others? Who is digging
deeper to put Africa’s history into perspective and help us understand how our
current challenges are influenced, partly, by our past? Besides a few lone
rangers such as the late Muammar Gaddafi and Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta, who is telling us why our
continent needs closer economic, social, cultural and political ties? Lone
rangers, however passionate, cannot single- handedly influence an African
renaissance. There is need for an African owned media house.
The
power of the press in influencing public opinion cannot be underestimated. For
centuries, the media has aided in triggering revolutions, swaying general elections
and driving countries into the verge of civil wars. Twenty
years after the Rwandan genocide, political
analysts are still convinced that the media paid a big role in stirring
up ethnic hatred that caused the death of nearly one million people. Elsewhere in 1992, the UK’s most popular
tabloid (both in readership and distribution) was believed to have handed the
Conservatives a narrow victory over the Labour party. On the eve of the then
general election, The Sun newspaper headline read “If Kinnock wins
today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights." A
day after the tory win, the paper’s self-serving headline was “It was The Sun Wot Won It”.
The
appeal for an African owned TV station does not come from a place of radical
Pan-Africanism bent on portraying the continent as a utopia. Neither is it intended to completely counter
existing global news corporations that have been camping in Africa for decades
telling the continent’s story. To their credit, these corporations have lately
been covering a few positive stories - a far cry from days when they only
portrayed Africa as diseased, war ravaged and poverty ridden. This became particularly evident following
the entry of Al Jazeera and CCTV into the continent.
Critics
may scoff at the idea of a Pan African TV station. They may even question how
it would compete in a market dominated by well-established and powerful
corporations in a continent with a huge appetite for foreign content. But these fears are
baseless. When one of Kenya’s leading TV station-Citizen news- made a deliberate choice to shift their
programming from a predominantly foreign based content in favour of local
programs, the support from their viewers was overwhelming. Other TV stations
had to follow suit to remain relevant. The success of the Nollywood film
industry is also another pointer.
