Page 16 - AIB | The Chanel | Issue 1 2013

CV
NAME
Amadou Mahtar Ba
DATE OF BIRTH
August 1966
CAREER
Born in Sinthiou Bamambe, Senegal,
Amadou Mahtar Ba was educated in his
home country, France and Spain. He is
fluent in French, English, Spanish, Fulani
and Wolof and holds a Masters degree
from the Ecole Française des
Professionnels de la Communication,
Paris and from the Paris 7 University
(Jussieu). Between 1993-1996, Ba was
instrumental in the restructuring of
PANA, the Panafrican News Agency.
After serving as Director of
Communications & Marketing for BICIS
Bank (1996-2000), in 1999 he co-founded
AllAfrica Global Media and allafrica.com
to distribute African news and
information worldwide. Having taken part
in the 2005 G8 summit in Gleneagles, he
turned the idea of a pan-African
organisation focused on the business of
media into reality with the African Media
Initiative (AMI), incorporated in Nairobi in
2010. Ba heads AMI as CEO and is a
member of the World Economic Forum’s
Global Council for the Future of
Journalism, and on the advisory boards
of the Reporting Developing Network
Africa, the Knight International
Journalism Fellowship administered by
ICFJ, as well as pop star Bono’s ONE. In
2011 and 2012, he was ranked as one of
the 100 most influential people in Africa
by the London-based pan-African
magazine New African.
MEDIA USE
First thing in the morning, reaches for
mobile phone and goes to Twitter to
check tweets of the last eight hours; then
onto laptop to allafrica.com to get news
from the continent; then listens to RFI in
French and BBC in English; in the car
tunes into local news channels in Nairobi
FAVOURITES
Big fan of reggae and salsa; playing
soccer with his five boys; reading
traditional African books from the 60's
and 70's