Page 30 - AIB | The Chanel | Issue 1 2013

THE CHANNEL | FOCUS
programmes to their schedules –
CNN is the exception here as they
started their Africa‐focused
programme a long time ago. The
big players, RFI, BBC, are still there,
particularly in times of crisis, in
terms of the big international
stories, they are listened to. But
they are not the prime sources of
information, people go to them
when they want a different
perspective and when they want to
know about the rest of the world.
That is the big challenge, how do
they stay relevant in a growing and
moving Africa.
What advice do you have for
foreign players?
Relevance! Remaining relevant is
what will give you credibility and if
you do that, you will get the audience.
Donʹt try to be the local player
because that space is taken and you
canʹt actually fulfil that role. It
could well be that you are the
organisation that can stand back and
say, "let’s put this in perspective".
That is the role an international
media player can play, particularly
given the fact that resources tend to
favour those international players
compared to local players who are
still challenged in terms of their
resources in a number of areas –
academic, experience wise, and in
being able to put some of these
things together – although that is
changing very fast.
If you are looking at the
continent and its countries as an
emerging market, for instance if
you may want to invest in a
particular region or country, I think
listening to the media in those
countries will give you a good
insight into how things stand. This
is something that a lot of businesses
donʹt do. To any outsider I always
say ʹlook, go in, have a listen for at
least half a day, flick around and
youʹll get a good sense of where
things stand on politics, on
business, on the economyʹ.
Where has there been progress?
Although Africa is more than 53
countries and of course they are all
different, there has been huge
progress and growth right across.
The speed may be different for a
number of reasons – on the whole
there are very few places now
where you do not have increasingly
free media and media able to
operate. I am not going down the
road of saying ʹthis country has
worked and that country hasnʹt
workedʹ.
If you look at my country,
Uganda, between 1992 and 2002
you might have had 30 to 40 radio
stations. You then jump to 2012 and
count more than 120 radio stations.
What has happened there is that
technology has become cheaper
which enables people to do things
that they could not do before.
Secondly, you now find that there
are a lot more people who want
localised information. So where
before you used to broadcast to a
city and a region, you now find a
sub‐region that wants to be able to
talk to its farmers and about the
school down the road that has not
been repaired etc. In the first wave
you had the excitement, the
opening up, the phone‐ins, the
growth of mobile phone usage
which meant that people could
phone in to these stations and a
national conversation can be had.
We have now moved from the
national conversation to a
conversation that can be localised.
As an example, in Uganda and
Kenya you have stations that are
focused within a local area, talking
about the issues that affect them,
not the issues that affect the city
100 miles away and issues that are
on the national agenda, but issues
such as what the weather is likely
to be and what this will mean for
the harvest this year. The private
radio and TV stations that have
sprung up are mostly regional in
the sense that they are in the cities
and urban areas, but now in some
areas you see the next step,
localised TV ‐ people being brought
into a small studio to discuss issues
that affect them.
If we look at online, to a large
extent it still remains an urban‐
centred development. It is there,
internet has grown cheaper, the
growth of smartphones makes it
increasingly available to many.
What is the role of the mobile?
The mobile phone is accessible to
some of the poorest people. It is no
longer a luxury. It has transformed
peopleʹs lives – the traders can keep
track of their goods as they come
from the port of Mombasa to
Kampala and can tell their
customers. Now that has seeped
right down to the villager. Very
cheap handsets are available, the
next growth is in cheap smart‐
phones. So if I hear something that
I think is outrageous being said on
We
have now
moved
from the
national
conver-
sation to a
conver-
sation that
can be
localised
“
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30 | ISSUE 1 2013 | THE CHANNEL