Pointe-Noire, Republic of the Congo – Today at 17:00 local time, Michael Peters, CEO of Euronews and Africanews, officially launches Africanews channel, with the whole Africanews’ team.
Africanews is the first independent and multilingual pan-African news outlet to show the new face of news coverage from a fast-moving continent.
From Pointe-Noire in the Republic of the Congo, a team of 50 media professionals from 15 countries across sub-Saharan Africa has since 4 January 2016 been providing coverage, on africanews.com, of Africa and the rest of the world from a purely pan-African perspective. They are supported by an additional extensive network of 45 correspondents all over Africa, operating in conjunction with Africanews’ French-speaking and English-speaking editorial teams.
Africanews is a 100% Euronews subsidiary financed through advertising and distribution. Africanews adheres to the same editorial charter as its European sister channel, Euronews.
Africanews has created a fully-fledged pan-African network, with editorial decisions taken in Africa for an African audience.
From 20 April, the TV viewers of sub-Saharan Africa join the existing Africanews community on its website, its YouTube channels, and its Facebook and Twitter accounts.
For more informations about Africanews, its genesis and its programmes, the presskit is available: africanews.com/page/pressroom
Africanews: a sub-Saharan Africa channel
From its TV launch, Africanews is immediately available in 7.3 million homes in 33 countries across sub-Saharan Africa.
This exceptional launch is being conducted in partnership with major pay-TV players in Africa, who believe in this new pan-African media outlet.
Several national channels with regional reach have also chosen to team up with Africanews, and will broadcast part of its output (from 30 minutes to several hours a day): Canal 2 Info in Cameroon. MBC on Mauritius. Ouest TV in Senegal. RTA in Madagascar.
The Africanews signal covers sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Ocean islands via two satellites: SES 4 and SES 5. To give the largest possible number of TV viewers access to this new source of African and international news, Africanews is broadcast unencrypted and offered free of charge, for the first six months, to operators and owners of dishes pointed at one of the two satellites.
* At launch, Africanews will also be distributed by operators in the following countries :
Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Sao Tome, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda.
Africanews: a business model based on commercial revenues
Africanews is a 100% Euronews subsidiary financed through advertising, distribution, production and partnerships revenues. Sales of advertising space start today on digital media and on TV. The first advertisers are: the mobile phone company MTN Congo, Brussels Airlines, the hotel chain Accor Africa and Madagascar Fair International.
(Source: Euronews press release)