Report the News

The number of grassroots reporters in Africa is growing every day.  You could easily be one of them.

I hope that you have read my blog article, “Mobile Reporters in Africa.” It introduces an organization, Voices of Africa, which is loyal to the thousands of self promoted, local reporters.

If you are part of a community outreach or development program, take some photos with your phone and type a report and send it to us.

There have been cases where grass roots reporters have presented photos of security or government officials accepting bribes.  Some have gone as far as to take photos of ‘work sites’ where money was reported as spent for specific projects yet photos show no progress at all.  And, you probably have seen or heard about photos and videos sent from remotes villages hit by a typhoon or earthquake.

Stories of Africa is set to be an outlet for such stories.  We will begin accepting photos, videos and stories right away.  We will begin posting them on the Stories of Africa site starting July 15th.

Here is what you you do:

1.  Use your cell phone or PDA to take photos or videos of a significant event, such as a disaster, a development project, a rescue, an accident, or officials misrepresenting the situation to donors, whatever you see that is NEWS.  We are looking for news stories, not requests for donations.

2.  Write a shot 100-300 news article discussing the news in the photos.

3.  Attach the story, photos or video an email and send them to me at newsdesk@storiesofafrica.org

4.  I will post the stories here and make news outlets aware of their presence.

While I was busy composing this blog I received a job announcement for African reporters and photographers.  Find the announcement at http://africamedianetwork.ning.com/profiles/blogs/wanted-african-freelance. Stories of Africa is positioning to be an outlet for grassroots news generated by reporters via cell phones, ipods, and PDAs.

Remember we now ready to receive your reports and will post them beginning July 15th, 2010.  I will be back with another post concerning this project before that date arrives.

I have just returned from six weeks in Tanzania.  While there I was once again astonished at just how deep and broad cell phones have penetrated Africa and have become common place in the remotest of villages.  In many African countries the cost of a phone call is much cheaper than it is the United States or Europe.  I was struck my the wide spread use of text messages as well.

But, when I returned to my home office I had on my agenda to write a new post concerning reporters in Africa.  My original thought was to research a specific reporter and prepare a review of his life and work, but during my research I was blown away to find that there are a growing number of ‘grassroots’ reporters in Africa using mobile phones to record and send the news.  The site that brought this to my attention was Voices of Africa where reporters in some of the remotes of village share engaging, slice of life stories.  Just when we thought the Internet was the greatest blessing to reporters, “It is now possible for Africans to send articles and images (still and moving) about events taking place in their countries without using a computer and without having traditional internet connection.”


The Voices of Africa website, which was initiated in 2007, is overseen by the Voices of Africa Media Foundation that “believes that by stimulating ( citizen) journalism, democracy will be served and this may stimulate good governance in Africa.”

If you are an African interested in journalism or becoming a reporter, you need to visit the fine folks at Voice of Africa.  Who knows your report might be the next one to appear on the site.

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Of course this is not the beginning of stories of Africa. There have been multitudes of articles, stories and books written about Africa. I do welcome you to the beginning of Stories of Africa website and blog which is a home for we who reading and writing about Africa.

Reporters share the daily events from the continent: the challenges, disasters, victories and lessons. We will carry a daily RSS news feed from BBC’s Africa service, but our emphasis will be on the reporters themselves. We will highlight the stories behind the stories, the careers of those who write the new.  Jeff Koinange, Hilary Ng’weno, and Amin Mohamed are the first of many we will feature.  We encourage you to give your own observations and ratings of these reporters in the comment boxes. Suggest other reporters for us to feature.

The scholars of Africa help us remember the past and plan for the future. On the Stories of Africa we will be looking into the life work of some of these scholars and detailing much of their writing. The initial featured scholars (Kwame Appiah, Ali Mazrui, and John Mbiti) are only a toenail of an elephant compared to the entire wealth of scholars who have written of Africa, her people and land. We will be adding new scholars periodically, further we solicit you to give us the names of your favorite scholars, who might even be yourself.

Through fiction and poetry, the story tellers of Africa carry us into the heart and soul of what it is to be African or to live among Africans. The light of their insights has flashed a light on what others have ignorantly referred to as the Dark Continent. Some readers may be familiar with the story tellers we present this month (Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Wole Soyinka, Njabulo Ndebele, Nadine Gordimer, Leopold Senghor, and Mazisi Kunene), but most of Africa’s fiction writers are unknown to the rest of the world. Our task is to give their work exposure. No doubt, you have a favorite fiction writer or poet.  Tell us about him or her. If you are one who is blessed with a muse from Africa and wish to share your fiction here, we may feature you and your work.

I lived in Africa for more than twenty-five years. Sixteen of them were in Kenya among the Kipsigis people. Nine were among the Aja people of Benin. I researched and traveled in more than a dozen countries. I am an avid reader of reports, articles, and stories from Africa and have written over a hundred of myself.

Lets begin to share the stories of Africa.

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