Africa-Press – Botswana. With the media constituting a major role in shaping and building nations, a panel discussion during the sixth BRICS Media Forum held in Johannesburg, South Africa on Sunday, saw participants discuss the importance of the media in strengthening exchanges among BRICS nations and Africa to invigorate Africa’s growth.
One of the panellists, Cameroon News and Publishing Corporation (SOPECAM) general manager Ms Marie Nnana said African countries were faced with numerous challenges hence highlighting the need to build reliable partnerships as the best way out of most development setbacks.
“Such partnerships should in no way downplay the importance of self-reliant development as well. In other words, Africa must work with her friends, but there is a need to harness her own resources for national growth in the different African countries,” Ms Nnana said.
She appreciated the philosophy behind the gathering in the BRICS Media Forum as a way of enabling Africa and its partners to share experiences so as to improve the professional output and the well-being of their populations.
“The support from China has so far put into the various development initiatives across Africa, and Cameroon in particular, where I come from, can also be seen as part of efforts to sustain growth in Africa. The importance of such assistance which is generally tailored to the needs of the population has guided my interest in the theme: Strengthening Exchanges To Invigorate Africa’s Growth,” she added.
She said the leadership of President Xi Jinping had presented several opportunities, especially through the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) that matched global objectives and development strategies in most African countries.
Such objectives, she said included the China-Africa Cooperation Vision 2035, the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the 2063 Agenda of the African Union.
She said the programmes did not only tie in with the objectives that different African countries had earmarked for growth but contained specific projects capable of changing the lives and well-being of thousands of people in Africa.
“For instance, in Cameroon the ambition to attain the level of an emerging economy by 2035 projected by the Cameroon Head of State is intended to ensure that the population is capable of feeding itself, sending children to school and providing adequate health care,” she said.
She noted the role of media practitioners anchored on being able to break down some of the major concepts that governments and their partners were putting in place for the well-being of the citizens and equally letting those in decision-making positions know how the policies were being perceived by the masses.
For her part, Ms Janna Tolstikova, who is TV BRICS International Media Network chief executive officer, emphasised the importance of highlighting the meaning of presenting Africa’s own authentic national media to the global community along with its vision from local journalists and creators.
“Unfortunately, we face a lack of African national news in the global news feeds. Plenty of news about Africa is coming from international agencies, but it is not enough to shape our own vision of the agenda each country has,” she said.
She indicated that Africa’s economic growth had been steadily increasing over the past decade, adding however that there was still much untapped potential.
“This development can be done through various means, including trade, investment, knowledge sharing and, of course, professional media coverage of events on the international agenda,” she said.
She also noted that Africa’s media resources should have access to freely perform its own vision to global audiences to allow for more discourse on Africa’s economic agenda, its struggles and solutions Africa has to offer the world.
Such, she said could be done through international information exchange that shaped the national agenda of each country to the audience of another country and brought them closer and built a base for further connections and mutual interests in various fields.
“We believe it helps to stimulate the development of each country and to enhance the common growth between the countries when we put a light on any field using media tools,” she said.
On global information exchanges with Africa’s media, Ms Tolstikova said TV BRICS’ approach embraced multilateral high-quality information exchange between different editorial boards, adding that if the method is used, there would be no need to create a new media source in a foreign language to spread the agenda in another media landscape.
She said focus should be on distributing a constructive peaceful agenda related to existing and potential cooperation between countries and urged that BRICS should source Africa’s peaceful agenda using its local media content and local professional journalistic information.
She thus emphasised the need to strengthen exchanges between countries, saying it would lead to more sustainable, inclusive and faster economic growth, not only for Africa, but all other countries termed BRICS+.
Meanwhile, other panelists emphasised the need for increased collaboration and cooperation in the media and communication sectors to promote a more balanced narrative on Africa’s development and opportunities.
The importance of developing partnerships, sharing resources and best practices and promoting people-to-people exchanges to foster a more nuanced understanding of Africa was also the highlight of the discussion.
Panellists also discussed the significance of promoting African media’s participation in international mainstream platforms to challenge the prevailing Western-centric narrative.
They called for a more inclusive and diversified media landscape that reflected the aspirations and achievements of Africa.
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