More realistic and relevant images of Africa may be seen on television screens across the world with the launch of new TV channels.
The changes come after established global television companies have been criticised for mostly broadcasting news and documentaries that stereotype Africa as a disaster-torn continent full of starving and needy people.
The website journalism.co.za reports that new satellite channels are planned to give an African perspective on African news
South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) began test transmissions of SABC International in June 2007.
‘SABC News International will provide on-the-hour news bulletins and news updates,’ says Alwyn Kloppers, Manager of Resources at SABC News, who is also a member of the task team planning the service.Fashioned on similar lines as the big international services like CNN, BBC World and Al Jazeera, SABC News International will seek to compete commercially.
The channel will replace the existing SABC Africa service carried on DSTV, whose broadcasting contract expires in March 2008. The new channel will be available on Sentech’s relatively unknown VIVID satellite platform. It will be free to air, but users will need to buy a special decoder. It will cover Sub-Saharan Africa from Nigeria to South Africa.
Initially, broadcasting will be mainly in English, with French as the second main language. Other languages like Portuguese could be added in due course.
The SABC initiative comes amid several other continent-wide TV projects, many driven by a sense that Western networks consistently misrepresent Africa. An independent company, Africans Together Vision (ATV), led by Samir Amin, the son of the late Mohamed Amin, a Kenyan cameraman best known for his coverage of the 1984 famine in Ethiopia, is planning a pan-African channel with the name A24 TV.
In 2006, ATV announced that it aims to give a voice to the continent and that it targets free-to-air television and radio stations complemented by mobile and internet services.
The Guardian newspaper, UK, reports that for years a news channel has been beyond the reach of any media organisation in Africa. Now, however, satellite and coverage costs, through new technology and the internet, make A24 possible.
The channel will offer breaking news, analysis and a platform for sharing ideas between Africans from across the continent and beyond. It will use a range of distribution methods including streaming on the internet and mobile phones. Africa is enjoying an explosion of mobile usage and the channel bosses plan to encourage its audience to send user-generated content to its Nairobi headquarters.
Eventually, A24 wants to run 46 news bureaux across the continent. A24 will cover both the uplifting as well as the depressing news from Africa.
The channel will be editorially independent and plans to train its own journalists through the A24 Foundation with the help of Norway's Gimlekollen School of Journalism. The foundation will coordinate this training in cooperation with universities and institutes in South Africa, Ethiopia and Kenya as well as major TV news agencies.
A24 is in discussion with a wide range of international broadcasters and partners about content-sharing, distribution and support, and the channel’s two founders, Amin and managing director Daniel Rivkin, plan to roll the channel out both online and on television during next year.
‘24 will make a difference because it will create a new kind of voice,’ says Amin. ‘It will be truly African, beyond local politics and beyond prejudices.’
Meanwhile, CNBC Africa has recently begun broadcasting as sub-Saharan Africa's first 24/7 international business news channel. Recently, to give more coverage on Africa, Al Jazeera added another portfolio called Al Jazeera Africa to its Al-Jazeera International (AJI), the new 24-hour English-language news and current affairs channel and sister of Al-Jazeera Arabic News Channel.
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