The two organisations also seek to provide a range of platforms and learning initiatives so that African media become “learning institutions which continuously seek to improve their performance to audiences and markets by providing high quality and ethical management and management systems and editorial and advertising content,” AMI and the SPI announced today.
They will work to create and promote “greater collaboration among African media” and with other news organisations across the world that share their vision and goals. They will also collaborate on a range of programmes, including media management and leadership research and training.
The SPI, the only university-level institution in Africa and the developing world offering high level editorial and business management training programmes, has hosted the annual, pan-African AMLC for the past nine years. It has provided a critical platform to African media leaders to network and discuss key common challenges facing their companies at a time of rapid change brought by digital channels such as the internet, mobile phones and social media networks.
For nine successful years, the AMLC has been funded and organized in close partnership between SPI and KAS Media Africa, the sub-Saharan media programme of the German Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung.
AMI seeks to strengthen the media, from an owner and operator perspective, so that it can play its full role in promoting social development, economic growth and in empowering citizens to hold governments and other institutions to account. Since 2008, AMI has organised every year the African Media Leaders’ Forum (AMLF), the largest gathering of African media owners and operators, to discuss and seek practical solutions to issues of common concern among themselves. Earlier this year, KAS Media Africa and AMI announced a strategic partnership beginning with the hosting of a joint annual media conference on the African continent later this year – under the banner of the African Media Leaders Forum (AMLF).
“Given that both the AMLC and the AMLF were focusing on similar issues, it made better sense that both organisations joined hands, strengthened their reach and impact and leveraged on their combined economies of scope and scale,” SPI Director Francis Mdlongwa said.
This year’s summit will be held in the Tunisian capital Tunis on 10 and 11 November.
Post published in: Africa News