Highway Africa 2008

New Media is the order of the day for global citizen journalism

By Bay Tsimane

This year’s Digital Citizen Indaba (DCI) brought to the fore in a vivid and illustrative manner, the impact of mobile technologies such as MXit, a cellphone chat service, in changing the lives of African communities.

Presentations also focused on mobile reporting, setting and sustaining a community blog as well as creating a podcast that people want to listen to.  Through the use of these technologies, African citizens can create and sustain digital voices that can touch lives and make a difference to their wellbeing.

It was intriguing listening to Marlon Parker, an IT lecturer at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology who has started a drug counselling service using the cellphone chat service, Mxit. Parker, who works with youngsters involved in drugs and gangstersim, has for the past two years been using Mxit to reach out to addicts. He is doing his PhD thesis on the use of technology to facilitate community change.

Taking advantage of the wide usage of cellphones in communities, Parker and his team invite addicts to the centre for one-on-one counselling sessions. This is commendable work that should be supported and possibly funded if we are to change the lives of our fellow Africans.

African Voices via Mobile phones

In a panel discussion moderated by Peter Verweij of the School of Journalism, Utrecht, Anteyaw Debrah from Ghana and Munene Kilongi of Kenya, shared their experiences as mobile reporters for Voices of Africa.  Anteyaw says mobile phones offer immense opportunities as unique and powerful tool for news dissemination. Munene gave an account of how mobile reporters work.

It is, however, not all smooth-sailing for these two mobile reporters.  For instance it is difficult to convince people to be interviewed by a cellphone reporter. It appears that people are not familiar with digital reporting and therefore education is needed to create awareness in African communities on the advantages of modern technology.

This is also a challenge to all bloggers, journalists and African governments including civic society and those who work in the ICT sector to reach out to African communities that are still lagging behind in accessing information through digital convergence.

African governments with draconian media laws such as Zimbabwe and Egypt need to relax these laws to allow for the creation of environments that allow citizens to participate in the new media to influence desired changes in their lives. - edited By Rezaa Kasu