[Video] Interview with Amadou M. Ba of AllAfrica.com
Amadou M. Ba is the co-founder and president of AllAfrica.com, the largest online aggregator and distributor of news from Sub-Saharan Africa in English and French. He is also the acting executive director of the African Media Initiative, which aims to strengthen Africa's media sector by bringing together owners and operators of major media outlets to collaborate on training programs, seek investment opportunities, advocate for better policy, and improve media research.
LOGIN TO COMMENT | POSTED ON OCT. 10, 2009
Think Globally, Act Locally?
The discussion in Salzburg emphasizes media systems in the developing world—the need to cultivate independent media systems, strong journalistic traditions and empowered, engaged citizens. I applaud the effort to focus attention on these goals. But, may I turn the table for a moment? Don’t we also need these things in the so-called developed world? This struck me as I read one of the resources on the SIM website, Shanthi Kalathi’s valuable report, “Towards a New Model: Media and Communication in Post-Conflict and Fragile States.”
LOGIN TO COMMENT | POSTED ON OCT. 10, 2009
Insights and Ideas...
... are starting to come in from participants at the meetings in Salzburg this week. We will continue to link and post them here:
Joshua Goldstein, UNICEF Innovations Group
Pippa Norris, Kennedy School of Government
Stay tuned...
LOGIN TO COMMENT | POSTED ON OCT. 10, 2009
Reaction to Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama?
I'm curious how the Salzburg delegates greeted the news about President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize.
LOGIN TO COMMENT | POSTED ON OCT. 9, 2009
'Crowdsourcing' Using the Boy & Girl Scouts
In today's late afternoon session Jose Edgardo Campos of the World Bank Institute recounted a dynamic use of cell phones in the Philippines to address the problem that only 20 percent of textbooks distributed every year reached pupils:
"We needed to find a way to figure out whether school textbooks were actually making it out to the districts from the warehouses in Manila.... So we worked with Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, who were already organized – and were, of course, some of the targeted users of the textbooks – to use cell phones to tell us what titles had actually arrived in the rural areas and in what quantities.
LOGIN TO COMMENT | POSTED ON OCT. 9, 2009