Local Journalists during a training session on how to tell the true African story
The Rwandan story can best be told when local journalists and photographers have good art of storytelling.
A new project “Amplify Fellowship program for creators” comprised of two CNN veterans through their company- aKoma media have launched a program in Rwanda to train local journalists on how to tell authentic stories about Africa.
Under this initiative, 25 young fellows aged between 21-34 years from Nigeria, Kenya and Rwanda are today starting a 6-month online course on photography, video shooting and editing, and writing for online platforms.
Selected candidates are journalists and photographers already in the profession. Their work will consist of covering stories or shooting pictures/videos, sending them to the aKoma team for editing and feedback.
Every candidate will file at least one story per week. Rwanda has six candidates in this team.
Zain Verjee, aKoma CEO and Co-founder said the intention of this project, is to make a maiden team that will start telling the African genuine story.
“It is so sad to hear negative portrayals that dominate the narratives about Africa. Based on this we thought about something that can help portray the real image of Africa and then we came up with Amplify.”
According to Chidi Afulezi, the co-founder of aKoma media, the 6 months fellowship will provide skills to fellows that will enable them to become job creators and provide them entrepreneurial opportunities.
“Fellows will gain skills that position them to create strong and impactful stories and for potential paid positions with media companies within and outside Africa,” Said Chidi
Amplify project owners believe that the project us timely because they are targeting a wide pan-African audience by 2019 whereby 950 million Africans will be subscribed for mobile in Africa.
It might be clear that with this target, there is a need of huge funding however akoma managers said they don’t expect any funding from any one as they referred the project as “our heart, blood and money initiative”.
So far, only the MasterCard foundation partnered with aKoma in the development and implementation of Amplify project.
After the six preliminary months, aKoma managers will discuss way forward for other batches.
Africa has been misreported in several global media. CNN veterans are training Local Journalists to report correctly about Africa
