1. Posted on Wednesday 9 December 2009 - 09:47

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   Kent Mensah, AfricaNews editor in Accra, Ghana Photo: Kenya journalists on demonstration. Credit: Evans Wafula

   Twenty-five journalists have been imprisoned in Sub-Saharan Africa as of December 1, disclosed the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists. According to an annual census of the CPJ nearly 90 percent of these journalists were detained without charges in secret detention facilities.

   

   CPJ stated: “With at least 19 journalists behind bars, Eritrea by far leads the list of shame of African nations that imprison journalists. Eritrea holds this dubious distinction since 2001 when the authorities abruptly closed the private press by arresting at least ten editors without charge or trial.
   
   “The Eritrean government has refused to confirm if the detainees are still alive, even when unconfirmed online reports suggest that three journalists have died in detention. CPJ continues to list these journalists on its 2009 census as a means of holding the government responsible for their fates. In early 2009, the government arrested at least six more journalists from state media suspected of having provided information to news Web sites based outside the country.”
   
   The statement named Ethiopia as the first-runner up among African nations with journalists in jail. It said four journalists were held in Ethiopian prisons, including two Eritrean journalists who are detained in secret locations without any formal charges or legal proceedings since late 2006.
   
   “The Gambia, with its incommunicado detention of reporter Ebrima Chief Manneh since July 2006, and Cameroon, which has imprisoned the editor of a newspaper since September 2008, completes the list of imprisoned journalists for Sub-Saharan Africa.
   
   “Worldwide, a total of 136 reporters, editors, and photojournalists were behind bars, an increase of 11 from the 2008 tally. The survey also found that freelancers now make up nearly 45 percent of all journalists jailed across the globe,” added the statement.
   
   Full report on www.cpj.org.

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Reactions

1. Posted on Friday 11 December 2009 21:35

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   Borderjumpers

   

   
   5 berichten
   Lid sinds December 2009

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   FYI...on this article today from the Worldwatch Instiute's Nourishing the Planet Blog
   
   Filling a Need for African-Based Reporting on Agriculture
   http://blogs.worldwatch.o...reporting-on-agriculture/
   
   I’ve been trying to read as many African newspapers as I can while traveling. In Ethiopia I read the The Herald, in Kenya, the Daily Nation, in Tanzania, The Guardian, and here in Uganda, I’m reading the Uganda Record. One thing that I’ve noticed in all these papers are the large number of articles on agriculture, hunger, climate change, poverty, HIV/AIDS, malaria, and water and sanitation. It’s not surprising—all of these issues impact sub-Saharan Africa in a big way.
   
   What is surprising, however, is the lack of African journalists writing these articles. Most are pulled from newswires, like Reuters and AP, or from the International Herald Tribune and UK-based papers. That means there’s not only very little on-the-ground reporting from the continent, but also that the people who know best about what’s really happening here aren’t the ones writing about the issues.
   
   But there are efforts underway to increase reporting about Africa from Africans. The International Center for Journalists received a $2 million grant, three-year grant in 2008 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to improve coverage of agriculture and health. They’re placing journalists from the U.S. in four key African countries—Ghana, Malawi, Tanzania, and Senegal— where they will lead projects with African journalists, helping them improve not only coverage, but the quality of the articles they’re writing. The project will also help train “citizen journalist” stringers who can relay information from the village level via cellphones.
   
   And earlier this year, the Gates Foundation also awarded a two-year grant to the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism to develop an intensive training program for African journalists to promote high-quality coverage of agricultural issues.
   
   These projects could be at least partly inspired by grants the Soros Foundation and the Open Society Institute have been giving for training journalists in the former Soviet Republics and in Eastern Europe. The Independent Journalism Institute provides similar programs for journalists in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia.
   
   These types of grants—and hopefully future funding from other donors—are an important way of not only generating news stories, but informing African people about what’s taking place on a daily basis in their own country.
   
   --Been traveling across Africa and my personal travel blog is called BorderJumpers or www.borderjumpers.org - Danielle Nierenberg and Bernard Pollack

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