NIMCA chairman invites African media councils to join Pan-Africanist body
PICTURE: Media Council of Tanzania Executive Chairman and inaugural NIMCA Chairman Ernest Sungura in conversation with Press Council of South Africa Executive Director Latiefa Mobara at the African Media Councils meeting in Cape Town in May 2024
Dar es Salaam
The new Pan Africanist media body – the Network for Independent Media Councils in Africa (NIMCA) – has finally become operational after it held its maiden technical committee meeting in Tanzania.
Media consultant and trainer from South Africa Izak Minnaar said they have been working on the concept of such a media association for many years and that they were now glad to see it coming into existence.
‘It took us time to think through before issuing a press statement on the establishment of NIMCA in Cape Town,’ said Minnaar, who was formerly the Editor of Digital News at the SABC and is a member of the Press Council of South Africa.
He was instrumental in setting up the NIMCA technical committee meeting held at the UNESCO Tanzania offices early this week.
NIMCA, the first-ever media body that brings together all Africa media councils, was officially launched on 16 May 2024 in Cape Town. The members recommended Tanzania as the permanent seat of the news continental organisation, with chairmanship rotating among the member countries.
The recommendations are expected to be tabled at the first NIMCA Annual Conference 2025 to be held in Tanzania, with that country’s media guru Ernest Sungura, who is also the Executive Secretary of the Media Council of Tanzania (MCT), elected NIMCA Chairman.
‘We invite independent media regulators across the continent to take up membership of this promising unity to make self-regulation of our African media outlets a reality, raising ethical practices, which would increasingly professionalise our African media,’ Sungura said in his opening address.
The technical committee members who attended the Dar es Salaam inaugural meeting early this week were Sungura, Minnaar, Ziada Kilobo (MCT Secretary) and Kennedy Mambwe (Media Self-Regulatory Council of Zambia) who also serves as a NIMCA Board member. Other participants were South African consultants Michael Power and Wendy Trott from ALT Advisory Africa, Tanzania-based consultant Elizabeth Wachuka and Derek Murusuri, who is a media and management consultant from the MCT.
Other technical committee members include Tanzanian journalist Josephat Mwanzi, Bryan Tosh from MCT and Victor Bwire from the Media Council of Kenya.
Power stressed the importance of fundraising as a primary function of NIMCA, to strengthen the capacities of the media councils across Africa, while Minnaar observed the ‘dire need’ to empower Africa’s content regulators. Apart from quality standards, the biggest challenge facing African media is the limited availability of resources.
Many African countries also struggle with access to state-of the-art technology and skilled human capital.
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