Ms. Gabriel Ayite Baglo
West African Journalists Association (WAJA), Dakar, Senegal

Gabriel Ayite Baglo, 42, Togolese journalist, is Director of the Africa office of the International Federation of journalists (IFJ) since february 6, 2003. He was formerly, West Africa Coordinator of the Media for Democracy Programme (2000-2003) of IFJ and WAJA ( West African Journalists’ Association) funded by the European Commission.

Mr Baglo was Secretary General of the Togo Union of Independant Journalists (UJIT) from 1997 to 2001; Member of the management committee of WAJA (1999-2001); Reporter at the Togo national television (1990- 1993); and founding member of the Crocodile newspaper 1993 where he was consequently reporter and editor.

Mr Baglo holds a Masters and a Pre-Doctrals Diploma (DEA) in Linguistics and communiucation, and a Degree in English. He is maried and father of four children.
The IFJ africa office and the WAJA office are based in Dakar, Senegal.

Mr. George Christensen
Radio 1 FM, Banjul, Gambia

Ms. Beatrix Mugishagwe
Abantu Visions, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Ms. Beatrix Mugishagwe is a film producer in Tanzania at an organization called Abantu Visions. She specializes in the production of local programmes for the Kiswahili speaking people on education and development which have been screened by nearly all the TV stations in the country. Abantu Visions also undertakes special packaging of videos for rural areas where there is no electricity and therefore no TV. In collaboration with Tanzanian writers the organization started the production of feature films.

Mr. Sam Phiri
Zambian journalist

Mr. Sam Phiri is Media Programme Officer for the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) based in Johannesburg, South Africa. A former journalist with the Times of Zambia, and the founding president of the Zambia Union of Journalists, and Director of Training at the Nordic-SADC Journalism Centre (NSJ) in Maputo, Mozambique. Currently, he is studying for a doctorate in Communication with the University of South Africa (UNISA). He holds Masters and Bachelors degrees in Mass Communication.

Mr. Roland Stanbridge
Media and ICT consultant/Journalism Trainer, Sweden

Mr. Roland Stanbridge is a citizen of South Africa with considerable expertise and knowledge on media and ICT issues, working as a journalist for several major South African newspapers between 1965 and 1997. Mr Stanbridge has an MA degree in African Studies from the University of Cape Town (1977) and is currently a doctoral student in journalism and communication at the University of Stockholm (JMK), Sweden. Whilst in Sweden, he is a part-time media/communication lecturer for three Swedish universities (KSM, Campus Norrköping, and University of Linköping), including supervising MA students and teaching a variety of Internet-related courses including a course for African journalists on online research and publishing. He has just been appointed Director of International Masters Programme in Global Media in the Department of Media and Communication at the University of Örebro, Sweden, which will offer course in 2003 to media professionals from Africa and other parts of the world. Mr Stanbridge is also developing a project to link Swedish media researchers with African scholars for joint research activities on pressing media questions, focusing on academic research on ICT and media issues in Africa. From 1996 to 2001 Mr Stanbridge was senior lecturer at the Department of Journalism & Media Studies, Rhodes University, South Africa where he is reputed to have founded the New Media Laboratory (NML), and appointed its Director teaching online literacy to undergraduate students and media practitioners as well as more advanced levels in Computer Aided Research (CAR) and Internet Publishing courses. Whilst at Rhodes, he initiated and convened the Highway Africa series of annual conferences over the last five years and was the founding member of the South African chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) and a board member.

Dr. Hakim Ben Hammouda
ECA Subregional Office - Central African region

Ms. Veronica Wilson
Radio Netherlands

Ms. Veronica Wilson is a Sierra Leonean by birth and currently lives in the Netherlands. She is a broadcaster with approximately 25 years experience, working for the BBC and the Central Office of Information in London.

She joined Radio Netherlands in 1971 to set up, produce and present TV programmes for Africa. She is currently a producer with the English Department of the Dutch International Broadcaster working on news, current affairs and documentary radio programmes. Her current duties involves building a network of partner stations in Africa to re-broadcast Radio Netherlands programmes, initiating co-productions and offering training to producers on the continent.

In the Netherlands she also lectures in Cross-cultural Relations and Development Studies to would-be diplomats from the Dutch Foreign Ministry who scheduled for posting to the developing world.

She is the founder and coordinator of a non-profit organization known as African Media Productions, an educational body dedicated to popularising the works of African writers by adapting the novels/plays for radio.

Mr. Gaston Zongo
IMPACT-Africa project

Mr. Gaston Zongo, is a citizen of Burkina Faso (West Africa) and is a telecommunication engineer, post graduate of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications de Paris (1976). He also holds a Masters in mathematics, and a postgraduate in Research and Development Economics, of Paris I University (1977). He has been a managing Director of the Telecommunications Operator of Burkina Faso for 15 years, and simultaneously professor of mathematics, applied Statistics and Econmics at the University of Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso).

He currently heads the Institute for Monitoring and Promoting Poverty Alleviaton through Communication Technologies in Africa (IMPACT). He has been the Executive director of the African Telecommunication Observatory for three years (1995-1998) before being appointed Executive Director of the IDRC/ Acacia initiative (Communities and information society in Africa) (July 1998- August 2001)

He led the Acacia programme out of the regional office of IDRC in Dakar (Senegal) of the Canadian International Development Research Centre (IDRC). Acacia focuses on Sub- Saharan Africa and is an ICT for Development research program aiming at demonstrating how disadvantaged social groups can apply ICTs to address their social development problems.

Gaston’s main research interest is focused on policies and strategies to reach universal access and rural connectivity and in particular the community access and their application for sustainable development and poverty reduction.