By Andrew Allimadi, 20 March 2006

A one-week regional media training for trainers workshop opened Monday 20 March at the Economic Commission for Africa's head office in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The workshop will train trainers working on media-related courses in institutions of higher learning and journalists on the role ICTs can play in the development of African countries and share country experiences. Over 20 participants from media houses and training institutions in Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe are taking part. Also represented are leading media training organisations such as the the East African Media Institute (EAMI), Nordic-SADC Journalism Foundation, the Media Institute for Southern Africa (MISA) and the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA).

In her opening address to the workshop, the acting director of ECA's Development Information Services Division (DISD) Ms Aida Opoku-Mensah, said an information revolution was taking place across the globe and it was important to harness its potentials to the development of Africa. She outlined ECA's work programme which is the African Information Society Initiative (AISI), and said ICTs goes beyond technology and covered development policy related dimensions.

Ms Opoku-Mensah said the media are key partners in increasing widespread understanding of ICT issues across Africa and facilitating the adoption of relevant policies and programmes across the continent. Therefore, it is important to build media capacities and interests in the issue to enable them to fulfill this important function. Newspapers, radio and television provide an easy, accessible and cheap means of carrying information to end users. Communities in Africa do not have to wait for the Internet to receive much of the information it carries. The mass media can access many of the existing sources of information and provide broad channels of communications to the poor and to remote areas.

The training workshop is based on the AISI Media Training Module developed by DISD utilising ECA's decade-long experience in ICT4D activities, especially in the area of national ICT strategies and plans.

The workshop will explore how ICTs can help wealth creation, improve business productivity and rural growth and development. She also outlined some challenges that Africa faces in this regard, including the lack of adequate ICT infrastructure, the challenge of rural connectivity, and policies issues including Internet Governance issues, such as how and why countries on the continent need to have a say in who controls the Internet.

Participants also visit ICT for development projects in Addis Ababa to gain first hand experience in reporting on such issues as well as design different web sites as part of the course.

Background

The ICT for development training of trainers course is part of a series being organized by ECA's development services management division. A previous course was held for participants from West Africa, and the project will train trainers from all over the continent. The course has been prepared in collaboration with the Communication Assistance Foundation of the Netherlands and financial contribution from GTZ of Germany.