Interview by Kangsen Feka (originally published on Palapala Magazine)
George Esunge Fominyen is West and Central Africa correspondent for Humanitarian affairs for [Reuters] AlertNet and West and Central Africa coordinator of the Emergency Information Service of the Thomson Reuters Foundation. He formerly headed the multimedia editorial unit of Panos Institute West Africa (PIWA).
At PIWA, his task was to strengthen the role of the institution in the training of journalists and other media personnel in media production, dissemination and exchange on selected priority issues in West Africa and across the continent.
On PIWA’s work
The effectiveness of initiatives relative to social change take a while for the impact to be seen. However, there are activities that I observed, which brought about immediate change. One of them is how providing training on an innovative format like oral testimony for radio to community radio journalists helped them to give voice to local people particularly in Sierra Leone. Armed with this technique, the producers were able to involve different parts of their society in discussions thus setting the pace for issues dealing with tolerance.
Also, the introduction of the concept of blogging as an alternative that gives voice to journalists to produce socially relevant content was another immediate success that I observed in my time at PIWA.
However, there are a host of other techniques that are being rolled out by PIWA at the moment that I believe would enable local communities to set the agenda of media discussions and thus enable their concerns to be relayed to decision makers with the possibility of direct feedback. A model like the radio listening club, which is already vastly used by PIWA's sister organisation Panos Southern Africa (Psaf) readily comes to mind. I spent time in Zambia, visiting these clubs and learning the methodology and I dare say it is one that merits being encouraged in most African countries.
How can the grassroots take advantage of the some of the new technology that have become indispensable components of the media be used by these communities to not only lend them a voice in current debates but as a resource for economic activity?
There have been so many advances in communication technologies in recent years that I sometimes run into too much talking... Let's just take one of them: the internet and let's use a concrete example. Barely 4-5 years ago, Anglophone Cameroon literature was barely known outside the group of scholars who worked on it in their academic research. As a community, English-speaking Cameroonians have been using the power of the internet to bring this to light. They have used more or less free tools like blogs (Palapala Magazine and Cameroon Literature in English) while the writers by creating blogs of their own - Dibussi Tande, Francis Nyamnjoh, Joyce Ashutantang, etc have created the buzz neccessary to forge ahead.
With publishers like Langaa using Amazon.com there is a voice on Cameroonian issues raised by English-speaking Cameroonians on the international stage. 10 -20 years or so ago, they would have needed to go through the sole, monopolistic outlets run by the State of Cameroon to get this message out and this may never have worked. Essentially that is how communities can take advantage of new technologies for their voices and concerns to be heard.
What most Africans have to master now is how to put in place viable business models around the use of these technologies. I realise that media in Cameroon, for instance are still grappling with this aspect of things. But I am sure with more experience and support they would get there.
You run a popular blog, which covers a range of issues that include wrestling, politics, the environment, soccer etc. In fact, one of your recent posts on witchcraft elicited many spirited responses from readers across the blogosphere. Could you elaborate on this phenomenon in our society and why you felt compelled to address it on that forum?
First of all, I would like to thank you for the compliments and also express thanks to the thousands who have visited Gef's Outlook. My blog is an open space for discussion and debate on burning issues. Where I have insight on a topic of interest, I throw it out to the world. Witchcraft is one of such sources of debate. Recently questions have been raised about the rationale of the whole idea of witchcraft and how it remains ingrained in the minds of many Africans. A TV documentary even took it further when it looked at the effects issuing punishments for witchcraft in the Central African Republic's penal code, which I think holds true in Cameroon. So I thought it was a moment to see what Cameroonians thought about it.
But, the phenomenon needs to be viewed from the wider perspective of the place of African belief systems in contemporary African societies. Since the paths of traditional African belief systems and Judeo-Christian civilizations crossed each other - the African has faced a severe internal existential dilemma of who he is and what he actually believes is right or wrong to believe in. If you have the opportunity to read the works of Francis Nyamnjoh, you would see the troubled state of most of his characters as to what they profess to, and what they do or actually believe in. For instance, in Souls Forgotten the reader is left perplexed as to what was the cause of the terrible disaster that killed 1700 people. Is it the reaction of angry lake gods or the volcanic activity of a lake that emitted toxic gases? In A Nose for Money, it is the diviner who reveals at the end that Prospere the lead character cannot bear children, that his wives had been cheating on him and that his third wife died of AIDS.
A recurring theme in Nigerian films focuses on mystical beliefs, witchcraft and divination. The stories are full of people who go to church in the day and go to diviners later in the evening to know why they cannot be able to make children. Although this may be fiction, it mirrors the society and that is what the many Africans from Ghana to Zambia say attracts them to Nollywood movies.
Should beliefs be part of laws that were conceived in another context, time and place? Where do you set apart deceit from truth in accusations of witchcraft? How sane is one to believe in such things? It is for everyone to think and debate. My blog posts simply poses these questions but does not [claim to] provide answers for anyone.
Now lets talk about one of your passions; soccer. What is the state of the game in the continent as we prepare to host the biggest party/tournament on earth?
This is quite a huge question. I may say, CAF is better placed to respond. There is talent in Africa and from Africa that is making a mark on the World game. There has been a slight improvement in organization which has been the bane of African soccer. Yet, there still is a long way to go. Sub-Saharan Africa except for South Africa lacks infrastructure and the whole continent bar a couple of North African countries still lag behind in development of the game at the youth level.
In many countries national teams are still perceived as a tool for political manipulation in which case there is a complete disregard in the professional management of teams. But man-for-man, some African teams could equal Spain or Brazil. In the right frame of mind, there are African squads that could go quite far based on the skill and determination of the players, but that has to be part of a whole mindset.
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