Why I am naming and shaming African Media Initiative (AMI)

by Kiflu Hussain

I might never have known about the existence of African Media Initiative (AMI), had I not received an invitation from this organization that sounds well intentioned. In 2011, I was pleasantly surprised by an email from AMI that invited me to attend the fourth African Media Leaders Forum (AMLF) in Tunis. It was held from November 9-11, 2011.To this day, I have no idea why or from which hat AMI picked my name to extend invitation to me since I am not formally attached to any media houses except my significant contribution to various media outlets in Africa and elsewhere. Since I wrote several pieces on what’s come to be known as the “Arab Spring, the Jasmine Revolution or The Arab Gdansk” depending on the historical mood of the person commenting on those exciting events, I thought that could be the reason that prompted AMI to invite me.

From left, Charles Onyango and Kiflu Hassain

Whatever, I attended the meeting under the auspices of East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project (EHAHRDP) and the Daily Maverick, a South African online journal to which I contributed articles. As I said in the piece after I got back from Tunis under the title “The Eruption of a Revolution; a Time Bomb Ticking to Explode Anytime,” I felt that “I travelled to a pilgrimage of revolutionary sites.”Coincidences too added to my excitement, albeit with a tremendous sadness. At the last day of the forum, November 11, 2011, a young Ethiopian teacher named Yenesew Gebre immolated himself Mohamed Bouazizi style by way of an ultimate protestation against the dictatorship in Ethiopia, which was in fact what elicited the piece I mentioned above.
While that was in the aftermath of the forum, I went to the meeting with great expectation to hear from the forum about freedom of the press and a way forward on how to deal with those African nations that curb or suppress it totally. The fact that the theme of the forum was “Empowering Citizens through Social Media and Techonolgy”coupled with AMI’s core principles shown on its website, heightened my anticipation of a discussion on specific notorious cases of suppression of the media by some African States. Since that was not the mood of the forum, I attributed it on my late arrival in the afternoon on the day of the opening. I was late because of the tardiness of Egypt Air that transported me to Tunis with a lot of inconvenience. So I thought I might have missed discussions to this effect during the opening session in the morning.
At any rate, on the second day I joined a panel when the forum was divided in different groups to discuss various issues. I followed the panel among which one of the presenters was Charles Onyango Obbo, a renowned Ugandan journalist and prolific columnist as well as Executive Editor in the Nations Media Group. I was rewarded by his humorous presentation and incisive critic towards the heavy-handedness of his own government against the media. He made the panel discussion, at least to me, interesting through a snide comment he threw against his fellow countryman, Mr. Robert Kabushenga, CEO of the government run, The New Vision who also attended the forum.Yet, he nearly disappointed me when he revealed a plan that Nation Media Group chose certain African cities to base permanent branch in a bid to tell “African story by Africans.”Among the cities chosen for this “honor” was Addis Ababa. During discussion time, I raised a question to Charles by reminding him how the Ethiopian regime brooks no space at all for media; how a Nation Media Group correspondent named Argaw Ashine was forced to flee from his own country due to this fact at the time Charles was revealing a plan about Addis; and that Ethiopia is clad with an iron curtain in a way only slightly “better than” Eritrea. And so I sort of asked him on what criteria they chose this city for their project. Acknowledging what I have said, Charles nevertheless said we can’t flee leaving everything to dictators and added the rationalization of NMG or his own that “If Coca Cola can do business with these dictators that it’s also possible for media houses to operate as business organizations.”He included too the fact of Addis being AU headquarters as additional reason.
Although, the reasoning sounded hollow to me, I let it go for two reasons. One, because it came from a seasoned journalist that I’ve come to respect, I thought there could be something that I might have missed.Two,I realized immediately the pointlessness of NMG’s plan to operate in Addis given the behavior or rather the misbehavior of the regime in my country. Apart from what I read over a year ago on the Daily Nation of Kenya about the glittering night life of Addis which created ample “job opportunity” for Ethiopian commercial sex workers in the “fast growing Ethiopian economy,” I don’t recall any other worthy “African story told by African journalist.”
To cut a long story short, I left from Tunis with a nagging feeling that whispered to me about a tendency of some African media houses and practitioners to capitulate to dictators who are in the good book of their Western patrons. I also had the uneasy impression of AMI to be a vehicle for this by advocating African media to subject itself to corporate tyranny at a time when the rest of the world is struggling to free itself from this monster. In a casual conversation I had with one of AMI staff alongside a young Rwandese journalist, she expressed her hope of our next meeting to be somewhere around Kigali, capital of Rwanda. When I said Rwanda known for its notoriety to crackdown on journalists! She sort of glossed over the matter. The young Rwandese journalist whom I met in Entebbe and became my travel companion up to Tunis, by the way, has landed in prison and currently languishing in one of the jail houses in Kigali. Last but not least to be mentioned about my sojourn in Tunis is the merry making I had during a gala dinner, courtesy of AMI.
Another tentative invitation from AMI
The above reflection in hindsight about Tunis was prompted by an invitation I received recently from AMI that advised me to “save” November 6-8, 2013 for the purpose of the 6^th AMLF to be conducted in Addis Ababa.AMI did not even have the sensitivity to remember how I travelled to Tunis from my host country, Uganda. I travelled with a conventional travel document (CTD) given to refugees who fled from their own country. The letter also informed me that Addis was chosen to dovetail the 6^th AMLF with the 50^th anniversary of OAU.To a protestation letter I wrote formally to the CEO of AMI, Mr.Amadou Mahtar Ba, his colleague, Ms.Noreen Wambui gave me a cock and bull story about his travelling wherefore he will respond in due course. Since that response has not been forthcoming, I have decided to embark on a naming and shaming campaign against this organization which has violated its own avowed principles.
When one visits the website of AMI, one is faced with a quotation from Mr. Jay Naidoo, a prominent South African activist during the struggle against apartheid as well as a key player in current civil societies. The quotation which AMI spouts from this gentleman go “A strong, sustainable, ethical media that is free and independent is key to Africa and its development.”Sadly, Ethiopia, despite being the seat of OAU/AU for five decades has never had a leadership that allows for that kind of media to flourish in that ancient country supposed to be a beacon of genuine independence for the whole of Africa. The current regime is the worst for any hope of such a vibrant media as envisioned by Mr.Naidoo and as stated by AMI itself. While the semi-feudal regime of Emperor Haileselassie and the military dictatorship of Mengistu Hailemariam never created an illusion of a pseudodemocracy, the current regime against its own constitution passed a series of draconian legislation that effectively rendered civil society organizations and the few independent print Medias out of commission. Accordingly, many Ethiopian journalists are behind bars while scores of others are in exile.
Unfortunately, while these Ethiopian journalists are languishing in unspeakable conditions in different detention centers out of whom some are locked up in remote areas in order to deny their visitation rights by family and lawyer, AMI shamelessly will go to Addis and dance with their captors and tormentors in a gala dinner like the one I witnessed in Tunis at El Mouradi Gammarth Hotel. And this savage joke is going to be perpetrated by an organization that prophesies to work for a “vibrant” African Media in the name of dovetailing its next annual meeting with the 50^th anniversary of OAU/AU in Addis. Considering the main financiers of AMI, such as the UK Department for International Development (DFID) known for bankrolling “developmental” dictatorships from Ethiopia to Rwanda, one may not have been surprised at all.Still, I am of the opinion of that one should not go quiet in the face of this sort of grand deception.Perhaps, we need a book on it too titled “Lords of Victims of Rights Violation” Graham Hancock’s style “Lords of Poverty.”
Hopefully I would see you with my next theme entitled “A Postcard to “Pan-Africanists”on the eve of 50^th anniversary of the infantile OAU/AU.”
An Ethiopian Social and Political Commentator
Email: kiflukam@yahoo.com