Starting summer 2015 Africa will have a fresh news network to add to the growing list of dynamic and independent media voices on the continent. This will come in the form of AfricaNews, a sister channel of the established EuroNews. Not only will it be in French and English the widest spoken languages on the continent, but it will incorporate other languages such as Swahili, Arabic, and Portuguese. The headquarters of the news network will be in Congo-Brazzaville which will enable them with a firm base of operations to broadcast the news.
The most attractive aspect of AfricaNews will be watching the synergy of the sister news networks coming together. Under the model they have released to the general public, the two will share news and information. This will ultimately lead to African stories and more importantly global stories being told from the African perspective. It goes without saying this will facilitate the new African identity as our influence and voice becomes louder and louder across the world. EuroNews has partnered with the national television channel of the Republic of Congo ensuring that these are Africans telling African stories, only good things can come from this.
At a time where everyone is interested in defining the narrative of the African Rising story we need media outlets such as AfricaNews that will have strong ethics in addition to high editorial independence and quality. Above and beyond African voices on the continent this is an avenue for African voices in the Diaspora to tell their story too, especially those in Europe. This is mainly because of again the synergy that will take place between the two across the continents. Additionally with the creation of this news network it will only push existing media houses to raise their standards to a higher level. Moreover it will provide employment and foreign direct investment as specialists from Europe move to the continent to work closer with their African partners. At the launch of the new venture the CEO of EuroNews stated “we take pride in announcing this emblematic cooperation project and we are eager to launch this new player on the world media scene.” I personally could not agree more.
The company announced that its CEO will be the Kenyan Isaac Khaguli Esipisu, a former journalist of CNBC Africa, Kenyan Nation Media and Reuters.
On the picture : Isaac Khaguli Esipisu, CEO of AfricaNEWS
