“Holistic approaches to media development should be taken in all contexts, looking beyond, for instance, journalism training, at the broad set of issues - legal, regulatory, economic, political, infrastructural and technical - that influence the development of independent media”. - Finding of the GFMD’s international conference in Amman, Jordan, 1-3 October 2005

THE AFRICAN FORUM FOR MEDIA DEVELOPMENT (AFMD)

The establishment of the African Forum for Media Development (AFMD) is linked to the earlier establishment and development of the Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD). The GFMD held an international conference on 1-3 October 2005 in Amman, Jordan, which was attended by 425 delegates from 97 countries. One of the goals of the conference was to establish whether consensus existed about the establishment of an international organisation to provide a collective voice for non-governmental organisations involved in the development of the media. An overwhelming mandate was received at the conference to formally establish the GFMD.

It was later decided by the GFMD's founding steering committee - as proposed by the African caucus meeting of the Amman conference - to proceed with the establishment of regional forums for media development, which would collectively constitute the GFMD in future.

The AFMD is therefore part of a series of regional forums that have been established in Asia-Pacific, Eurasia, the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) as well as in Latin America & the Caribbean. The GFMD mobilised these regional networks ahead of its second international conference that will take place in Athens, Greece on 7-10 December 2008.

The AFMD’s founding conference in Grahamstown, South Africa on 7-8 September 2008 was attended by 60 delegates from 35 African media development organisations from Southern, Western, Eastern and Central Africa and a number of African continental media networks including The African Editors Forum (TAEF), the Africa Division of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), the Africa office of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the Network of African Freedom of Expression Organisations (NAFEO). Other participants included eight international and two Asian media development organisations as well as the financial supporters of the conference - the UNDP and the Open Society Media Programme. It was also attended by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. (The conference programme, summary report, papers lodged in writing and a full list of delegates are available elsewhere on this page).

The network of the AFMD has further been broadened by a preparatory meeting of 20 African media organisations that took place in Maputo on 3 May 2002 immediately after UNESCO’s international celebration of World Press Freedom Day in Mozambique. An additional group of African media organisations were also briefed about the establishment of the AFMD at the “Press Freedom in Africa” conference of the Open Society Media Programme that took place in Botswana on 15-16 October 2008. Some of these and more African organisations will meet again in the African Forum sessions of the second international conference of the GFMD in Athens to further develop and consolidate the AFMD.

Sub-Saharan Africa is generally characterised by a serious lack of communication and coherent linkage between media support organisations within countries, between countries and between sub-regions of the continent. It is essential to overcome this fragmentation for various reasons including:
  • To limit unnecessary duplication of effort;
  • To combine synergies for stronger impact nationally, sub-regionally and at sub-
    • Saharan level;
  • To provide a coherent and streamlined media civil society counterpart for the African Union;
  • To effectively map and provide a database of media civil society organisations and resources in
    • sub-Saharan Africa;
  • To explore best practises; and
  • To provide an African regional platform and voice for international engagement with other regions (in the first instance through the GFMD), but also in relation to other international organisations (governmental and non-governmental).
While vital and essential efforts are underway among some media support sectors in Africa to establish sub-Saharan networks (e.g. among editors, associations of journalists, media freedom organisations and organisations in the media education and training sector), it is nevertheless essential that these and other sectors of the media also engage with each other in a more holistic manner. This inter-sectoral approach is a key element of the GFMD in order to develop voice and vision regionally and internationally for recognition of independent media (community, public and private) as a crucial sector of development in its own right, and not as a sub-component or instrument of other development sectors.

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