ACME launches media and politics in Africa annual lecture series

The African Centre for Media Excellence (ACME) announces the launch of the “Media and Politics in Africa Annual Lecture”. The purpose of the lecture – to run every year hence forming a series of lectures that will be published into a booklet for wider circulation – is to explore the relationship between media and politics in Africa amidst the ever-changing circumstances generated from within and without the continent. The first three lectures are being funded with a grant from the Democratic Governance Facility under a project that ACME is running titled “Enhanced Media Reporting for Transparency & Accountability (EMERTA)”.

“We hope to nudge Ugandan journalists and others to think more broadly and critically about some of the urgent issues affecting our industry today – issues such as the impact of new media technologies on the conduct of journalism and politics and how that in turn is redefining the interaction between media and politics,” said Dr Peter Mwesige, ACME’s executive director.

The lecture will be delivered in Kampala every November by a notable African whose work has significantly joined for better or for worse the worlds of media and politics. Accordingly, the inaugural Media and Politics in Africa Lecturer is Mr Trevor Ncube. He will deliver his lecture at 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday, 26 November 2014, in the Banquet Hall of the Golf Course Hotel in Kampala. Mr Ncube is a renowned Zimbabwean entrepreneur and publisher running influential media outlets in Zimbabwe and South Africa. An intrepid fighter for media freedom in Zimbabwe, Mr Ncube is probably better known as the majority owner of South Africa’s highly respected weekly newspaper, Mail & Guardian.

“We are very pleased that a media heavyweight on the continent such as Mr Ncube accepted to honour our invitation,” said Mr Bernard Tabaire, ACME’s director of programmes. “He is intellectually impressive too – just take a listen to his TEDx Talk titled Embracing Life’s Challenges to get a sense of what the man is all about.”

Added Mr Tabaire: “The lecture is open to the public, so I invite everyone who cares about the connections and disconnections between media and politics in Africa, and who wants his or her thinking challenged, to attend.”

Under the EMERTA project, ACME runs a grant facility and a fellowship programme for reporters as a key component. The other two components are “data journalism and evidence-based reporting” and “expanding spaces to enhance knowledge and promote professional fellowship among journalists.” The annual lecture is an activity in the latter component.

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ABOUT AFRICAN CENTRE FOR MEDIA EXCELLENCE: ACME is a Kampala-based independent, non-profit professional organisation committed to helping African journalists seek and achieve professional excellence, and improving journalism and mass communication in Africa. The organisation fulfils its mandate through refresher training for mid-career journalists; media literacy training for civil society organisations, corporate companies and others; media research; free expression advocacy; and media monitoring.

For further information, please contact Mr Bernard Tabaire, ACME’s director of programmes on +256-772-575-140; btabaire@acme-ug.org

ABOUT DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE FACILITY: Established by Austria, Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the European Union, the DGF is a basket fund that supports state and non-state partners to strengthen democratisation, protect human rights, improve access to justice and enhance accountability in Uganda. (www.dgf.ug)