Africa is mulling setting up a 24-hour television news channel that would portray the continent in positive perspective on the global platform and promote a development agenda, officials said on Wednesday.
They said the channel, which will resemble pan-Arabic television al-Jazeera, could be in place by next year.
”We want to cover Africa as it is in a more balanced, honest way and focus on development of the continent. Africa is not about just aid, but it’s also about creating opportunities,” Salim Amin, the head of Camerapix, the Kenyan-based company overseeing the exercise, told a pan-African media conference in Nairobi.
The pan-African and multilingual news and information channel, which plans to begin broadcasting late next year, will cost approximately $75-million, said Amin, the son of Mohamed ”Mo” Amin, the legendary photographer, cameraman and publisher who gained fame for the 1984 coverage of the devastating Ethiopian famine.
Amin said the Doha-based al-Jazeera has achieved more in broadcasting the views of the Arab world than a Western TV channel could do, thus the need for Africans to raise their voices.
Media experts attending the conference lamented that Africa has suffered poor coverage over the decades, being portrayed as a continent of disaster while there are numerous positive events thriving in its regions. — Sapa-AFP