The United Nations (UN) has declared its readiness to partner with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on production of news in local languages across Africa.
Mr Ronald Kayanja, the Director, UN Information Centre (UNIC) disclosed this during his courtesy visit to the Managing Director of NAN, Malam Ali Muhammad Ali in Abuja.
Keyanja identified inability by the media in Africa to project countries in the continent positively and promote the understanding of news content in vernacular as major challenge of Journalism within the continent.
According to him, East African people promote Swahili as the biggest language on the continent, saying the UN wants to promote Hausa as it’s second indigenous African language because of figures.
Kayanja said, “From Swahili you have Hausa as the second largest language on the continent. So, the UN has six major languages, we have added Hindi because of India, as you know, and parts of all the other countries.
“We have added Swahili and we are adding Hausa for obvious reasons. It has nothing to do with Amina Mohammed, because she’s Deputy Secretary of the UN, no, it’s out of the figures, the numbers make it so evident.
“You see BBC, Hausa, you see Al Jazeera always because of the numbers. So maybe, I know you are not there yet, but maybe that’s something we can work with you on.
“Certainly, as future initiative because for us, we are also developing it as language of communication within the UN because of the reach when you look at the Sahel, a major region for us Hausa is major.
“Recently, when we had the challenges we had in Niger and we wanted to monitor the media, of course, everybody told us we have to monitor the Hausa media. Then you can understand what is happening from where people are.”
He described Hausa as language that has become useful in an area the organisation may work on, narrating his request as non-Nigerian appointed to the country, many friends including relatives said, you are going to Nigeria? Please? Boko Haram?
“One of the challenges in Africa is that we are not good at journalism that projects our countries positively. We’ve been trained by the Western world that it’s only so-and-so is, that is not good.
“Bad news is good news. How many have been killed in Benue? I am not saying we don’t report about that but until I came to Nigeria, I didn’t know the great things happening in this country. I had to see them myself.
“When you travel all over the country, there are many wonderful things happening in this country, but if you only consume the media, you may think this country is on fire if you only consume the social media.
“So, that’s what I always tell my colleagues in journalism. I think we are undermining ourselves. When you look at the U.S., for instance, how many people die every day of gunshot? But you don’t see that as headline.
He narrated his work experience in Asia, saying the news media tells more about their achievements, scientific innovation, somewhere they would say so-and-so killed so-and-so but not their headlines.
This, according to him, implies that when you read China Daily, Singapore, news from Malaysia, and so on, much of what they cover is what they are achieving as a country.
“We are done with this university, this innovation as headline. Yes, they will cover the bad, but Africa somehow, the journalism we are trained to, is journalism that reinforces a stereotype that nothing good is happening in Africa.
“Absolutely, we have obligation to change that. Nigeria, I told you as a person who has worked in a number of African countries, there are lots of great things happening in this country.
“There are challenges like any country has challenges, but the problem is even the consumers of our media, once you project that, you make them lose hope.
“I have feeling the Japa syndrome has bit to do with how the country is projected. Yes, it is difficult, some of the hard times and so on, but in this country, I have seen great innovations.
“There are some people who work with fantastic, most intelligent people which you will find are Nigerians, the problem is that actually, you don’t see that in the media so much,” he added.
He urged the media to always uphold credible and balance reportage centered on good things rather than negative things, adding mindset in reporting is more towards that.
He said the practice whereby, something good in the country is not always given much coverage, not only Nigeria but Africa at large, is a mindset from the West.
“For them, of course, nothing good happens here, and that is what is projected but if we also try to show nothing good is happening, it is big concern. It is painful to see that as Africans, we always pull down ourselves,” he stated.
For his part, Ali said although the local language used for content production is strictly English, measures will be employed through use of technology to imbibe the use of vernacular.
“It is something we think we are going to resurrect. Only if we make this transition to the challenge posed by technology. If we make that, then eventually we see us doing vernacular because we want to reach the largest audience.
“If you look at the new news feed now, especially social media, young people, people below 35, the millennials, the Gen Z, what is their media consumption habit? They rely mostly on social media.
“Most of their attention span is very brief. If you cannot capture their imagination in the first 90 seconds that is a minute and a half, forget it, you are not going to get anything.
“So, we will try to segment our products to meet certain specific audience requirements,” Ali said.