{"id":8395,"date":"2019-04-16T15:33:25","date_gmt":"2019-04-16T13:33:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rnw.media\/?post_type=news&p=8395"},"modified":"2019-04-16T15:33:25","modified_gmt":"2019-04-16T13:33:25","slug":"saying-their-names-telling-africans-stories","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.rnw.media\/index.php\/news\/saying-their-names-telling-africans-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"Saying their names \u2013 telling Africans\u2019 stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

157 people died in the Ethiopian Airlines crash in March. But who were those people? Western media focused on the westerners onboard the plane \u2013 and the many African victims went largely unnamed. This prompted Socrates Mbamalu, journalist and editorial assistant with the \u2018This Is Africa\u2019 platform, to launch a campaign seeking to name all those involved in the crash and tell their stories. Using the hashtags #saytheirnames and #notastatistic, the campaign attracted a response Mbamalu describes as \u2018overwhelming\u2019.<\/strong><\/p>\n

#saytheirnames aimed to humanise those who died in the crash, and the campaign resonated deeply with the This is Africa community<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t realise how much people were interested in the lives of those who died. People really commented; they poured their hearts out. It was almost like bringing the community together and mourning together.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

And it wasn\u2019t just the followers of the platform who responded. The hashtag #saytheirnames was picked up by Al Jazeera and the campaign featured on Al Jazeera Stream<\/a>, contributing to a larger conversation on how the Western media gets Africa wrong.<\/p>\n

The dominance of Western perspectives on Africa is something local African media need to take more seriously according to Mbamalu<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems as if the local African media houses aren\u2019t doing so much themselves, it\u2019s like those in local media don\u2019t see the need for this paradigm shift in how we\u2019re reporting on Africa or how we\u2019re reporting on our individual countries. There are some trying to change the narratives and perceptions, but progress is slow.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

This is Africa<\/a>, currently supported by RNW Media but set to become fully independent in mid-2019, is one of those initiatives working to change the narrative around the continent.<\/p>\n

“As an organisation we are taking an umbrella perspective, looking at the whole continent and while local media might not yet be doing what it needs to do, the main challenge we are facing is Western media. As an individual outlet we can directly confront Western media coverage.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Burundi\u2019s President Pierre Nkurunziza recently revoked the BBC\u2019s license and extended the suspension of Voice of America, accusing them of portraying Burundi in a bad light. Such bans are most definitely not the way to counter Western perspectives on Africa, says Mbamalu.<\/p>\n

“Banning things is not the way forward. The way forward would be for the BBC to have journalists from individual African countries, either in advisory or editorial positions, so they are the ones reporting.”<\/em><\/p>\n

And that is what This Is Africa strives to embody–stories told by Africans in Africa. Stories aimed at stirring conversations and changing narratives, questioning old narratives and pushing for new ones.<\/p>\n

The #saytheirnames campaign generated many such stories and conversations, both personal, focusing on the victims<\/a>, and political, looking at how Western media was quick to blame Ethiopian Air<\/a> for the crash and questioning Western coverage<\/a> of African stories. The campaign reached almost 2.7 people million people and generated more than 75,000 likes, shares and comments.<\/p>\n

The strength of the campaign and the stories it told is, says Mbamalu, partly the result of a training he followed at RNW Media\u2019s training institute RNTC in February. The three-week course, \u2018Media campaigns for social change’<\/a>, delivered the tools and knowledge needed to create strong campaigns that resonate with the target audience and was, says Mbamalu, \u201ctotally eye opening\u201d. Lessons he learned informed the shape of #saytheirnames and supported him through a period that was:<\/p>\n

“Really emotional, also for me. I had to look for these people\u2019s stories, and then writing them and thinking about how to phrase things. And then seeing the reactions of people and it was just really\u2026.emotional.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Follow<\/a> Socrates Mbamalu<\/p>\n

#saytheirnames on Facebook<\/strong><\/p>\n

Total posts: 28<\/p>\n

Total reach: 2.693.802<\/p>\n

Total engagement: 75.305<\/p>\n

8,000 new followers in a week<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Media coverage of the Ethiopian Airlines crash in March highlighted the need for African perspectives on African stories. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8533,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8395","news","type-news","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rnw.media\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/8395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rnw.media\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rnw.media\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnw.media\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnw.media\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8395"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnw.media\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rnw.media\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnw.media\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}