BBC API partners Metro TV

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Metro TV have launched a collaborative effort which will see the British partner offering training to Metro TV’s news personnel in quality news reporting.

The BBC World Service Group director, Peter Horrocks, officially launched the African Partnership Initiative, API, in Tanzania last year to make it possible for teams from partner organizations and the BBC to co-produce content.

In pursuant of this objective Metro TV was again selected as BBC partner network in Ghana, among five TV stations in Africa.

As part of the collaboration a joint team of BBC producers and technicians, last week, embarked on a 5-day news production that encompassed story selection, news content and camera works focusing on a technological innovation, Mpedigree, a drug counterfeit detection device, in Ghana’s health sector.

Mpedigree, is a breakthrough invention of Ghanaian, social innovator, entrepreneur and researcher, Bright Simmons. It is a technology based system that helps people to determine whether the drugs they are buying are genuine or counterfeit. It uses mobile phone technology and a free text-messaging application to send information about a drug for instant certification by its manufacturers.

The Group Chief Executive of Global Media Village, operators of Metro TV, Talal Fatal, hailed the African Partner Initiative as a novel collaborative effort which seeks to transfer skills in quality news reporting and production to the local partner, which will also lead to sharing of content between Metro TV and BBC World Service TV.

The BBC team was led by Alex Jakana, and supported by Kate Fisher, who has worked with the BBC for over 13 years and built up vast experience in TV news production.

Metro TV and the BBC have had a distribution partnership for over two years to rebroadcast the BBC’s flagship pan-African news and current affairs programme, FOCUS ON AFRICA, which agreement has just been renewed for another two years.