Young African journalists arrive in Egypt for training workshop

Young journalists drawn from 22 African countries have arrived in Cairo, capital of Egypt for the 52nd training course for young African journalists.

The 20-day training programme is organised by the Union of African Journalists (UAJ) in collaboration with the Egyptian Ministry of Information.

The journalists are from Ghana, Burkina Faso, Sudan, Egypt, Gambia, Niger, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Southern Sudan, Angola, Congo, Senegal, and South Africa.

The others are from Cote d' lvoire, Uganda, Djibouti, Tunisia, Namibia, Nairobi, Lesotho, Botswana and Gabon.

For the entire training, they are expected to receive lectures on “Chinese African Relations between exaggeration and minimization,” “African culture and its social and economic income,” and meet the President of the Constitutional Court of Egypt.

They would be told as part of the training the benefits of switching from the ordinary to Electronic Government on the state revenue, Economic exploitation of African resources, problems and solutions of African press, hydraulic challenges in Africa; impact on development in the continent, and the media’s contribution to realizing continuity between African countries.

Additionally, the journalists would be schooled on the targets of sustainable development, infrastructure as a Sine-Qua-Non condition for inter-African Cooperation, the situation of refugees and unemployment in Africa.

The young journalists are also scheduled to visit some tourist sites including the Egyptian museum, the Mediterranean Sea, the Nile sat, the Pyramid and Sphynx, the Media Technology Institute, the head office of the UAJ among others.

Addressing the journalists at the opening ceremony of the training on Saturday, Mr Mahfouz Al Ansari, President of the UAJ said it was important for African Journalists to unite and persistently, work to ensure that the African continent rose to standard.

He said the programme would not be positive unless the trainees translated the knowledge they would acquire into projects, which would elevate the continent to a pedestal, and expressed worry that about 14 million young people in Africa who were illiterates, while 50 million youth were unemployed.

This, he described as “disturbing,” and entreated African journalists to design programmes of action geared towards reducing the trend of unemployment in Africa.

Mr Al Ansari who charged journalists to “work to help our continent get the needed good relations with the outside world,” conceded that the task could not be achieved by journalists alone, and called on various communities within the African continent to support the course.

Mr Saleh Elsalhy, the Committee Training Chief at the Supreme Council for Media Regulation, said the programme was a mechanism to train African journalists in different fields, and broaden their knowledge base in different aspects of news reporting.

He said journalism was a tool that enabled members of the public to know what was happening, and urged the media to play its role effectively.