Goodbye advertising shotgun The publication of Balancing Act's African Film and TV Yearbook 2008/2009 edition has heralded in a difficult time for advertisers in Africa as they find it more and more difficult to pin down their target markets. As of now the shotgun method in advertising goes right out the window; new innovative methods with the help of ever-advancing technologies are required to reach the channel hoppers and switchers of this generation. It is a daunting thought yet a challenge to those who aim to get it right. Aspiring African journalists however have a new form of help at hand as Media Helping Media (MHM) have launched a website for those in "particularly difficult situations" - "difficult" being an understatement for some countries on the continent where "journalist" is a curse word and "freedom of expression" is high treason. The site run by David Brewer, a journalist involved in international media development, provides basic to complex lessons for journos and journos-in-the-making. News media is important in all societies in keeping people educated and informed. Liberian Alfred Sirleaf knows this best as he's made getting the news out there a top priority. He's been donned Liberia's "blackboard blogger" on more than one occasion and expansion is on the cards for this inspired innovator. Sirleaf runs the daily news by the side of a major road in Monrovia on a giant blackboard that's even opened up to advertising. While the IMF may predict doom and gloom for Africa during the economic downturn, ingenuity such as this will surely get us by intact. Ciao! Sindy Peters, Content manager Send all your Africa marketing news to africanews@bizcommunity.com. | Top stories
Marketing
 FAIRFAX: The Stevie Awards has issued a call for its Sixth Annual International Business Awards, which recognises achievements in the workplace worldwide, from the executive suite to the factory floor. The 2009 awards will recognise work since 1 January 2008. Read more >>
Branding
 The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council believe that there are numerous proof points that demonstrate the business impact of counterfeiting, piracy and cyber-fraud. According to recent estimates, counterfeiting and piracy cost the US economy alone between US$200 billion and US$250 billion per year, and stole as many as 750 000 American jobs. Read more >>
Advertisement: CSI
 ATLANTA, USA: The Coca-Cola Company announced today that it has committed US$30 million over the next six years to provide access to safe drinking water to communities throughout Africa through its Replenish Africa Initiative (RAIN). Read more >>
Digital
The third edition of Balancing Act's Voice and Data Bandwidth Forecasts highlights the role that will be played by the introduction of new, cheaper international fibre bandwidth in 2009 and 2010. Fibre projects on the continent will aim to deliver plentiful, cheap bandwidth to business and individual users. Read more >>
TUNIS: The Board of Directors of the African Development Bank (AfDB) Group on Wednesday, 11 March in Tunis approved a loan of US$25 million for the New Dawn Satellite Project. The project comprises the design, construction, launch and operation of a pan-African communications satellite system. Read more >>
According to Rick Rogers, director at Alvarion, more people require high-speed internet services. Deploying wireline access networks such as DSL or cable modem involves relatively high investment costs and results in limited or insufficient coverage by wireline infrastructures with limited capacity. The WiMAX market seeks to provide a wireless access solution. Read more >>
A partnership between two government ministries in Zimbabwe will attempt to market the Southern African nation as an attractive tourist destination, using the internet as medium. Read more >>
Education and Training
 Media Helping Media (MHM) is a website that aims to bring together a variety of training resources for journalists in a variety of fields, such as media management, investigative journalism and editorial ethics. The aim is to provide a platform for journalists in developing states, post-conflict countries and areas where freedom of expression and media is under threat. Read more >>
Magazines
 25° in Africa magazine has a tri-pronged focus on energy, Africa and the environment. The publication aims at a wide audience, from energy research hubs, to the man on the street who wants to employ a more energy efficient lifestyle and technologies. Read more >>
Advertisement: Media
 [Erik Hersman] Alfred Sirleaf is an analog blogger. He runs the “Daily News”, a news hut by the side of a major road in the middle of Monrovia. He started it a number of years ago, stating that he wanted to get news into the hands of those who couldn't afford newspapers, in the language that they could understand. Read more >>
 A24 Media announced on Thursday, 12 March, 2009, the launch of its online stills collection, which contains what it claims to be “some of the best photographic collections in Africa”, digitised for the first time. Read more >>
GABORONE: News media publishers in Botswana gathered on 10 March, 2009 and resolved not to respond to the current invitations from the government regarding the formation of the Interim Committee of the Media Council as dictated by the newly enacted Media Practitioners Act. Read more >>
 [Gregory Gondwe] The United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) has honoured 12 Malawian journalists by awarding them with special recognition for writing good stories on HIV/AIDS prevention from mother to child transmission as well as emergency and disaster preparedness. Read more >>
[Gregory Gondwe] Malawi has launched the, Economics Journalism Handbook for the Malawi Media, which has touted as an important tool towards simplification of business and economics news to readers who have been finding it incomprehensible. Read more >>
 Axe, Coca-Cola and Barack Obama are among the brands vying for prizes at the inaugural international Festival of Media Awards (FMA) in April 2009. Microsoft, the Wall Street Journal, Meredith and BBC Worldwide all secured three nominations for the first global prizes for strategic innovation and delivery by media owners. All the winners will be announced 20 - 21 April in Valencia, Spain. Read more >>
Mobile
 A presidential-themed limited edition Mi-Obama phone, specially designed for the Kenyan market to commemorate the inauguration of the new US President by African firm Mi-Fone, as been a sell-out. Read more >>
Advertisement:  [Walter Wafula] Orange Telecom has become the fifth telecommunications company to start commercial operations in Uganda. Orange, a subsidiary of the France Telecom (FT) Group unveiled its operations to the Ugandan public on 10 March, following a two-year establishment struggle under the Hits Telecom brand. Read more >>
Mobile-XL, a mobile technology company, announced yesterday, 10 March 2009, that it is in a partnership with KenyaBuzz, a Kenyan current events news agency, to expand the availability of local event content to mobile audiences in the East African nation. Event information that has been available through Kenyabuzz.com is now also available to mobile phone users via Mobile-XL's XLBrowser. Read more >>
Economic growth and development depends on infrastructure: on roads, power, water and communications. Yet in many places around Africa much of this infrastructure is either ageing and in need of replacement, or was never developed in the first place. Read more >>
 The MTN Group has announced the launch of Mobile Money Transfer (MMT) in Uganda also highlighting its series of planned launches in Africa and Middle East. Read more >>
Newspapers
[Sam Hungwe] Zimind Publishers, which publishes two weekly titles, The Zimbabwe Independent and The Standard, has been granted a licence to start a daily newspaper in the country, a move likely to mark the beginning of a new media era in the country. Read more >>
Online Media
 Charl Lombard has replaced Samuel Mungadze as ITNewsAfrica.com online editor, it was announced earlier this week. Read more >>
 [Ndesanjo Macha] Maneno is a new blogging platform that promises to offer blogging and communication solutions for bloggers with limited or narrow-bandwith in sub-Saharan Africa. Maneno is a Swahili word, which means “words.” Read more >>
 [Ndesanjo Macha] The winners of Waxal - Blogging Africa Awards (BAA) for journalists have been announced. Waxal is an initiative of the Panos Institute of West Africa (PIWA) with the partnership of Highway Africa and Global Voices Online (sub-Saharan Africa). Read more >>
Production
[Proffesor Ndawonde] DURBAN: South African writer and media veteran Mandla Langa has scooped the Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best Book Award in the Africa Region 2009 for The Lost Colours of the Chameleon. South African filmmakers have also won at least six prestigious prizes at the 40th Anniversary of the Pan-African Film Festival in Ouagadogou, Burkino Faso. Read more >>
 OUAGADOUGOU: The film “Teza,” by Ethiopian filmmaker Haile Gerima won the special World Bank-United Nations joint prize on 6 March for highlighting the fight against poverty. His prize was awarded during a ceremony at the Hôtel Azalai Indépendance at the end of the biannual FESPACO Film Awards in Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso. Read more >>
Public Relations
africapractice, the pan-African corporate communications company and Richardson & Briggs (R&B), a public relations firm in Nigeria have announced a merger to create a new company, africapracticeR&B. africapracticeR&B will become the only international corporate communications consultancy to operate a fully staffed office in Nigeria. Read more >>
Recruitment
BRUSSELS: According to a new report released by the World Bank MENA region, global demographic developments will lead to greater labour and job mobility in the coming decades. The report titled, "Shaping the Future: A Long Term Perspective of People and Job Mobility for the Middle East and North Africa", predicts that by 2050, the declining labour force in some regions could reach a total of 215 million workers while other regions may experience an increase in excess of 500 million. Read more >>
Research
Once upon a time almost everyone in Africa knew what television and radio were and they played a key role in their lives. Particularly for urban Africans they were the soundtrack to life, the sports match in the bar and the common conversations about television programmes. Nowadays in the more liberalised of African countries there are more television and radio stations than you can remember the names of and for the smaller group of the more well-off, there are pay TV channels, time-shifting and DVDs. Read more >>
Retail
[Wambi Michael] KAMPALA: Ugandan exporters of dairy products to Kenya are bitter. They are accusing their bigger neighbour of imposing non-tariff trade barriers to block their produce from entering markets in Kenya and elsewhere. Read more >>
NAIROBI: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that Africa's economic growth will be affected by the continuing world economic crisis. It further predicted that growth in sub-Saharan Africa will slow to 3.25 percent this year, half the growth rate it previously projected. Read more >>
 [Charlotte Mathews] Developing coal miner Coal of Africa will export coal from its first mine after June this year and bring a second mine on stream before June next year, it said yesterday, 11 March 2009. Read more >>
AFRICA Mobile Banking Conference 2009 postponedThe 2009 Mobile Banking Conference has been postponed to 16 and 17 September 2009. According to the organisers this is due to unforeseen circumstances beyond their control. The conference was to be held from 18 - 19 March 2009 in Lusaka, Zambia. For more information contact the organisers on info@celpay.com or fax +0027 86 550 3232.
[Sam Hungwe] Food prices dropped marginally in February, but the utility tariffs and transport costs kept the urbanites mired in poverty, a consumer watchdog has said. Read more >>
The Regus Group, a provider of workplace solutions, is to open its first centre in Dakar, Senegal, according to its Johannesburg-based Africa and Middle East regional office. Senegal is fast-becoming the western gateway to French-speaking Africa, says Joanne Bushell, CEO, Africa and Middle East. Read more >>
Sponsorship
 Bank PHB Nigeria is to be the exclusive sponsor of CNN International's new weekly half-hour interview programme "African Voices", launching in March. The advertising campaign will also be aimed at online users via CNN.com. Read more >>
TV
 LAGOS: Advertisers and their media agencies recently attended a presentation by John Simpson, CBE and BBC's World Affairs editor, at a lunch presentation organised by BBC World News and DStv Ad Sales. The event, which took place on 25 February, 2009 in Lagos, was hosted by Sean O' Hara, BBC World News executive director, and Katie Waxman, BBC World News senior account manager. Read more >>
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Out Of Home
 Fanta has recently taken over Kampala's largest building wrap. The wrap, which is Uganda's first of a kind to fully encapsulate a building, is sized at over 2200m 2. Read more >>
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| | Performance Management Africa 2009 Beaver and Beaver Management Solutions - Johannesburg, 18 March | | 2nd Annual Direct Marketing Conference 2009 Knowledge Resources - Johannesburg, 18 March | | EconoBEE Seminar EconoBEE - Cape Town/Johannesburg/Durban, 24 March | | Unmasking the African consumer Marketing & Social Research Association - Nairobi, Kenya, 27 March | | Development Journalism training programme Institute for the Advancement of Journalism (IAJ) - Johannesburg, 30 March | | Africa Financial Controllers Conference 2009 Kishima Productions - Johannesburg, 30 March | | African Biofuels 2009 IIR - Midrand, 30 March | | |
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