the african media entrepreneur » Twenty Ten

Free Resource Launched Aimed at Pro Photographers in Majority World

David Larsen — Sat, 07 May 2011 07:51:15 +0000

I am so thrilled to be able to tell you that we have just launched Shutha.org a free resource for professional photographers in the Majority World aimed at ensuring they can compete in both local and international markets for photography.

Being at the World Press Photo Awards Days here in Amsterdam where South African photographer, Jodi Bieber, has won the World Press Photo of the Year Award, and where photographers from all over the world are gathering to celebrate that fact, we thought it was a brilliant moment to launch Shutha.

Above: Togo photographer Kokou Tadegnon interacting with children in Lusaka, Zambia, March 2010. PHOTO: David A. Larsen

Shutha, which is a Zulu slang word meaning “to take a photo”, is the fruit of months of really hard work by our team of writers from different parts of the World. We all met in Maputo at the end of January 2011 to conceptualize the resource and now it has finally all come together. It is divided into two major sections – one which helps to educate on what the markets for photography are and what they look for, and the other which focuses on the photographers themselves, their business and marketing skills and their ability to deliver to markets at the standards the market requires.

I believe Shutha is unique. It is not only free, but it is specifically aimed at professional photographers in the Majority World who often face challenges in terms of access to equipment and slow internet connectivity. Because of this we have designed the resource so that it can be available on DVD and not just online. I am also expecting that training events such as out Digital Campus will be enhanced by this resource. We would love to run training events with the Shutha team in different parts of the African continent. Having said that, we would be most thrilled if other training institutions and organisations took up the resource and built curricula around it. We are making it available on a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) license.

Above: Zimbabwean photographer Davina Jogi captures the press in action in Accra, Ghana, September 2009. PHOTO: David A. Larsen

That it is free does not mean it is cheap. The team that put it together has been really top class.

China-based DJ Clark is a contract multimedia reporter for China Daily, Director of Visual Journalism at the Asia Center for Journalism and Course leader on the MA International Multimedia Journalism at Beijing Foreign Studies University (in collaboration with the University of Bolton, UK).

Peter Krogh is an American professional photographer who has served photographers all over the world by writing what is known today as the foremost resource on Digital Asset Management: The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers. Peter was a Microsoft Icons of Imaging programme participant, and is recognised as a world leader in digital imaging with his courses on digital workflow sought after in many parts of the world.

UK-based Graeme Cookson is a digital imaging expert who trains scanning companies, picture libraries and publishing companies, including sports photography staff at Reuters, staff at The British Library, The British Museum, and The National Library of Ireland, The Royal Horticultural Society, and The Open University. Graeme is a sought-after speaker at major international conventions in the imaging industry such as CEPIC.

My wife, Rosanne Larsen founded Africa Media Online’s picture library in 2000 and has overseen the expansion of the company’s reach into markets in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and South America through its network of distributing agencies. A third generation Mozambican and Director of International Sales, Rosanne plays a pivotal roll in Africa Media Online on the interface between photographers who are supplying images and markets who want images, and was instrumental in the design and development of Africa Media Online’s MEMAT 3.1 media management system.

Above: South African photographer Simone Schultz editing work during the Twenty Ten workshop in Accra, Ghana, September 2009. PHOTO: David A. Larsen

Dominique Le Roux is a publishing consultant and Director of Moonshine Media, a Cape Town-based company that manages media projects. A South African by birth, Dominique was involved in the conceptualization of the Twenty Ten project and has spent a number of years engaging with the needs of photographers and journalists in various parts of the Majority World. Dominique has almost 20 years experience in the media world as a writer, magazine editor, book publisher, web content manager, television presenter and photographic agent.

Of course it also includes me a fifth generation African, and a former journalist and photographer by trade. To give you some of my background, I founded Africa Media Online in 2000 with a mission to empower fellow Africans to tell Africa’s story from our own perspective and enabling that perspective compete in local and international markets. In pursuit of this passion we developed a digital trade route connecting African photographers and photographic collections to a world-wide audience. The trade route includes training programmes, digitisation services, photo website systems, as well as representing photographers to local and international markets. Shutha is really a development of a programme we developed in 2008 called the African Photo Entrepreneur Programme (APEP).

Shutha.org is one of the outputs of the Twenty Ten: African media on the road to twenty ten (and beyond) project, a partnership between World Press Photo, Freevoice (now rebranded as Free Press Unlimited), Africa Media Online and lokaalmondiaal and funded by the Dutch Postcode Lottery. The Twenty Ten project trained 128 journalists from 34 countries around Africa who produced media content from an African perspective in the run-up to and during the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The content was used to produce a coffee table book, a travelling exhibition and was distributed to media around the world. A documentary film on the project was also produced by lokaalmondiaal. Africa Media Online has led the Shutha initiative, which has also benefitted from sponsorship of the Drupal-based web platform by the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) who originally developed the platform for its own site and then for their dpBestFlow.org initiative. For more information on the Twenty Ten project, see www.roadto2010.com.

Above: Shutha is part of the Twenty Ten project, a joint initiative of World Press Photo, FreeVoice, Africa Media Online and lokaalmondiaal which was funded by the Dutch Postcode Lottery. Above are pro photographers who participated in a training workshop run in Accra, Ghana in September 2009 – Back Row left to right: Greg Marinovich (trainer, South Africa), Julius Mwelu (Kenya), Carlos Litulo (Mozambique), Davina Jogi (South Africa), Nikki Rixon (South Africa), Chris De Bode (trainer, Holland); Second Row left to right: Alexia Webster (South Africa), Amos Gumulira (Malawi), Simone Scholtz (South Africa), Akintunde Akinyele (Nigeria), Samantha Reinders (South Africa); Front Row left to right: Michael Tsegaye (Ethiopia), Andrew Esiebo (Nigeria), Adolphus Opara (Nigeria). PHOTO: David A. Larsen

Killing Soccer in Africa

David Larsen — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 14:52:07 +0000

The Forum for African Investigative Reporters (FAIR) produced some excellent trans-national investigative reporting regarding football in Africa and exposed rampant corruption in the administration of football in all 8 of the African countries where the investigation was carried out. As we look back on a successful hosting of the FIFA World Cup in Africa in 2010, this provides an insightful commentary on why African teams did not perform as they could have on the world’s biggest football stage erected in our own back yard. This sort of brave journalism is to be lauded and is a fine contribution to the witness to history that African journalists produced on the lead up and during the tournament, to which our own Twenty Ten contributing journalists also contributed significantly.

The full report can be downloaded here:

allAfrica.com: One of Africa's leading news sites showcases Twenty Ten stories

dominique le roux — Thu, 27 May 2010 17:25:34 +0000

via allafrica.com

One of the Internet’s largest public content sites and the most popular Africa information destination on the web, allafrica.com averages some two million visits and five million page impressions each month. This reach will certainly play a most important role in distributing the content of the Twenty Ten project far and wide – helping Africa tell Africa’s stories.

The kind of stories, of course, are not just straight sports reporting. Pictured above by Samantha Reinders, for example, is nine-year-old Diego Mano from Mannenburg in Cape Town. This is part of a series commissioned by the Twenty Ten editorial team to showcase the influence of football’s stars on every aspect of African life – including the naming of its children – and was one of the 11 images run by allafrica.com as a recent photo essay.

"It’s Euro-sports, not politics, that’s shaking up Africa," says Daily Nation's Charles Onyango-Obbo

dominique le roux — Fri, 14 May 2010 07:46:29 +0000

I appreciated the boldness and honesty of Onyango-Obbo’s blog on Kenya’s Daily Nation‘site. The article – read it in full below – was shared with me by one of the Twenty Ten Allstar journalists, and it certainly does go a long way to articulating why our coverage of this World Cup is quite so important: by focusing on such a significant sporting event, rather than the usual fare of African political or environmental catastrophe, Twenty Ten invests a positive energy into this continent’s journalism and thereby, I believe, its democracy.

There were sniggers in Africa about last week’s elections in Britain. In some places, election officials were overwhelmed by long queues and some voters ended up not casting their ballots.

However, on Tuesday evening, we were treated to a dramatic example of how ruthlessly efficient an old democracy can be. In less than three hours, Prime Minister Gordon Brown held a press conference to announce he was resigning as Labour Party leader, and to say he expected that Conservative Partly leader David Cameron would be invited by the Queen to be the next prime minister.

He then went to Buckingham Palace to hand in his resignation, left without police outriders clearing traffic for his motorcade since he was now an ordinary citizen, and indeed, got caught in a traffic jam. In the meantime, his personal possessions were being moved out of No. 10 Downing Street.

As he spoke at the Labour Party headquarters to bid the staff farewell, Cameron made his way to Buckingham Palace to see the queen. The pictures of the queen receiving him were available to the world. Another 15 minutes later, he was out and in 10 Downing Street — which probably still had the whiff of Mrs Brown’s perfume in the air — as new prime minister. Say what you will, that was impressive stuff.

The discussion on BBC’s Focus Africa on Wednesday morning was about what a Cameron leadership meant for Africa. There was a strong view that because he is, compared to Brown, a hardliner on immigration, fewer Africans might get political asylum, and probably quite a number already there illegally could be deported.

It is embarrassing to hear Africans worrying about their inability to get asylum and emigrate to the West. Nevertheless, because of the reality of the large African Diaspora and the fact that their remittances are the largest source of foreign exchange for some countries (like Eritrea), it is a big issue.

For this reason, my sense is that elections in the West today mean more for Africans — especially the millions who depend on remittances from relatives — than our own national elections. Our elections will not change lives for many, but if 10,000 Kenyans or Ugandans were expelled from the UK, the consequences back home would be devastating.

In the long term, though, it is not the politics of the West that will most affect Africa. It is the non-political things like sports. The dozens of African players like Chelsea’s Didier Drogba have turned European leagues into a near-cult cross-border phenomenon in Africa. Daily, the media have stories about the goals African footballers scored in the English Premier League, for example.

Every week, we are treated to Ethiopians and Kenyans winning marathon after marathon in European and American races. This sporting success has created the one class of wealthy Africans whom, you can confidently say, has grown rich without being corrupt.

The global success and stardom of these African sporting figures is possibly the single largest force influencing what poor and working class children on the continent want to be. From Maputo to Algiers, dozens of boys have taken to football, often playing with crudely made balls, in the hope they will become the next Samuel Eto’o.

Across countries like Ethiopia and Kenya, thousands of young boys and girls daily take to the hills at dawn to run, hoping that one day they will find the fame and fortune of Sammy Korir or Haile Gebrselassie. There are no things that Africans experience collectively like the ups and downs of their sportsmen and women in Europe.

They are having a homogenisation effect whose consequences could be very visible in another five to 10 years. But if the homogenisation of Africa were happening only from these Diaspora and sporting sources, they would not be far-reaching. However there is another force that is “flattening” Africa together dramatically — Nigerian films (Nollywood).

Other than the pride in Nelson Mandela, the books of Chinua Achebe, and the music of Hugh Masekela, I cannot imagine an African product that has been as pervasive as Nollywood. In turn, Nollywood has helped touch off a new infatuation with things African. In countries like Sierra Leone, there are now FM stations that play only African music.

Many African TV stations, like Kenya’s Citizen, now have an all-African programmes schedule, a large chunk of them locally produced. If you went into hibernation in 1990 and woke up today, it is in the field of sports stars and cultural consumption of Africa today that would most strike you as being very different. Its politics, well, is little changed.

cobbo@ke.nationmedia.com

via nation.co.ke

Posted via web from africanmedia’s posterous

Launch of 'Africa United: The road to Twenty Ten'

dominique le roux — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 11:32:08 +0000

The Amsterdam Arena

How exciting to launch a book of African journalism in the Amsterdam Arena. Africa United: The road to Twenty Ten showcases some of the best work that has come out of the Twenty Ten project so far, so it was certainly a milestone in the project for all of us.

Edited by Stefan Verwer, Marc Broere and Chris de Bode and published by KIT Publishers, the book is an Everyman’s poignant guide to the role of football in Africa, as told by writers and photographers from across Africa.

Andrew Esiebo, a Twenty Ten participant whose photographs appear in the book, presented the book to Ajax footballers Maarten Stekelenburg and Eyong Enoh.

Guest speaker Guy Berger, head of the School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University

Africa United can be ordered through KIT Publishers.

Twenty Ten Dream Team Print Journalist: Mark Namanya

dominique le roux — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:07:31 +0000

Here is the third post featuring one of our print journalists in our series highlighting some of the content produced by individual members of the newly selected Dream Team. You can go directly to Africa Media Online to view the full articles and all images and gain publishing rights to them. The ‘Allstar’ and ‘Dream Team’ journalists of the Twenty Ten Project can be commissioned for specific projects in their home countries or in South Africa during the build-up to the 2010 World Cup. So, please feel free to contact us with story ideas you’d be interested in.

Mark Namanya is based in Uganda where he is the sports editor for the Daily Monitor. In November we posted an article about Mark’s impressions of South Africa and the impact of Western media on his preconceptions of the country. Mark has written one article so far for the Twenty Ten Project’s Africa Media Online. The article focuses on the 100 year rivalry between two soccer clubs based in Cairo, Al-Alhy and Zamalek. He gives an account of how this soccer made capital becomes “football crazy” on the day of this yearly soccer match.

Crazy fans enjoy life in the slow lane

Mark Namanya/Daily Monitor/Twentyten

Location: Cairo, Egypt

Take an iconic city, quadruple its population, add a few million foreign visitors, throw in the mother of all traffic jams for good measure and then stage one of the most passionate sporting occasions imaginable and what do you end up with?
“Madness,” most people would call it.
In Africa, they have another word for it: “Cairo”.
You certainly have to be crazy – and football crazy in particular – to venture out into the streets of the Egyptian capital on the day of the Al Ahly-Zamalek derby.
Few sporting occasions around the world can match its intensity. The two clubs have a rivalry which can be traced back almost 100 years and which has dominated Egyptian football for as long as most people can remember.
When the two sides meet – or, indeed, when Egypt take…

FOR THE FULL STORY OF 860 WORDS CONTACT pictures@africamediaonline.com

The Dream Team will be producing content all the way through the end of the World Cup and beyond. If you are intersted in purchasing some of our content or commissioning a specific piece please feel free to contact us.

Twenty Ten Dream Team Print Journalist: Nanama Keita

dominique le roux — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 12:54:58 +0000

Here is the second post featuring one of our print journalists in our series highlighting some of the content produced by individual members of the newly selected Dream Team. You can go directly to Africa Media Online to view the full articles and all images and gain publishing rights to them. The ‘Allstar’ and ‘Dream Team’ journalists of the Twenty Ten Project can be commissioned for specific projects in their home countries or in South Africa during the build-up to the 2010 World Cup. So, please feel free to contact us with story ideas you’d be interested in.

Nanama Keita is a Gambian journalist who has written articles for a number of Africa publications including the The Daily Observer and a range of online websites including Gambia Now.

In this article Nanama talks about the Ghanaian national team being the first team to qualify for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Here is a snippet of the text article. You can purchase the full article the Twenty Ten Project’s Africa Media Online Website

Ghanaian opportunity

Nanama Keita/Daily Observer/Twenty Ten

When Ghana became the first African country to qualify for the 2010 World Cup, the cash register started ringing in the West African nation.
The Black Stars over-came visiting Sudan 2-0 in the Group D joint qualifiers in Accra on September 6, to earn themselves a second successive appearance in the 79-year-old World Cup tournament.
The World’s most prestigious football event, which is played once every four years, will come with its usual tears, controversy and the triumphs and millions of us will be bound to our seats for four action-packed weeks.
Although the tournament will be over in just four weeks, the economic legacy of the 32-team tournament may be felt longer in the cocoa-rich nation of Ghana.
With qualification now in the bag, the Black Stars and their faithful, now believe huge financial opportunities will come pouring into the country.
Projections, based on the team’s first-ever appearance in Germany 2006, suggest the gold-rich West African nation could benefit from up to US$15m.

FOR THE FULL STORY OF 701 WORDS CONTACT pictures@africamediaonline.com

Twenty Ten Dream Team Print Journalist: Joseph Opio

dominique le roux — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 06:58:15 +0000

Here is the first post featuring some of our print journalists, the previous four entries featured the works of photo-journalists, in our series highlighting some of the content produced by individual members of the newly selected Dream Team. You can go directly to Africa Media Online to view the full articles and all images and gain publishing rights to them. The ‘Allstar’ and ‘Dream Team’ journalists of the Twenty Ten Project can be commissioned for specific projects in their home countries or in South Africa during the build-up to the 2010 World Cup. So, please feel free to contact us with story ideas you’d be interested in.

In this post we feature the work of Joseph Opio from Uganda. Joseph wrote a great piece on the failed rising of a potential soccer playing great called, Nii Lamptey of Ghana. Nii was supposed to be the next Pele, “So dazzling was the Black Starlet that Pele remarked that “Lamptey is my natural successor.” The Brazilian legend had just watched Lamptey pick up the FIFA U-17 World Cup and the Golden Ball for good measure. Lamptey, midfield sorcery notwithstanding, had managed to top-score with four goals as well.”

Here is a snippet of the rest of this article, which can be purchased via our website:

The tragedy of Nii Lamptey…and his quest for redemption

Article Synopsis: Lamptey was once Ghana’s most precocious gift. But his star flared all too briefly before being extinguished by a cocktail of dodgy agents, a numbing lack of education and treasonable neglect from the game’s overseers.

Text: Greater Accra, Ghana: Cocoa is Ghana’s leading export. But, lately, cocoa’s visibility as the country’s main foreign exchange earner is, at least symbolically, running into a challenge from Ghana’s talent at football.

Football has established Ghana as a hotbed of talent. And seduced, hawk-eyed scouts scour this terrain of 22 million, desperate to unearth the next big thing…or for the most optimistic, the next Nii Lamptey.

If the name rings no bell, dear reader, blush not! Lamptey was once Ghana’s most precocious gift. But his star flared all too briefly before being extinguished by a cocktail of dodgy agents, a numbing lack of education and treasonable neglect from the game’s overseers.

Ghana’s first genuine wonder kid burst into prominence at the 1991 World Youth Cup where his golden potential made other whiz kids like Argentina’s Juan Sebastian Verón and Italy’s Alessandro del Piero look like base metal.

So dazzling was the Black Starlet that Pele remarked that “Lamptey is my natural successor.” The Brazilian legend had just watched Lamptey pick up the FIFA U-17 World Cup and the Golden Ball for good measure. Lamptey, midfield sorcery notwithstanding, had managed to top-score with four goals as well.

“When Pele said I could go on to become like…

FOR THE FULL STORY OF 825 WORDS CONTACT pictures@africamediaonline.com

Twenty Ten Project Dream Team photographer: Arnaud Thierry Gouegnon

dominique le roux — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 16:32:14 +0000

Here is the fourth post in our series highlighting some of the content produced by individual members of the newly selected Dream Team. You can go directly to Africa Media Online to view the full articles and all images and gain publishing rights to them. The ‘Allstar’ and ‘Dream Team’ journalists of the Twenty Ten Project can be commissioned for specific projects in their home countries or in South Africa during the build-up to the 2010 World Cup. So, please feel free to contact us with story ideas you’d be interested in.

Arnaud Thierry Gouegnon of the Ivory Coast, has taken a series of interesting photo features over the course of the last several months. One of them has already been featured in an earlier blog post that highlighted the fact that we are now providing our stories in both English and French. Below you can find some images from a couple of Arnaud’s other photo features – Fabriquants de Maillots and Le Numero 9.

Twenty Ten Project Dream Team photographer: Ahmed Jallanzo

dominique le roux — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 18:52:44 +0000

Here is the third post in our series highlighting some of the content produced by individual members of the newly selected Dream Team. You can go directly to Africa Media Online to view the full articles and all images and gain publishing rights to them. The ‘Allstar’ and ‘Dream Team’ journalists of the Twenty Ten Project can be commissioned for specific projects in their home countries or in South Africa during the build-up to the 2010 World Cup. So, please feel free to contact us with story ideas you’d be interested in.

Ahmed Jallanzo is a well respected photojournalist from Liberia, popularly known as “Action in the Lens”. His images have appeared in news papers such as the New York Times and with organizations such as the European Press Agency. Ahmed takes pictures of a range of issues relevant to Liberian politics and society, many of his images focus on the role of soccer in Liberia and its politics.

In this photo feature titled, Technology and Football, Ahmed focuses on capturing images that highlight the impact of technology on the way that soccer is viewed in Lagos, Nigeria. The impact is both positive and negative as Ahmed points out, “Technology is attracting millions of people in Lagos to home videos, large television screens in cinemas and public places. Modern Technology is gradually drawing away people from the live games in stadiums.”

Here are a few images from this photo feature. If you want to purchase any of these images or see the rest of the feature please follow this link:Technology and Football.