Some 40 journalism educators from around Africa convened at Rhodes University on Sept 9 to present preliminary research papers and to plan for the WJEC. Prof Fackson Banda (above) – the SAB UNESCO Chair of Media and Democracy at Rhodes – convened the event. His overview paper on the state of research into Journalism Education in Africa is available for download here.
Support for the “Prepcom” came from Telkom, UNESCO, Open Society Foundation, Open Society Institute, and the Open Society Institute of West Africa.
Many of the papers presented will be re-worked for submission to WJEC, and editors of several journals at the Prepcom meeting expressed interest in publishing the final versions – African Communications Research, Rhodes Journalism Review, Global Media Journal, and Journal of African Media Studies.
The programme with the titles of the papers is available here, as is an overview survey by Banda of how they relate to past research on journalism education in Africa.
Concluding remarks by Adam Clayton Powell III, Vice Provost for International Affairs at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.