African media have come a long way

This week, Nairobi hosts a Pan-African media jamboree which will bring together heavyweights from different professions.

While participants take stock, history shows that several prominent Pan-Africanist personalities had beginnings in the media.

And among the participants is Benjamin Mkapa, who was editor of Uhuru in Tanzania and later became country’s president.

Long before Mkapa, the media had helped to define early Pan-Africanists through their ability to spread anti-colonial messages or challenge racial stereotypes.

W.E.B. DuBois edited The Crisis, a weekly publication for the NAACP, in which positive information about Africa could be found.

Marcus Garvey’s The Negro World stressed Africa for Africans and challenged European colonialism so much that all colonial powers banned it.

Those who read Garvey’s The Negro World included Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya and Nnamdi Azikiwe in Nigeria.

Both men, Kenyatta and Azikiwe, were founding editors of newspapers and became prominent anti-colonialists.

Before going to England, Kenyatta edited Muiguithania for KCA.

Azikiwe on returning from studies in the United States, edited The African Morning Post in Accra and then founded The West African Pilot in Lagos as a regional newspaper for West Africa in 1937.

Azikiwe became the first president of independent Nigeria in 1960 while Kenyatta acquired the same status in Kenya in 1964.

The 1960s were transformative years politically as colonialism gave way to independence.

In addition, media that identified with the African position appeared to thrive.

In the process, the nationalistic media nurtured journalists in radio and print.

Some of these journalists, like Leonard Mambo Mbotela in broadcasting and Philip Ochieng’ in print, became permanent features in Kenyan media.