Teaching journalism or teaching African journalism? Experiences from foreign involvement in a journalism programme in Ethiopia

Abstract

Journalism programmes across the African continent have different attitudes to the issue of universal vs. local values in journalism. This article discusses the issue in light of a post-graduate journalism programme that opened at Addis Ababa University in 2004. In its 5-year implementation phase, the programme engaged educators from Europe and North America in addition to local instructors. Thus, one could expect a potential conflict between Western and Ethiopian approaches to journalism. However, on the basis of experiences with the Addis Ababa programme, the present study questions the assumed dichotomy between Western and Ethiopian (or African) journalism discourses. Tensions did indeed come to the fore when the programme was planned and implemented, but they were defined by determinants such as professional background and personal preferences of the instructors involved rather than by geographical and cultural origin.

Teaching Journalism at a Distance: The Case of the Zimbabwe Open University (ZOU) (Harare Regional Centre)

“…Murphy and Scotton (1987) quoted in Skjerdal (2011) stated that even the journalism programme introduced by Kwame Nkrumah at the Ghana Institute of Journalism in 1958 was based on the American curricula. This could have been done also as a way of totally breaking away with the British colonial history.…”

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“…It is something that-as we know it today-Americans had a major hand in inventing. Skjerdal (2011) has argued that Western aid has resulted in an Anglo-American culture of journalism education which has proved impractical to implement in African countries with illiberal political regimes. Given massive change in the global news media landscape, especially in regard to journalistic practice, the collapse of familiar business models and the limited potential for genuinely independent "watchdog" journalism, researchers and practitioners need to reassess the relationship between external influences on local cultures and practices of journalism.…”

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