“We’ve introduced a new program and changed the training we offer at CESTI to address this new world of ICTS,” Sarr said. “Multimedia courses are required over the three year program, starting in the first year,” he said. Students now must blog, have Twitter accounts and in their final year contribute to the online news journal, CESTI-Info. The online publication is widely followed in and outside Senegal and stories posted are sometimes picked up by established publications such as Le Soleil, the government daily and other private dailies, he said.
“We want to empower students to be independent so even if they leave CESTI and don’t have a permanent job lined up, they can start their own business and even have the competence to take care of a website,” said Dr. Mamadou Ndiaye, CESTI’s New Media Technologies department chief. “Our objective,” he said, “is not to create a student who’s just a specialist in new media but a student who leaves fully competent in ICTS regardless of their specialty –radio, print, and television.”
“We place a lot of emphasis in our teaching on esthetics and
deontology,” Ndiaye added. “Students need to mindful of the
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Keeping up with this new media is a challenge for journalists working in the field and for those whose job it is to education the next generation, said Dr. Ibrahima Sarr, a veteran Senegalese print journalist and, since 2011, director of CESTI (The Center for the Study of Information Sciences and Techniques). An affiliate of the University of Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD), CESTI, established in 1965 as a pan-African institution, was the first journalism school in Francophone Africa.
In 2007 UNESCO, ranked CESTI No. 10 out of 86 journalism schools across Africa in terms of quality and
placed it on its list of 12 schools that have been identified as “Centers of Excellence” in media training.
Despite this distinction, CESTI and the majority of journalism schools in Africa, schools in southern Africa, Kenya and Nigeria being the notable exceptions, have only recently begun focusing attention on providing the material resources required to prepare graduates to enter this new digital media.
“When I attended CESTI we didn’t even have computers,” said Sarr, a 1995 CESTI graduate. “For the past five years,” he continued, “and this is something that started with my predecessor, we’ve put a lot of emphasis on new technology communication. The Internet has led to a “reconfiguration of the media space in Senegal,” he said.
fact that that which they dare not or could not do in print they also must not do on online,” he said. Thus another area of focus is ICT legal issues, he said noting that January 2008 there were five new laws passed related to Internet.
While everyone touts the potential of the Internet and new technologies, making their use even more widespread and their benefits available to the masses in Africa remains a major challenge. Cost, infrastructure, accessibility, technology education, and in many countries, government policies that serve to restrain press freedoms are among the hurdles that exist.
It’s really a question about adaptation and accessibility said Mame Fatoumata Diallo in Guinea. “Sure there are those who say that the price of computers and even digital cameras has declined to where even young children can have them,” she said.
“Here, accessibility remains difficult,” she continued. “We don’t have electricity, we don’t have high speed connection, and the cost for connection is expensive. In Europe, for example, this is no longer a problem, but in Guinea it is very much a real problem.” Education is also an issue, she continued.
“Here in the centers that offer ICT training you can find young people 18 years old who don’t have even the basic knowledge about the Internet while on the other side of the world, in places like the US or Europe, children are being introduced
to this as young as 2 years old.”
Still, advocates for the continued expansion of ICT education and its use in Africa say the potential and benefits for those in the media as well as the public at large, warrants all the effort it will take to address and over come these hurdles.
“For one thing, it has opened up the information marketplace,” said journalist Amoo in Ghana, who has created his own blog. “Since the new and social media is a free ‘media house” it gives me the freedom to develop my own content in whatever form I want it and then get it published free of charge,” he said, adding, “The good thing is that people definitely read, Amoo said.
He said he believes there is a public waiting for this. “Internet penetration in Ghana has been relatively slow,” he said, “yet there is a huge potential as connectivity improves so people will easily have news as and when they want them.” g
Dr. Ibrahima Sarr, director of CESTI, trains aspiring journalists in Senegal.