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New Publication Promises Stories Told By Africans For Africans

New Publication Promises Stories Told By Africans For Africans

From IOL. Story by Michael Morris.

Independent Media launched its new continental weekly, African Independent, Friday in Cape Town, and Executive Chairman Iqbal Survé spelled out the vision of an “integrated” strategy he sees challenging agencies such as Reuters, Bloomberg and Agence France Presse, and social media giant Facebook.

The new 48-page tabloid went on sale Friday in Cape Town and, if all went according to plan, also in the capitals of Angola, Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

It promises to be “a publication for minds without borders,”  with “the full African story” — stories told by Africans for Africans.

Though edited (by Independent veteran Jovial Rantao) and printed in Johannesburg, the new newspaper will draw on content and syndication partnerships across African media, the mainstay being the Sekunjalo-owned African News Agency (ANA), set up this year after the South African Press Association closed.

Survé sees the new paper as part of a larger plan.

“It’s print, it’s digital, it’s mobile. We think that within three years we will have an African social media site, a Facebook-like site for Africa, customised or nuanced for Africans, and also online video, as well as our satellite TV partnership with Africa 24. And, of course, magazines… we are busy with partnerships there.

“What’s common to all platforms is the content. It’s about how you distribute content, and if you can get the balance right between generating, sourcing and syndicating and packaging it on multiple platforms, you have a successful investment strategy.”

Survé says the African Independent will change the narrative of how the continent is reported. He believes commentators incorrectly saw the launch of ANA as the reincarnation of a traditional news wire agency.

“The business is not about replicating the service, but understanding where the market sits and what the requirement is. Our view is that it’s not about news wires services, but content syndication and social media,” he said.

Within less than a year ANA “has been valued at between $600 million and $1 billion as we have brought in investors who have bought 10 percent at that valuation,” Survé said.

ANA, he said, is the core element of the company’s expectation that “in five years, we will be competing very aggressively not just with Reuters, Bloomberg and others, but even with social media engines such as Facebook.”

Wider African investments, he said, go with putting money into the South African operation, starved of investment under the former Irish owners.

“I cannot keep blaming the Irish, but they really did not do anything,” Survé said.

Survé said he was pleased with achievements to date – the group’s digital capacity, launching new products, including expanding vernacular publications, a group-wide redesign initiative (in the works), and advances into Africa.

Economic viability rather than utopianism or ideological orientation is, he insisted, the foundational principle of expanding media interests.

“I don’t move without having a lot of information to back up our plans. Some of those plans go into the dustbin because they don’t satisfy the essential criteria, which are largely commercial. Fundamentally, what we are doing is a business, and it has to be sustainable and self-funding if it’s going to have any social function. You can have a utopian view of life, but you have to be realistic about doing business, or you end up making terrible mistakes. Business is also about risk, but minimising the risk and calculating well.”

A key feature of his approach, he said, is developing partnerships.

“Collaboration and partnership are vital. You cannot run a business as you did a few years ago. And in media, the virtue of partnerships lies in the diversity of content.”

It extends to other spheres of the operation, too, he said.

Survé recalled that while his “African strategy” team was working on the plans for the new weekly, “I sent them back probably six times to relook at the positioning, the mock-ups, the content, the advertising revenue, the circulation, all the key assumptions… and if I think back to the original distribution model, it would have cost more than the cost of the entire paper. At some point I said, ‘Why not partner with airlines?’ And that’s the model we now have, reducing the cost of distribution by 90 percent.”

The new paper is focused on Africa’s “influencers” – professionals, decision-makers, industry leaders, opinion formers. “You cannot print for the whole continent, and you don’t want to either. But allied to the print platform is the online element, which some 300 million Africans can access on their mobile phones or computers.”

Survé anticipates African Independent will be self sustaining within a year.

Read more at IOL.