African media at G8 summit

Kenyan journalist John Kamau, of the Sunday Standard newspaper, chronicles his G8-summit experiences on the BBC website. In an entry from Wednesday, he comments on the lack of journalists from Africa at a summit that supposedly intends to “solve” problems in Africa.

It is a sad state of affairs that we cannot find concrete analysis from African media on what is happening here simply because it seems few efforts were made to invite them.
G8 summit diary 1330BST, 06 JULY 2005.

Even when it concerns the “future of their continent,” Africans primarily get their news and information filtered via the Euro-American info monopoly of Reuters, AP, BBC, AFP, CNN, etc. In addition, the rest of the world is apparently not all that interested in what Africans have to say about decisions made at the G8 summit.

Relief from this indifference toward Africans would be much more helpful in the fight against poverty in Africa, than so-called debt-relief or the $50 Bn in aid the were able to agree on. But I doubt that these pale, powerful men have any real interest in Africa, beyond distracting from some of their foreign policy disasters.

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