Lecturers from the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane in Mozambique were in Grahamstown recently to further develop their journalism programme in collaboration with the Rhodes School of Journalism and Media Studies.
Lecturers from the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane in Mozambique were in Grahamstown recently to further develop their journalism programme in collaboration with the Rhodes School of Journalism and Media Studies.
While in town, they also attended the Highway Africa conference.
The lecturers from the School of Communication and Arts (ECA) and the Department of Journalism and Media Studies (JMS) are working together to develop a journalism curriculum for the Mozambican university.
This forms part of a media-strengthening programme begun in 2012 sponsored USAID and the US non-profit organisation IREX.
ECA lecturer Mario Fonseca spoke with Grocott's Mail about the importance of developing the quality of media and the work of journalists in Mozambique.
He said that to get it right they had to start at grass roots level, and the development of a new curriculum was part of the process.
"In order for this process to be a success we had to consider a sum of factors.
"[These included] looking at the journalism curriculum itself, to thinking critically about factors like how will it be of benefit to our needs as a democratic country and how we will contribute to the development of journalism in Mozambique," he said.
The partnership with JMS brought valuable experience to this stage of development, he said, in a process expected to take four years before the new curriculum can be implemented.
Aida Nangwe, also a journalism lecturer at ECA, said the partnership gives them the opportunity to learn things from Rhodes that they can implement at home.
"We plan to use what we know and learn here in our context to benefit our university," Nangwe said.
Fonseca said it was a great opportunity to be working with a well-known institution that has more than a century of experience in journalism, but added that he hoped JMS could learn from them, too, making it a learning process for all parties.
The group from Mozambique was among journalists from around the world that gathered in Grahamstown last week to attend the Highway Africa Conference focusing on social media's growing contribution to mainstream media.
The workshops, panel discussions and seminars attracted media practitioners, academics and students from all corners of the globe.
