[FoME] African Union - European Commission: "Pan-African Media Observatory"?

[Christoph Dietz]

THIS INFORMATION IS FROM THE AFRICAN UNION COMMISSION AND THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION
PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL ADDRESS, TO PARTICIPATE  VISIT http://media-dev.org 

Thank you.

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Dear professionals of the media and development world,

The first "Media and Development Forum" in Ouagagougou in September 2008 made a positive contribution to the reflection on the mentioned topic, involving NGOs, medias, universities, political representatives and international organisations. The Forum made it possible to identify concrete proposals and recommendations amongst which a certain number were later put together into a "Joint Road Map for Action" signed by the president of the African Union Commission, Mr Jean Ping and the European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian aid, Mr Louis Michel.

Amongst the objectives identified is the establishment of an independent Pan African Media Observatory, tasked with different assignments (information, observation, advice, mediation and monitoring of the Forum's recommendations).

To this objective, the African Union Commission and the European Commission, together with a number of experts from the media field, have elaborated a first proposal on the assignments and the structure of such an Observatory. In order to allow consultation on the proposal, it has been posted on http://media-dev.org 

With this e-mail we would therefore like to invite and strongly encourage you to give us your comments, your critic and your recommendations on this outline for a Pan African Media Observatory. Your contributions would be very appreciated and useful in order to make improvements to this blueprint. You can comment either online (http://media-dev.org) or, if you prefer, by sending us your comments by post. The dead-line for the consultation period is, a priori, the 15th of July 2009.

We thank you in advance for your responses and we hope to have the pleasure to hear from you in the near future,

Habiba Mejri-Cheikh
Spokesperson and Head of Information and Communication African Union Commission

Ian Barber Head of Unit Information and Communication.
Directorate General for Development and relations with African, Caribbean and Pacific States. European Commission