President of the Ghanian Africa Institute of Journalism:

The Caribbean Historical Society, in conjunction with the Media Association of Trinidad and Tobago hosted a special lecture featuring Kojo Yankah, President of the Ghanian Africa Institute of Journalism and Communications and Chairman of the Pan African Historical Theatre Festival on Saturday.

Speaking at the lecture, President of the Caribbean Historical Society, Nyahuma Obika said that the session was a very important one, as it allowed this country the opportunity to establish ties with the countries from which our citizens are descended.

He said, “We believe that we must take initiatives to reconnect ourselves from across both sides of the Atlantic. We know what history has brought: the transportation of millions of people from their ancestral home, whether it be India or Africa or China to all parts of the world, in this case here to the Caribbean.”

Obika said that it was TT’s responsibility to understand these ties in order to utilise the channels necessary for reconnecting to these “ancestral homes.” He also lamented the fact that with respect to the media in both TT and on the African continent, very little news was being transmitted in either direction.

“Therefore,” said Obika, “ our media practitioners have a critical role to play in disseminating as much information as possible.”

Yankah agreed with Obika that there was very little portrayed in the media with respect to occurrences in Africa.

“I have read a couple of your newspapers and watched a couple of television programmes and listened to a couple of radio programmes and I noticed one significant thing: very, very little about Africa. We (in Africa) also have very little coverage of events in the Caribbean.”

He noted however that the very limited news coverage that did exist tended to be focused on the negative events.

Yankah said that as media personnel, journalists were required to inform, educate and entertain. At the same time, he said, we are required to question what form of information we are transmitting to the general public.

“If we are to even use the basic factors of informing, educating and entertaining, then we have questions to ask ourselves. We should know what we are going to inform the people about. Media people have to be knowledgeable about their society, about their culture and about their background and history,” said Yankah. He said that the media are also required to be aware of the events occurring in other parts of the world. Without these requirements, Yankah said that the media would be unfit to serve in educating the general public.

Asked by former MATT president and current President of the Association of Caribbean Meida Workers Dale Enoch as to the solution to the problem of limited communication between the Caribbean and Africa, Yankah replied :.

“Regionally, we have news agencies,” said Yankah. “All we need is news agencies that will link each other up.” Yankah offered to link the local news agencies with those in Ghana as well as those in other African nations.

Yankah, who is the recipient of a number of awards such as the Langston Hughes Award and the first prize in the contest for World Journalists, will address high school and college students at the JFK Auditorium tommorrow on the topic of “The Pursuance of African Liberation and the Impact of International Trends on its Development.”