Saudi Gazette The world's first pan-African multilingual TV news channel, Africanews was launched in Pointe-Noire, Congo-Brazzaville recently. The channel is a subsidiary of the popular Europe news network Euronews. Currently, it airs in English and French and hopes to air in other languages in the future. Michael Peters, CEO of Africanews, said in a press conference, "In five years, Africanews aims to broadcast in Swahili, Hausa and many other African languages. It will be different from others because we hold a pan-African perspective than others who have regional and continental.'' The mission of Africanews is to "empower people through independent and reliable news." Africanews is formed of a strong team of 85 professional journalists and technicians, coming and working together from 15 different African countries and covering sub-Saharan news with correspondents across the continent. It includes flagship programs such as The Morning Call, Business Africa, Football Planet and The Network to maintain its African identity. "Another strong asset is Story Hunters, an exclusive program that allows viewers and users to be part of the story. Story Hunters is based on user generated content, aiming to make ‘All African' voices heard," said Peters. The channel is editorially independent from Euronews, free from political or ideological bias and represents the voice of Africa globally. "Africa has many faces; the idea is to deliver all faces about politics, economy, sports and culture, first to the Africans and then equally to the rest of the world, which will be made by the African people," said Peters. "Africa is a land of opportunities. It is a continent that is rising...The demand for unbiased news is unmet. There is a gap to fill. This is why we are launching Africanews to pioneer independent news from the African perspective," added Peters. Hannane Ferdjani, a journalist/anchor at Africanews told Saudi Gazette, "Africanews was designed and set up to bring the continent's matters into the limelight for Africans to feel represented and as though their stories are being told. It was also about changing the current narrative and go beyond the "dark continent's" discourse. Our added value is that we give an independent insider's perspective through our All-African newsroom - something that has never been done before. We strongly believe that with time, our channel will impose itself as the reference outlet for news about Africa." Africanews is free to pick and amend international productions from Euronews. Simultaneously Euronews can use productions from Africanews thus helping the channel to expose the image of Africa throughout the globe. According to Peters, Africanews based its station in Congo, because Congo was the only country that met the three important criteria: guarantees of editorial independence, easy access to fast Internet and geographical access to everywhere in Africa. Currently, Africanews is broadcasted to 7.3 million homes via pay TV networks in nearly 35 African countries and is live on social media at africanews.com.
