With the support of a fully-funded training, African Foundation for Young Media Professionals is empowering early-career media enthusiasts to be better practitioners, writes Tijani Abdulkabeer
The African Foundation for Young Media Professionals (AFYMP) whose mission is to propagate media capacity development is providing young media and communications professionals with the skills and resources they need to excel in the media space by leveraging technology.
In 2022, the foundation through funding support from MacArthur Foundation and Wole Soyinka Center for Investigative Reporting (WSCIJ) launched a media training for early-career media and communications students across several tertiary institutions in Nigeria.
This training which will further promote the practice of journalism and expose these young minds to the business aspect of the profession saw selected students get trained and equipped with skills to do quality journalism that highlights solutions-focused approaches to solving problems faced in the media industry.
The funded program has four courses which are Media Entrepreneurship and Niche Building; Campus Journalism; Women in Journalism and Disabilities and Inclusion in Media.
One of the selected students was Kehinde Ayanboade, a fresh graduate of The Polytechnic, Ibadan. Due to his passion to pursue a career in journalism, he has worked with media outlets including National Insight, Inside Oyo, The Punch Newspaper, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and others at different times. Recently, he launched a news platform known as naijametro.com.ng to keep people abreast of the latest happenings within his community.
“This was an opportunity for me to have more insights, meet new people and learn the new ways of the media. It was a very good thing that we had trainers from the academia, and media space to train us and they were able to use their experience to take us through the media realm and charged us to be the change,” he said regarding the training held in Lagos on Monday, August 13.
The goal of this funded training is to work with young media professionals and search for game changers that will help change the narratives of media professions in Nigeria, according to Mr Yinka Olaito, the Executive Director of AFYMP.
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THE GAME CHANGERS
Precious Akintulubo, one of the selected participants from the Olabisi Onabanjo who doubles as the founder of Horeah TV expressed satisfaction with the training and maintained that the insight gained from the facilitators would help spread journalism to a new audience and break barriers.
“Being an online entrepreneur, my main focus was how to build my audience and so this training was a hotcake for me and it would be so wrong to leave without implementing something,” she said, adding that “the training met my expectations as an online brand owner and was glad I had to take sessions on community journalism, fact-checking and different dimensions to media entrepreneurship.”
As a 300 Level mass communications student at Federal University, Oye-Ekiti, Peace Oladipo was elated with the quality of thought drawn from the facilitators. She says that the training has exposed her to the practical aspects away from the only theory that they teach in her school.
“It was very splendid for me. I must say that this is beyond what I imagined. It was so enlightening and educative coupled with beautiful ideas that were mind-blowing. Being a media entrepreneur now makes sense to me, unlike the jargon they teach us in school.” she said smiling.
Abdulrasheed Hammad, a 400L Law student from Usman Danfodio University (UDUS) says the training has helped him to have a new mindset.
“The insight so far is more than what I expected because this training based on media entrepreneurship has broadened my knowledge of the new media. I have had to learn, unlearn many things in this training,” Hammad said.
AFYMP Executive Director further explained that the foundation is committed to investing in the next generation of media giants who need to build outstanding unique media brands and channel their potential toward being the game-changer in the media industry.