Journalist and educator Solomon Annan has charged the African Union to immediately set up its own media house to serve as a medium to propagate the continental body’s policies.
“The AU is just a body constituting states in Africa. But I have seen that the biggest challenge confronting the AU which perhaps the union has not recognized yet themselves is that some of its policies [including Silencing the Guns] are not going down to the individual states,” he said on International Dialogue – a YouTube based talk show on the channel Aniwaba.
He said the AU’s “Silencing the Guns” policy was not well received by member states and that media houses on the continent failed to disseminate and explain it to their audience.
“How many people in Ghana, Togo or Benin and the other African countries have heard of silencing the guns? These are very telling questions and, you see, nobody says anything [about it],” he bemoaned.
Mr. Annan told the host of International Dialogue, Solomon Mensah, that: “Perhaps if I could suggest something, the AU must set up its own media house that could champion its policies. A strong media house like the BBC, CNN or the Aljazeera will go a long way to ensure the AU gets its messages across to Africans. Once media houses on the continent are not ready to restructure and position themselves well, the AU must lead in that direction.”