The Shift in African Storytelling
As part of the Social Media Week 2015, the NYU Kimmel Center hosted a panel discussion on the topic “The Seismic Shift in African Storytelling in 140 Characters or less”. An opportunity to discuss issues, benefits and challenges pertaining to the explosion of social media on the African continent. In a friendly atmosphere, a panel of five African social media activists was invited to discuss the matter with a dozen of media and communications professionals with a solid knowledge of communication issues on the continent. It is for this reason that I was invited. Significant disparities in the sub-Saharan region In less than a decade, Africa -especially the sub-Saharan region- has gone from being largely unconnected to the internet to having millions of people using it. The entire panel agreed on the conclusion that this key change has created two kinds of Sub-Saharan Africans in terms of media and communications: the haves and the have-nots . Until...