By Amine Kabbaj
By Amine Kabbaj
Morocco World News
Fez, Nov 17, 2012
Morocco will be host to the 7th edition of the “Africa Media Leaders’ Forum” (AMLF). Co-Chair Mustapha Mellouk announced the event on November 9 in Dakar calling it “an event that reunites hundreds of media professionals and operators in Africa and the world.”
Mr. Mellouk, who is also the president of “Casablanca media partners,” announced during a press conference in the closing ceremony of the 5th edition of “Africa Media Leaders’ Forum” in Dakar, that the next Forum will take place in Ethiopia and then in Morocco in 2014.
Mr. Mellouk added that the 5thedition of the event was about very important subjects related to the role of media in the development of Africa and the advancement of democracy and governance. Media Development the Human Factor, the training, the Investments, The Technological Change, the Ethics and Deontology, the Transition from the Analog Broadcasting to the Digital Broadcasting and other subjects were discussed during the conference dedicated to the professionals of the media sector.
The event’s closure of the conference saw the participation of the Senegalese president Macky Sall and other eminent personalities in the media sector. Mr. Mellouk made a wish to see the Forum’s recommendations constituting a real fundament to the establishment of a substantial platform for media on this continent.
Among these recommendations, he cited: “the necessity to put the citizen in the center of the preoccupations, the call for a “content tailored to the needs” and to consider the media as a multi vocational one (education, information, promotion, entertainment…)”.
“These recommendations are also about designing a concept that conciliates between the public and the private funding under proactive and transparent conditions in order to guarantee its independence,” he added.
The 5th edition of the AMLF involved the participation of many Moroccan professionals and operators in the media sector, in particular the president of the High Authority of the Audiovisual Communication (HACA), Amina Lamrini Ouahabi and her general manager, Jamal Eddine Naji.
The important participation of the representatives of the HACA took place in Dakar during a seminar of “the French Network of Media Regulators” (REFRAM) under the theme of “The Transition to the Digital by 2015.”
Dakar’s edition of AMLF was organized by the “African Media Initiative” and saw the participation of more than 300 media professionals from Africa and all over the world.
The challenges to adapt to the technological changes, the management of media companies, the ethics and regulations, the content and quality; all these subjects were also widely debated during the seminars involving the African media.
Amine Kabbaj obtained his BA in English studies from Sidi Mohamed ben Abdellah University in Fes and is currently pursuing an M.A in Applied Linguistics and Research in Higher Education within the same university.
