In response to pressing appeals from many media practitioners and stakeholders across Africa who believe a free, independent, professional and thriving media industry is essential to the continent’s future, AllAfrica Global Media has agreed to launch a new convening platform: the AllAfrica Media Leaders’ Summit (AMLS).

As with journalism institutions elsewhere in the world, African print and broadcast media have witnessed major changes in their industry. They need to address the challenges they face collectively.

On November 4th, 2008 – the same day the world witnessed the election of Barack Obama as the first African American president of the United States of America- AllAfrica Global Media was making its own history, three thousand miles across the Atlantic Ocean, in Dakar, Senegal. The company organized a continental media gathering of fifty of Africa’s most influential media leaders in Dakar with support from the World Bank, Ecobank, Coca-Cola and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to launch what would become known as the African Media Leaders Forum (AMLF). The Forum quickly emerged as the most important annual gathering for Media leaders and Media Stakeholders across the continent and ran annually in collaboration with AMI for 6 years, growing with each edition.

AMLF was held successfully from 2008 to 2013, bringing together media stakeholders including influential journalists, senior editors, civil society organizations, academics, business leaders as well as heads of state and leaders of Africa’s most prestigious institutions, such as the African Union, the African Development Bank and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. What began with fifty attendees grew to more than 500 participants.

After a 10-year hiatus, AllAfrica is launching a new annual initiative, the AllAfrica Media Leaders’ Summit (AMLS). This vital convening platform is re-established as part of a broader campaign to support media practitioners with the skills, enhanced contextual knowledge and structures to play appropriate and essential roles in driving regional integration and the transformation of African economies, whilst championing human development. AMLS 2024 will bring together over 250 top African media leaders, owners and operators (representing almost all African countries and territories), global media players and opinion leaders, government officials, corporate leaders, academics, civil society champions, and development partners to discuss the business of media and the critical role it must play in shaping Africa’s future. AMLS will be held from the 8th to the 10th of May this year in Nairobi, under the theme “Re-engineering African Media in Times of Critical Transformation”.

Why the need for a pan-African media leaders gathering? And why now?

The adoption of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is seen by many as a game changer, with immense potential to usher in an era of development and prosperity. In the media industry, increased digitization, the introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI), widespread misinformation and disinformation campaigns, as well as the use of deep fakes, have created a new reality full of opportunities – but at the same time, threaten to exacerbate civil unrest and conflicts. In this context, a new annual convening of Africa’s media leaders can play a critical role in addressing critical issues that concern everyone.

The core objectives of the summit are:

1. To share an understanding of forces shaping Africa’s Integration and align on the role of Africa’s media in crafting the continent’s economic transformation and integration narrative.
2. To support media leaders and practitioners through an era of rapid change and constant technological disruption with the world as we knew it, pre-covid, morphing into a new reality in a context marked by AI, digitization, the scourge of disinformation and misinformation as well as economies responding to the post-pandemic recession.
3. To share and discuss new ideas to gain enhanced contextual knowledge in order to shape and support Africa’s future by strengthening the continent’s collective efforts towards African Integration and economic progress in line with the UN SDGs and Agenda 2063 ~ The Africa We Want

The Summit agenda revolves around 6 key pillars:

• African Economic Transformation
• AI, Technology and Digitization
• Regional Integration and Peacebuilding
• Misinformation and Disinformation
• Governance, Standards, and Capacity Building
• Creating Sustainable Business Models

In addition to the main Summit, AllAfrica is bringing forward great innovations to this edition taking into account the ever-changing media landscape in the face of digitization, emerging technologies and developmental progress. An annual gathering of key stakeholders to have these important conversations is more important today than ever before and AllAfrica is looking forward to heading up this continental initiative.