The Konrad Adenauer Asian Center for Journalism (ACFJ) extends its reach beyond Asia and into Africa as it participates in a training program aimed at developing African photojournalism, particularly in preparation for covering the upcoming World Cup in South Africa in 2010.  The program is part of a larger program called Twenty Ten, is a joint initiative of international organizations World Press Photo, Free Voice, Africa Media Online, and lokaalmondiaal aimed at raising the standards of African journalism in print, radio, and photo journalism and enabling African journalists to produce stories about their own land for their own people.  ACFJ has been asked by World Press Photo to provide the courses for the photojournalism component of the program.   In a related announcement, the School of Social Sciences sees the new venture as an “affirmation of the success of (the School of Social Sciences) programs”.

The first of three courses launched last July 20 and it is a “hybrid” program or a mixture of online and on-site courses.  In keeping with the sports orientation of the courses, the programs are called “preseason training” and participants for the programs have been organized into “teams”.  The various teams have been organized based both on their language skills and their photography skills, resulting in three distinct teams of journalists, with two teams speaking English and one team speaking French.  Participants meet online via Blackboard, a web-based learning classroom, for eight weeks followed by an on-site meeting for one week in Ghana, Nigeria, and Burkina Faso for each respective team.   There are a total of 36 participants in all, the English speaking participants coming from Nigeria, Liberia, South Africa, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Angola, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Egypt, South Africa, and Zambia.  The French-speaking participants come from Senegal, Maurice, Ivory Coast, Cameroun, Congo, Togo and Burkina Faso.

The program is led by Dave J. Clark.  Seasoned photojournalists Alex Baluyut and Jimmy Domingo are the speakers for the English speaking teams while guest lecturer Markel Redondo of Spain will be handling the French speaking team.