PROJECTS, PROGRAMS and ACTIVITIES
The Foundation supports educational, public communication and cultural diplomacy projects that will enable African people to assume leadership roles in the processes used by themselves and others to educate and inform the world about Africa by equipping significant numbers of indigenous Africans to tell their own stories. The Foundation's research and consulting teams also provide governments and business communities with validated information that can be used to make critical decisions based on reliable market research results that were derived from inside the affected sectors.
Our work is being conducted in partnership with citizens and social institutions to expand opportunities for enhanced citizen participation in the agenda setting processes that will result in good governance, economic viability, accountability, education, news and information. Citizens from all walks of life are being taught how to effectively bring investigative reporting skills to bear on problems identified by their fellow citizens and to monitor the impact of NGOs and government alike in collaboration with their local partners. We provide free community media training to citizens of African and Diaspora villages as we create our indigenous community media network for life-long learning.
PARTNERS & RECENT ALLIANCES
We are pleased to announce our recent (February 2011) alliance with LINKS Multimedia Foundation. From our new base in Tanzania, this partnership will provide on-the-job training in printed media, broadcast media, photography, video, radio, film and other media sectors. We will also produce a series of interactive broadcast programs that focus on Africa's liberation heritage and public health and well-being. These programs will be initially released through SIBUKA FM Radio and TV SIBUKA before being distributed as internationally syndicated programs. In January 2012, our SIMBA Photo Bank began an alliance with Africa Interactive in order to more efficiently meet the visual information needs of our growing group of global knowledge clients. In 2011 we began providing consultation services and film production training to MFDI (Media For Development International-Tanzania) Swahiliwood Film Industry Capacity Building Project whose current crop of behavioral change and entertainment/education films are being sponsored by USAID and the Johns Hopkins University. Professor Robert Jones recently semi-retired from teaching at the American University in Cairo and now works from both Cairo and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania where he has opened our new office and studio. In addition, he and Doris have founded the Julius K. Nyerere Center for Good Governance [through civic media engagement] at the Open University of Tanzania where they serve as Senior Academic Consultants to the Vice Chancellor and the Department of Arts and Social Sciences.
ONGOING ACTIVITIES & PROJECTS
Our media programs are varied and custom built around specific needs of targeted segments of the potential audience. These needs are determined through an extensive research process that integrates community stakeholders into the agenda setting process.
We provide education, training and global marketing assistance to visual communicators through our SIMBA Image Base and Photo Agency which is developing a large database of art, graphics and photography produced by indigenous imagemakers.
The OLAfrica Knowledge Foundation began training community media personnel in 2003 when it funded the feasibility study to establish the Institute for Heritage Studies at South Africa's Vista University (now the University of Johannesburg). Since 2004, we have been expanding this work to include all regions of Africa and the Middle East through our life-long learning and earning frameworks as a result of our initial "micro investment" program CyberAc@demy for Multimedia Production Training. In collaboration with SIMBA (Sounds and Images for Multimedia and Books about Africa), we assist Africans to tell their own stories through our flagship information project, Treasures of Africa and the Middle East Magazine (TAME).
Professor Robert Jones is currently developing new models for educating journalists and training visual communicators through a Photo-Ethnography Community-Based Learning initiative sponsored by the John D. Gerhardt Center for Philanthropy and Civic Engagement at the American University in Cairo and the OnLine Africa Knowledge Foundation. He is continuing his development of Africa's first on-line visual communication curriculum for degree-seeking media students and working professionals along with Professor Doris Jones of the American University in Cairo who teaches writing, rhetoric, journalism, marketing and visual literacy.
RECENT PROJECTS:
2010-2011: Fundraising and Programme Consultants to the Kwame Nkrumah Pan African Cultural Center (Ghana and Egypt) that will transform President Nkrumah's former family residence on Cairo's historic Nile Corniche into a global depository for preserving the memory of Africa's Liberation era that began in Ghana and spread throughout Africa and the Diaspora with the support of former Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser. The Center will feature letters and other historical artifacts detailing how African nations broke the colonial stranglehold. It will provide resources and space for academic discourse by leading and aspiring African scholars who wish to use their indigenous voices to share stories of the liberation struggles which are still continuing today. The Center will feature direct links to global libraries and universities, including Historically Black and African Colleges and Universities (HBACU) whose faculties and scholars will engage people of African descent around the world through the OnLine Africa Mystic Oracle searchable database and other connectivity programmes..
2009-2011: As lead consultants to the Open University of Tanzania and African Virtual University, we have been assigned to develop Africa's first and only internationally accredited university on-line journalism and mass communication curriculum. This work has resulted in the publication of the first in a series of virtual dynamic textbooks for teaching photography, graphic design and visual literacy in blended and on-line learning environments. Discussions are currently underway to co-venture 2011 projects with Hot Sun Foundation's Kibera Film School (Kenya), Media for Development International (Tanzania and Zimbabwe) and Eco News (Kenya).
2009-2010: The Foundation has sponsored free multimedia training courses for disadvantaged residents of several rural African villages. This training is led by Professor Robert Jones of the American University in Cairo (AUC) who recently published 2 dynamic virtual textbooks "Shedding Light on Photography: Your Concise Guide to Technical Control and Artistic Expression" and "Publication Design: Principles and Practice". He is co-authoring a series of interactive visual literacy textbooks with AUC Writing, Rhetoric and Journalism Professor Doris Jones.
2008-2011: The Foundation has co-funded several International Community Media Projects with the John D. Gerhart Center for Philanthropy and Civic Engagement of the American University in Cairo and the Italian NGO Live-in-Slums.org with whom we have conducted public information work with the United Nations Population Fund, Tawasol Community Learning Center (Egypt) , Association for Protection of the Environment (Egypt), Village of Vikawe (Tanzania), Green Zanzibar (Tanzania), President Obama's ancestral village of Kogelo, Kenya where we are training citizens to collect and preserve their town's visual and aural histories.
Learn more about our HISTORY and EARLIER PROJECTS