Couple opens doors of communication for Africa
May. 23, 2006 News media contact: Kathy Gilbert * (615) 7425470* Nashville {304}
NOTE: Photographs and audio are available at http://umns.umc.org.
By Kathy L. Gilbert*
WASHINGTON (UMNS) - Looking for information about a treason trial in Ethiopia, low voter turnout in Chad or news about a new minimum wage fix in Mozambique?
One place on the Internet carries all those stories and more: AllAfrica.com.
For 30 years, two United Methodists have dedicated their lives to listening, reporting and making sure the world knows what is happening on the huge continent of Africa.
"AllAfrica.com is at its heart a global voice for Africa's needs, information and support for Africa's media," says Tami Hultman, who co-founded the Web site five years ago with husband Reed Kramer.
The site posts 1,000 new stories every day in English and French from more than 130 African news organizations and hundreds of other news outlets. The site reaches more than 12 million viewers a month, and more than 14,000 Web sites carry AllAfrica's headline modules or otherwise link to the site, says Kramer.
The site is used by people all over the world. Most of the users are in North America and Europe, but the fastest-growing regions going to the site are Africa and Asia, Kramer says.
Viewers can find information about particular countries or regions and topics such as health, religion, sports or business.
"All of those are available through different doorways at AllAfrica.com," Kramer says. "We have a section on every country and more than three dozen topics so that someone can access information through various sources."
All of this is pretty amazing considering the size of the staff and the Web site's financial bottom line.
"AllAfrica has scrambled to survive from the very beginning," Hultman says. "We have been pulled up by the proverbial technology bootstraps and grown organically. We have been funded by 'angel investors,' the majority of which are Africans who want to see it succeed."
The Web site has refused investments unsuited to its goals. Hultman and Kramer are hoping to become "cash positive" within a year.
"We're just on the verge of self-sustaining cash positive operations, but we're not there yet," Hultman says. "We're in a very tight race to the finish between collapsing from the weight of our growth and success and the number of people we serve or having the capital to actually handle that growth and manage it and take advantage of it to bring in revenue so that it will survive and continue to grow."
Voice of Africa
Kramer and Hultman have a young international staff equally dedicated to being the voice of Africa.
Aminata Sall, who at 35 is the oldest member of the staff, is a native of Senegal, Africa. She manages the site's French pages. She moved to the United States four years ago and says she has learned a lot through working at AllAfrica.com. "I have learned more about Africa working here than I learned my whole life living on the continent."
Tali Trigg majored in English, international affairs and African studies at Georgetown University. A native of Sweden, the 24-year-old says reading news has always been his hobby, and he has learned a lot from working on the Web site.
"We get calls all the time thanking us for being unbiased and giving a balance of news," he says.
"We present varied and objective news and let the world know Africa is not just about violence and war," says Gaddiel Baah, 30, a native of Ghana, West Africa. "The complete picture of Africa is very complex. People in Africa long to do their best and live decent lives."
Alec Johnson, 25, is managing editor of the Web site.
"Working here is an opportunity to be part of something that is working to improve media in Africa," he says. "Being an independent media source feels good. We are helping media grow in Africa and giving a perspective on Africa that is not skewed."
"What you get when you come to AllAfrica.com is a diverse collection of information that contains many different perspectives and points of view," Kramer says.
The news team does not edit the stories coming in. "We use the content that's published in the newspapers as it's published. We make that clear to our readers - that it comes from that source and we identify the source," Kramer says.
Being based in Washington, the staff has a commitment and a focus on U.S. relations with Africa.
"There is not really any other news organization out there doing that," he says. "We cover what the U.S. government is doing and what other organizations do that affect relations with Africa."
Satisfactions, frustrations
Dedicating so much time and energy to the Web site has its satisfactions and frustrations, Kramer says.
"A satisfaction is that so many people tell us either personally or through electronic transmits that they rely heavily on the news that All Africa provides to do their work.
"The frustration comes from being under resourced and unable to do as much as we would like to do to reach as many people, write as much information, to be on top of the news as much as we'd like to be. We're working very hard to try to solve the resource issues so we can go out and do even more in the future."
World justice
Hultman says her commitment to Africa "grows out of a larger sense of responsibility to promote justice worldwide and as a foundational premise of my faith, which came from my parents."
A central goal of AllAfrica is to be a bridge between Africa and the rest of the world, she says. "We want people to know that Africans are just like everybody else and are composed of people of diverse backgrounds and cultures who share in common the human trait of wanting the best for themselves, their families, their communities and their world."
Early on, Hultman and Kramer started using the Internet technology because it was cost effective.
"We were early adopters of technology, always have been," Hultman says. "That's what keeps us alive today, that same reliance on highly sophisticated powerful technology that enables a small number of people to reach a large global audience."
In the beginning, no one understood the Web could be a tool for social justice, she says. "It was regarded as a tool of the elite."
AllAfrica is the successor of the nonprofit Africa News Service, which operated for two decades before the online venture. The AllAfrica "family" includes AllAfrica Foundation, a nonprofit organization that sponsors the Charlayne Hunter-Gault Fellowship for African women journalists and operates SustainAfrica.org, PeaceAfrica.org and HealthAfrica.org.
The daughter of a retired minister, Hultman says "both parents raised me to think that my job was to make the world a better place, and Africa became the central part of that because I went on a National Student Christian Federation study seminar to Africa in the summer before my junior year at Duke."
Kramer grew up in the United Methodist Church in Knoxville, Tenn. He and Hultman, a North Carolina native, met in college.
"I didn't go to Africa when she did; I didn't know her then, but when I met her, we were both looking for what we wanted to do when we graduated," he says.
Growing connection
Kramer and Hultman were at the inauguration of Liberia's new president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf - a fellow United Methodist - in January. While in West Africa, they also visited United Methodist Ganta mission and were pleasantly surprised to see all the computers were displaying AllAfrica.com.
"They were using the Web site not only to check on things in Liberia but they had also been checking on what was happening with their fellow peacekeepers in the Congo," Kramer says.
There is a growing connectivity to the Internet in Africa, despite the infrastructure challenges, he says.
"It's happening in Africa despite the obstacles. The audience continues to grow."
*Gilbert is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in Nashville, Tenn.
News media contact: Kathy L. Gilbert, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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United Methodist News Service Photos and stories also available at: http://umns.umc.org
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