*In this week, I learned about African media. For me, African continent itself is not familiar with myself, and I noticed my stereotype-image about African Media. Actually, I was surprised about the freedom of media in Africa. Especially last week I learned a lot about media limitation in the Middle East so I was more surprised about free media in Africa, even though both countries have a history of colonialism from European countries. In addition to my stereotypical image about Africa, a lot of African countries are still developing countries and have many poor people so media access is not as big deal as other areas. However, for real, it was wrong, rather their lives are improving along with the media developing. Throughout the reading, I feel such a strong power of language. I had no idea about that, because I have never felt such a power of language in Japan, where there is almost only one ethnicity. Also, in the class of reading discussion, the guest speaker, Naa from Ghana, told us a lot of interesting facts in her country. Then I was interested in some points about Ghana media, in this blog I want to show the brief of media facts in Ghana and media power there.
- According to GHANA EMBASSY HP, Ghana has 75 different ethnic groups. About the language, the official language is English but school uses both English and nine other local languages. The most widely spoken local languages are Ga, Dagomba, Akan and Ewe. In terms of education, Primary and secondary school are free and compulsory between the age of 6 to 14. In 1996, 76% of primary-school aged children were enrolled, but only 31% of secondary-school aged children entered school. Higher education is provided by University of Ghana etc.
- I think these facts relate with media developing in Ghana. Ghana is the country which has media diversity, such as broadcasting TV, Radio, print media, and internet. As Naa said in the class, getting internet access is not as expensive as we think. So I think the biggest influence for media diversity is education level. When people try to get information from print media, they have to being able to read and understand English, which is common thing with internet but Education is needed. However, in terms of TV or radio, which is almost run by local, people can get information even if they can only understand local African languages, which Education is not necessarily. In fact, the rates of radio owning is highest in Ghana. And then, it was really making sense that Naa said in even university, internet is not big deal because it is not indispensable for people. Their lives' central media is radio or TVs rather than internet. I think this is really good trend because easy radio access make more and more people possible to get information and it connects to Ghana itself's development. If you see this Modern Ghana HP, you can tell how their online-media is developed and expanded. It shows the level of people who are taking advantage of internet because it should fulfill the demand of users who are educated.
-From the Press reference HP, I learned how important for Ghana's developing the media influence is. The head of article says "Ghana has vibrant press that plays a key role in political discourse, national identity, and popular culture. " in 19th century, the media worked as civilization's voice and this role is still continuing now. It helped the developing democracy in Ghana. Throughout entire statement inside this homepage, media takes an important role at every aspects of Ghana development.
-I could know media is indispensable element for Ghana. Media helped a lot of changing such as democracy acting or campaign for independent. I didn't know these facts before this week's lecture, discussion and my small research. Because of my stereotyping, I was blind about rapid changing in Ghana or other African countries. Now I really know in the near future African countries would have big powers because they have a media free, which promotes the countries development, or more media free is necessarily for countries' growth.
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