In her speech, Hélène Brousseau, Project Manager at the Africa Directorate of the French Media Development Agency (CFI), spoke about the Media and Migration initiative CFI implemented for a year and a half. She shared highlights of a recent study conducted on media and migration in Africa and the recommendations made on the subject.

According to Ms. Hélène Brousseau, data was collected at the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022 from focus groups made up of migrants and journalists, as well as through interviews with experts, researchers and heads of organisations and NGOs. According to her, this collection was conducted in sixteen (16) countries in three geographical areas: Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, including nine countries in West Africa, including Senegal.

The interest of this study, she said, is to describe the contextual elements with brief migratory panoramas for each country but also the analysis of media content and public discourse on migration. 

The added value of this study lies in the fact that it takes stock of the various projects, capacity building and support for the production of media content in these countries, and funded by donors, she said.

In conclusion, she shared some general recommendations from the study:

• Establish or promote networks of journalists at different levels, regional and national;
• Increase awareness and education
• Translate media content into local and national languages;
• Support and encourage media production on migration
• Review the training courses regarding their format, content, duration, beneficiaries and the monitoring and evaluation tools associated with them.

Ms. Brousseau thus informed that this study is being finalised and that the dissemination is expected between the end of 2022 and early 2023. Before announcing that there will be a feedback event to present these outcomes in French and English.

Speaking of other initiatives carried out by CFI, Ms Brousseau said that capacity building activities were recently carried out in Dakar last July. “We are working with four partner countries in these initiatives: The Gambia, Guinea, Mauritania and Niger. We are also in the process of finalising two courses on the ethical handling of the migration issue and on the fight against disinformation on this issue. Training of journalists will also take place in the coming months until next year and twenty (20) journalists will be trained per partner country,” she concluded.