The Future of Ugandan Media in the Digital Age

The Ugandan media landscape is changing fast and, as a result, traditional print and digital media are being forced to rethink the methods of work that have kept them relevant to their audiences and profitable for decades.

With the advent of digital media platforms, the leveling effect of social media and the multiplicity of online sources of news, many legacy media houses are finding themselves more and more alienated from the audiences they have come to depend on for views and sales.

The "new media" is creating newer modes of capturing, packaging and distributing news content that are more relevant and responsive to the needs of a new generation of news audiences.

These changes in the media landscape have forced many media houses in Uganda to begin thinking critically about how they can embrace the new technology and platforms in order to stay alive in a rapidly changing media market.

This has led to media houses getting involved in experimentation with different formats, content and distribution channels but as yet nobody seems to have a good idea of what works best.

Those that have made some headway in producing, and delivering, content that their audiences want are finding they have to figure out how to make money from these new formats and platforms.

The dilemma that many media houses are facing is that innovations in digital and mobile news gathering and distribution will ultimately mean very little if these innovations cannot be monetized.

At present, while the media houses are slowly getting to grips with digital media, the advertisers are still hesitant to spend their money on these new products and platforms. The advertisers are still more comfortable dealing with legacy media, probably because they understand it better.

All things considered, it will be a while until Ugandan media houses sort through the experimentation to find what works and inevitably some will not survive.

However, those that are thinking seriously about the future, and investing in keeping relevant in the digital age, will experience lots of birthing pains but they will inevitably be the first at the table when what is today's new digital/social media fad becomes tomorrow's mainstream platform for delivering news.

Its a brave new world out there but it is also full of untapped potential.

Christian Mafigiri: Telling Ugandan stories through graphic novels

Christian Mafigiri is a Ugandan artist whose love for American comic books led him to pursue a career in art. He later trained as a journalist and he has combined his skills in journalism and art to tell stories through different forms of graphic story-telling.

Mafigiri has recently collaborated on a multimedia project with Scottish photo-journalist Marc Ellison that tells the stories of 6 former child soldiers who were abducted by the LRA and their struggles to integrate into society, while trying to deal with their own trauma.

Mafigiri has also produced graphic novels for sell which use the style of the comic books he loved as a child to tell stories that resonate with Ugandans.He hopes that one day his graphic novels and comics will give Ugandan readers the sort of entertainment he got from reading American comic books like Superman and Batman.

Uganda Law Society website hack: Wrong target Mr. Anonymous

The Uganda Law Society website has been hacked by Anonymous, a Hacktivist group that has made a name for itself over the past few years, who claim they want to bring to the world's attention to the Uganda government's violations of human rights specifically in relation to some pending anti-gay legislation.

"We have gone to the trouble of compromising the Ugandan Law Society's webserver to bring to your attention, and to the attention of the world, your government's gross breaches of human rights and justice" 

The group had released a statement last year threatening some kind of action against Uganda government's network infrastructure and they have followed through by exploiting a vulnerability in the ULS website's security (which they cheekily pointed out).

Ironically, the target chosen for the first attack happens to be one of those organisations at the forefront of fighting the anti-homosexuality bill that is before the parliament of Uganda. The Uganda Law Society has been on record as being against the anti-gay bill and its members have been quite vocal in the support of activism against the bill.

I am guessing the the social justice hactivists at Anonymous probably saw the name of the organisation and assumed it was a government agency. The fact is that the ULS is an association of lawyers charged with ensuring high levels of professionalism among lawyers in Uganda (granted it was established by an act of parliament but strictly speaking its not a government agency).

I guess that really doesn't matter to the guys at Anonymous. The important thing to them is that their point has been made and they have shown that they are gearing to take on the government of Uganda.

"If nobody else will take action and the government of Uganda refuses to see reason, Anonymous will adopt a scorched earth policy towards Uganda's network infrastructure. They should expect us, for we do not forgive and we do not forget. Your networks are not secure, you cannot protect against us"

Under Anonymous's #OpUganda (which I am guessing means Operation Uganda) the ULS website hack is just the beginning and it seems many more Uganda government websites are going to be targets over the coming months if the list at the end of this press statement is anything to go by.

Judging from what these guys have to say about the internet security of most Uganda government websites this might be these guys'easiest operation yet. 

And the Kony 2012 juggernaut rolls on

I spent yesterday trying to write a post on my views on Invisible Children's KONY 2012 video that has gone viral and garnered millions of views (38,430181 on YouTube as I write this). More specifically, I wanted to write about what I thought was wrong with both the approach of the film-makers and the way people without the slightest clue about the LRA (besides the misinformation gleaned from KONY 2012) were taking up the Stop Kony cause with such fervour.

However, Twitter could not let me do that in peace because almost every 5  minutes I received links to articles and blog posts reacting to the Invisible Children campaign. Posts like this one by Michael Wilkerson guest posting at Foreign Policy, and this post by  Ugandan blogger Angelo Izama are just two of the many that are out there echoing my feelings.  There is also this video from Ugandan blogger Rosebell Kagumire

As a result I feel what I had to say has already been said by many other people-many times over-and I do not see my self adding much to this debate.

But just when I was thinking of moving on I saw #konysurrender, which just confirmed that most people out there psyched about doing their bit to stop a murdering warlord are really clueless. What do they expect? That Kony is going to be so overwhelmed by millions of earnest pleas from American high school and college kids that he will cave in and surrender himself to a police station near him. The naivety of this later campaign is so incredible it hurts.

Kony will not surrender and Jason Russell and Co. know this because I am sure they know about the failed peace initiatives between the Ugandan government and the LRA in Southern Sudan in 2006. They also know about a US funded operation called Operation Lightening Thunder meant to capture Kony, after the failed peace talks, that was botched spectacularly. They know that the US government is more than aware of the Kony problem.

What exactly Invisible Children expects to achieve by Covering the night I cannot farthom. Getting people aware is OK, I guess, but ultimately there is nothing useful that can come of this campaign except cranking up the hysteria and misinformation.

There are efforts afoot to get the child soldiers abducted by Kony to abandon his army and surrender already. There are also numerous organisations that are on the ground attempting to find solutions to the problem that is Kony that are actually doing useful work that has a shot at working. However these efforts run the risk of being sidelined in favour of interventions that are ill-conceived which only play to the emotions and offer a sense of having helped solve a problem by buying an action-kit. These efforts on the ground need support from clear headed and sober people who know exactly what they are talking about. Here is a report  by the International Crisis Group on the LRA conflict as it is at the moment, work on the ground being done to end it and some meaningful recommendations on possible interventions by different parties. If only people bothered first to seek out reports like this before jumping on whatever save-the-hapless-Africans bandwagon that happens to be passing at the time, maybe initiatives like KONY 2012 just might be taken in stride and treated with the cautious scepticism they deserve.

But then again maybe I am being overly cynical and not giving the campaign a chance. Either way the StopKony juggernaut is on the roll and there seems to be no stopping it for now. I will see how this plays out-reservations and all.