Mail, Guardian Launches New Africa Digital News Platform

The wait is over in Africa for a homegrown platform that tells its many stories from a mature perspective, rather than from the tired metaphor of an emerging giant. It’s not only Africans who want better insight into their continent – the world also wants to understand Africa better.

“Mail & Guardian Africa has taken the bold step to report Africa by telling why things do or do not happen, using an evidence-based, non-dogmatic and analytical approach and exploring the new opportunities that technology, social media and crowd-sourcing tools offer to do that in new ways,” says Mail and Guardian Africa Editor Charles Onyango-Obbo, a leading pan-African journalist with an unparalleled grasp of the Africa narrative.

Mail and Guardian Africa aims to be the leading and most important commercially successful contemporary voice on African issues. News analysis, insight, commentary and investigative journalism will be the hallmark of this Pan African platform.

As part of the package, http://www.mgafrica.com, the digital news and information portal of Mail and Guardian Africa, was activated on Thursday 1 May 2014. This will be followed by the launch of the Mail and Guardian Africa head office in Nairobi, Kenya on Tuesday 20 May 2014. From this location, Charles will lead a carefully selected contingent of creative and African journalists and editors operating across the continent.

“The aim is to focus on delivering quality African news and information via mobile to, primarily, 30-40 year-old audiences with a college education in both Africa and outside the continent. Mail and Guardian Africa will offer a non-paternalistic, intelligent, and enlightened view of developments on the continent without feeling duty-bound to talk up the “Africa Rising” narrative, or to be stuck in cynicism and a refusal to see progress either. The objective is to make M&G Africa the most trusted and diverse source of news on Africa,” says Charles.

Chris Roper, editor-in-chief of M&G Media, describes M&G Africa as “a very necessary addition to the journalism landscape of the continent, and one that knits together the many voices of Africa into a coherent, thoughtful tapestry, rather than the more usual competing narratives imposed on the continent by interest groups.”

The M&G Media has appointed Anastacia Martin as Managing Director Mail and Guardian Africa to drive the strategic mandate and ensure commercial viability of the contemporary digital news portal.