Kenya's Emerging Indy Media

By Michelle Chen, In These Times. Posted March 27, 2008.

While news reports across the world have displayed images of chaos shaking Kenya, an alternative media system driven by ordinary Kenyans is emerging in the East African country to help raise the voices of the seldom heard. The violent aftermath of President Mwai Kibaki's disputed election in December has detonated Kenya's festering ethnic, land and power struggles, leaving hundreds dead and displacing hundreds of thousands. But it has also energized the country's independent media-makers, many of whom see their work as key to overcoming the crisis.

Fusing mass communication with political organizing, the Kenya Independent Media Center (IMC) has aired local activists' perspectives on the violence and its root causes. Through its growing network of independent reporters, IMC Kenya aims to generate "information for action," according to co-founder John Bwakali.

The organization also tries to lead by example through its non-hierarchical structure as a collective -- a potential model of radical self-empowerment in a society besieged by political disillusionment.

In an IMC audio piece, Jimani, a young activist with the Warriors, a Nairobi-based self-help group, reflects on the desperation that has pushed many of Kenya's youth into violent clashes.

"Why has a youth gone out to fight, ready to die?" he asks on a recording produced shortly after the elections. "Is it freedom for those who are oppressed in this world? Maybe you can say so." But he continues: "As a [young] man is ready to go out there and die because he wants his voice to be heard, we need to give them that chance. We need to hear what they have to say to us."

Some youth are amplifying their voices through a video collective called Slum-TV, led by Kenya-based media activists. By documenting everyday struggles in Mathare -- a densely populated slum in the capital Nairobi -- the project enables young people to produce homegrown media and, through local public screenings, fosters community dialogue. Following the outbreak of the post-election violence, Slum-TV has focused on current recovery efforts that bring together activists from different ethnic groups.

Slum-TV co-founder Sam Hopkins noted the contrast with corporate media's coverage of "tribal" violence. "The idea behind focusing on characters who have crossed the ethnic divide is really just to provide another version of what's happening, to counteract the mainstream international media," he says.

As an ear to the ground in their communities, grassroots media activists have sometimes been ahead of the news.

Patrick Shomba and fellow artists, who founded the Ghetto Film Club media collective in 2006, foreshadowed the approaching unrest in a screenplay titled "The Ghetto President." The film, created last year as a civic-education project, explored issues of corruption, voting rights, youth rights and ethnic conflict. After scraping together volunteer help and borrowed equipment, the group completed the film a few days before the election and held a public screening in a Nairobi slum. Their next film, they hope, will be about reconciliation.

Since cities like Nairobi are ethnically diverse, Shomba views street-level art as a way to "maintain the peace here in the urban sector, with a mix of culture and a mix of tribes."

Local youth lead the project as actors and producers -- a rare opportunity for them to overcome marginalization. The group aims to eventually turn media work into a sustainable income source for young people wrestling with poverty, crime and lack of schooling in their communities.

In the post-election turmoil, Shomba is also working with Kenya's budding community radio scene to air local news, as well as anti-violence messages, on three small urban stations, with an estimated reach of more than 2 million listeners.

"What our guys can do at the grassroots," he says, "the mainstream media can't come and do."

Though still in its infancy, grassroots reporting is gaining traction in Kenya. Since 2007, the Web-based Voices of Africa project, an initiative of the Africa Interactive Media Foundation, has delivered field reporting from mobile-phone-based correspondents in Kenya. Its coverage features video commentary from everyday people on politics, underlying social problems and concerns about the ongoing mediation talks.

See more stories tagged with: internet, activism, kenya, independent media centers

Michelle Chen has written for the South China Morning Post, Clamor, INTHEFRAY.COM and her own zine, cain.

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