Past Issues :: 2006 December 1 :: Cover Story: Dateline Africa
Dateline Africa: The International Network of Street Papers’ new focus puts Africa front and center in the street paper movement
Seven thousand miles from here, from a desk in Monrovia, Liberia, young Geeza Williams surveys the toll 15 years of civil war has taken on his homeland: an impoverished country emerging from years of slaughter with virtually no health care or economic structure to build upon. An estimated 200,000 Liberians were killed in the civil war, which started in 1989 and created nearly a half a million refugees around the world, including Williams.
“The conditions in Liberia are horrible in terms of the infrastructure, damages exist both physically and emotionally due to over 15 years of civil war,” says Williams. “Poverty is at its highest with over 90 percent of the people unemployed and the 10 percent that work making less than 30 U.S. dollars a month. People can not feed their families and they rely on relatives living mainly in the United States, a home for over 50,000 Liberians. The health system has collapsed with people relying heavily on the grace of God to make it daily. The poorest people are located all over the country. The capital, Monrovia, has close to 1.5 million people, with people forced to quit the countryside due to the lack of opportunities. As a result, Monrovia is crowded and the crime rate has increased.”
A journalist by trade, Williams has become an activist by necessity. But he didn’t just want to tell the story to the rest of the world, he wanted journalism to tangibly improve the lives of people living on the streets of Liberia. By the end of this year, he hopes to begin publishing a street newspaper there, joining a movement of emerging African publications mentored by a new focus project of the International Network of Street Papers.
“A street newspaper will firstly help vendors, who are homeless and unemployed, to at least make something from the paper for a daily meal, keep them out of crimes, problems,” Williams said. “Secondly, it will inform people about social and health issues- such as AIDS, malaria, typhoid fever, and attract help from foreign donors, agencies who see this plight and will assist where possible. It will also highlight the need of the homeless, creating opportunities for them where possible and focus on their problems.”
Before the war, Williams worked as a foreign correspondent with Sports World newspaper. When the war came, in 1989, Williams became a refugee in Accra, Ghana, where he graduated from the Ghana Institute of Journalism in 1992.
“I was a refugee for 8 years in Accra, but I did not let that put me down,” says Williams, who returned to Liberia to launch Sports for the Development of the Underprivileged, or SDU, as a vehicle to highlight the problems of the Liberian people and look for solutions. SDU aims to “rekindle the spirit and passion” of young people and their communities through projects that organize and empower – physically through a soccer program, and intellectually and financially through a street newspaper.
But Williams recognizes it will take much more to achieve his vision of a free press, with employment and empowerment for the poorest people of Liberia. It will take a lot of help from the outside world, he says.
“I envision a paper that will be circulated throughout Liberia, setting the stage to help change homeless lives, helping them back in mainstream society- jobs, exposing social and health issues, partnering other organizations in nation building, reconciliation, reconstruction.”
With the assistance of the International Network of Street Newspapers, including a $1,000 contribution from BISS, a street paper and INSP member in Germany, Williams has established a foothold on the project. Across Africa, the INSP and its members are building a new framework of street newspapers, including partnerships in Kenya, Zambia, Cameroon and Malawi, to help people realize employment and opportunity. The INSP is matching the movement on the ground with the knowledge and resources of more than 80 newspaper members worldwide, in 27 countries with more than 55 million readers.
Unlike other programs for the poor, the INSP is not providing charity, but solidarity, and the chance for people to speak for themselves.
“An opportunity to work and earn a decent living.”
From her desk in Glasgow, Scotland, INSP Network Director Lisa Maclean traces a direct line to all of the street papers in the network on a global map. There are currently two lines to Africa, one to The Big Issue Namibia and another to South Africa, which boasts The Big Issue South Africa in Cape Town and Homeless Talk in Johannesburg.
The INSP board has set a directive to establish at least five new papers in Africa, as funds become available, and foster a network of existing and new papers on the continent. The organization has secured funding through large institutions, including the European Union and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development. Along with providing employment, the INSP is seeking to establish a free press in countries that lack an independent media.
“The INSP supports projects who in turn to support homelessness and marginalised people,” says Maclean, who is one of only two staff members coordinating the INSP under a volunteer board of directors drawn from members. “I think that INSP has an important role to play here in helping to make individual street papers as strong and effective as possible. For example, if we help to start up a street paper in Kenya, we will have assisted the employment of, say, 100 people within one year, which has an indirect impact on 500 other people by providing food and shelter for families.”
Maclean recently visited Kenya for an assessment and planning mission. The trip took her to Kibera slum, one of the biggest in Africa with 800,000 people living in mud huts with corrugated iron roofs, with no running water or electricity. There, Maclean met Cosmas, a Kibera resident who coordinators youth projects and works part-time, earning $22 a month. Half of that goes to rent. Cosmas will be running the vendor services at the new street paper.
“It is young people from Kibera that will be the future vendors of the street paper,” said Maclean. “There is obviously dire poverty there and high levels of unemployment and crime. However, what I noticed, was that there is also a great eagerness to take part in entrepreneurial projects and a huge desire to have the opportunity to improve their lives and support themselves and their families. There is a lot that can be done.”
The quantity of inquiries for starting new papers and the dire need for aid across the continent made Africa an obvious focus for the INSP. But for Mel Young, one of the founding organizers of the INSP and it’s honorary president, Africa is not a special case in the sense that the poorest and homeless of all nations need a new solution.
“I don’t like the way Africa is suddenly being singled out by the rest of the world as a “disaster” area and we should all suddenly start being patronizing,” Young says. “The people there are brilliant and have an amazing culture and history. Simply, there aren’t so many street papers in Africa and if they can help provide a solution for homeless people then of course we should help them publish them. They work well in Namibia and South Africa. It is imperative because people are dying every day. Homeless people die in every country in the world every day and this shouldn’t happen. We should end homelessness everywhere, including Africa – by partnering together and supporting one another. Through doing things like publishing street papers that provide real and practical solutions we can begin to make a difference. The continent of Africa should share in this just like any other continent.”
Clement Njoroge is a former resident of the Kibera slum who today is leading a team of 10 people in Nairobi in training about 30 vendors from the Kenyan slums in basic marketing, public relations and other skills needed to run a newspaper.
“These are young people of ages between 17-26, who are jobless and are interested in living a decent living,” Njoroge says.
Njoroge plans to release the innaugural issue of The Big Issue Kenya in January to coincide with the World Social Forum to be held in Nairobi. Koinonia Media Centre, publishers of newsfromafrica, an internet based magazine since 1996, and Kenya Youth Congress Foundation came together to form The Big Issue Kenya as a charitable organization. The monthly magazine already has office facilities and equipment through Koinonia, and in two years, Njoroge expects the paper to be self-sustaining, and a critical source of income for slum dwellers, particularly youths, who make up about 65 percent of Kenya’s total population.
“They continue struggling with various problems, including unemployment, susceptibility to crime, drug abuse and HIV/AIDS, eroding cultural values, exposure to immorality, amongst many other challenges,” Njoroge said. “The youth grapple with the question about who they are and who they are becoming; what they do and do not believe; and what they want to be in the future. There is need for all stakeholders in the government, church, civil society, media and corporate institutions to unite their efforts in working together with the youth so as to mould them into socially acceptable and mature citizens. We felt that the media has a vital role to play in bringing into the limelight some of these issues that the media in Kenya has given less priority. This project will engage young people in articulating their views. Above all, young and disadvantaged youth will have an opportunity to work in the project and earn a decent living.”
Njoroge said the paper will target urban dwelling readers regarding urban issues and the problems of slums.
“It will be an advocacy forum. It will carry stories on the problems experienced by slum dwellers, such as poor sanitation, deplorable living conditions, exorbitant rent, crime, prostitution, alcoholism and drug, HIV/Aids and high rates of unemployment among other issues,” Njoroge says. “This will be aimed at setting an agenda for the authorities to look into the problems faced by this sector of the society and also helping policy makers by providing grassroots information.”
“Enterprising individuals and sympathetic groups”
The modern day street paper movement stems from a resurgence in grassroots papers in the 1970s, but it’s roots trace back to the migration of people from rural areas into the city, according to Norma Green, a journalism professor at Columbia College in Chicago and an associate member of the North American Street Newspaper Association. People raised on farms were lured by the promise of independence and supposedly less work, Green said, but they often wound up trapped by circumstances in the city – unable to travel far or find permanent shelter. The problem became institutionalized during the Industrial Revolution.
“Enterprising individuals and sympathetic groups helped create some of the first street papers,” Green says. “In the U.S., many of the 19th century street papers had a decidedly religious tone to them. Various groups have created publications to express their experiences and garner interest in their plight and help others. These groups include migrant workers, hoboes, and Japanese internment campers.”
Today, street papers are as sophisticated as glossy magazines with celebrity interviews, and as grassroots as small independent, four-page periodicals. But nearly all share a similar distribution system – through vendors who are experiencing poverty and/or homelessness who buy the paper for a small portion of the cover price and sell on street corners to earn an income. For many street papers, the content is created by the vendors and the people on the streets, creating a chronicle of experiences and expressions historically undocumented in other media. Each paper adapts to its own community’s needs, and develops with the support of local readers, businesses and institutions.
In 2003, the INSP and NASNA launched the Street News Service, an independent clearing-house of stories published in street papers around the world for use in other papers at no charge. As an organizing tool, the news service is capable of launching international campaigns, such as the call for justice for those responsible for a rash of homeless executions on the streets of Brazil. The result was a pouring of letters to Brazilian authorities from as far away as India, South Africa, Scotland and Argentina.
In 2006, the INSP entered an agreement with Reuters News Service to swap stories and photographs with the Street News Service. With the popularity of the news service growing, the organization is now looking at expanding its translation services to offer stories in more languages.
“I think that it is our duty to provide the reading public with quality information about important social, cultural, economic and political issues that are not widely available in other media forms,” Maclean says.
Regardless of language or geography, all street newspapers are built on the shared concerns of cultures across the globe.
“Some of the issues have been hijacked by politicians and the media has not be diligent enough to dig deeper and get to the root of the matter,” Njoroge says of Kenya, but could just as easily be speaking about the United States or elsewhere. “The paper will strive to bring thoroughly investigated issues and bring them to the attention of the general public, government, policy makers, civil societies so that everyone can make an informed opinion of pertinent issues.”
