The mobile phone market in Africa is the fastest growing in the world, surpassing both Europe and the United States. With the coming launch of a new citizen journalism project, African media have begun to see the potential of this technology in journalism across the continent.

AfricaNews, a website describing itself as an online interactive platform for sharing views on Africa, has developed Voices of Africa, a project that will present content from reporters in South Africa, Kenya, Ghana and Mozambique. The pilot, an initiative of the Africa Interactive Media Foundation, seeks to support African citizens aspiring to work in the media industry.

“The objective of Voices of Africa is to enable reporters in Africa to make professional reports by supplying them with affordable mobile technology,” Hidde Kross of Skoeps.com, the company who donated the technology for the project, told RAP 21. “It gives viewers in countless internet cafes in Africa an extra window into developments in their countries, while simultaneously giving those professionally and personally involved outside Africa along with the broader audience a new glimpse of the continent.”

The pilot, set to launch in September, will provide staff members of AfricaNews or their partners in four countries with telephone sets equipped to receive news content. Reporters will be given mobile phones with high-speed data connections using General Packet Radio System (GPRS). GPRS, a system increasingly available on African networks, allows journalists to send and receive large amounts of data including audio and images, without using a computer or having traditional Internet connection.

The SKOEPS website, similar to Voices of Africa, consists entirely of eyewitness images, allowing people to capture news events with their phones and send pictures and videos directly to the site. Half of the proceeds of images sold go to the contributor and the company says it has established a unique, promising news source for its shareholders PCM Publishers, a leading newspaper publishing company in the Netherlands.

What makes Voices of Africa especially relevant in Africa is the growth of mobile phones. In 2007, an analysis by the International Telecommunication Union revealed that as a region, Africa’s cell phone market has been the fastest-growing market in the world, averaging 50% growth per year since 2000.

"Technology has to be incorporated in journalism,” Evans Wafula, Kenyan coordinator of Voices of Africa told IRIN about the need for traditional media to incorporate this type of technology. “The telephone is used to document, it’s a complete office. It takes human rights to the next level; perpetrators can be held accountable."

Wafula also suggested the possibility of this content being used by print and other traditional media in the future. “If the project succeeds it can spread and many media organisations can use it for publishing stories on Africa. The Daily Nation, Kenya Times and Citizen TV have shown interest in this pilot and want to know what the results will be,” he said.

According to Kross, the use of mobile phones in reporting has the possibility of increasing the quality of the news being reported. “Our reporters add images to stories, lending much more power to the message. This also increases the likelihood of western sources paying attention to what really happens in crisis areas. Secondly, immediate reporting changes the dynamics of events like demonstrations,” he told RAP 21.

In addition, Pim de Wit from Africa Interactive told RAP 21 that the structure of Voices of Africa changes the type of news being reported. “We will allow individual Africans to report things that they feel are newsworthy. They will be offered the chance to report about the other side of Africa, different from the predominantly negative news that we normally see on TV or read about in the newspapers.”

But as the GPRS technology may change journalism in Africa, the technology that brings the content to the public is also a need. But according to de Wit, with time distribution of their news will be made easier.

“In this early stage of the project the content is distributed by internet only. This means that Africans must have Internet access to be able to read the content uploaded by the mobile reporters,” he said. “Without a question short news will be distributed to mobile phones as well, but that will take some time.”

The founders say their type of journalism will eventually contribute to press freedom on the continent. “We are empowering these reporters to contribute to a critical and free exchange of ideas and truth finding, letting more stories be told, and also from remote areas,” added Kross. “We give our reporters a source of income as the news stories can be resold to other media.”

“The more African people can express their opinions about all things that matter to them, the more democracy will be served and this will contribute to transparency and a better quality of government. The use of new technology will enable many Africans to raise their voices,” de Wit concluded.

The Voices of Africa Project can be viewed at www.africanews.com.