Media Institute for Southern Africa (MISA)

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Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA)
Regional Secretariat
21 Johann Albrecht Street
Private Bag 13386
Windhoek, Namibia

Tel: +264 61 232975
Fax: +264 61 248016

Email: info@misa.org
Website: http://www.misa.org

Mr. Kaitira Kandjii, Regional Director, director@misa.org

Description

The Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) is a non-governmental organization with national chapters in 11 of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) countries. Officially launched in September 1992, MISA focuses primarily on the need to promote free, independent and pluralistic media, as envisaged in the 1991 Windhoek Declaration and African Charter on Broadcasting. MISA seeks ways in which to promote the free flow of information and cooperation between media workers, as a principal means of nurturing democracy and human rights in Africa. The role of the MISA is primarily one of a coordinator, facilitator and communicator, committed to working with like-minded organizations and individuals to achieve a genuinely free and pluralistic media in Southern Africa.

The Institute has five programs:

• Freedom of Expression: Its goal here is to intensify a campaign to repeal laws that obstruct media freedom and that limit opportunities for media from being independent and diverse, and to push for adoption of Access to Information legislation.
• Broadcasting Diversity and ICTs: Here, MISA campaigns for a three tier system of broadcasting (Public, Community and Private), underpinned by principles of editorial independence, diversity and regulation of legislation and promotion of ICT as a tool for national development and medium of sharing information. It also advocates for the transformation of state broadcasters into genuine public service broadcasters.
• Media Monitoring: MISA’s goal through this flagship program is to highlight attacks on media freedom in such a way that international media freedom and freedom of expression organizations, and others within countries and regions with the capacity, will follow-up these reports by providing solidarity and assistance within their means and policies to victims of these violations.
• Gender and Media Support: Through this program, MISA seeks to contribute to the improvement of media standards through excellence in journalism, which includes gender sensitive reporting. This is done through media awards and selective training programs, like such as on election reporting, based on the accessed needs of media practitioners. A scholarship program seeks to enhance the skills of journalists.
• Legal Support: The program goal is to improve the media legal environment through strategic interventions and support to victims of media violations and criminalization of media work and to influence public opinion through exposure of media court cases.

Track Record

MISA is recognized as the first media support organization of its kind in Africa working to protect and advance media freedom on a sub-regional basis. Its approaches have been adopted and adapted elsewhere in Africa.

MISA has consistently monitored and reported media freedom violations occurring in some SADC countries. For 13 years it has published its annual State of Media Freedom report, a publication pulling together its daily media monitoring reports which are distributed using through its list serves and the website, making the information available to researchers and other interested parties—especially for those that use the information for analysis and further publishing. The Institute was instrumental in contributing to the adoption of the African Charter on Broadcasting (ACB) adopted in Windhoek during the MISA and UNESCO co-organized conference to the 10th anniversary of the Windhoek Declaration in May 2001. The ACB has since been used as a twin to the Windhoek Declaration and its provisions have been incorporated in the African Commission of Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR) Declaration on Freedom of Expression in Africa adopted in October 2002.

As a result of MISA’s work in Zambia, the Government adopted legislation to bring into existence the Independent Broadcasting Authority and the amendment of the Zambia, National Broadcasting Cooperation Act transforming national broadcasters into public service broadcasters. This achievement has spurred other national MISA chapters to engage their legislatures in advocating for transformation of their national broadcasters to public service ones as provided by the ACHPR declaration.

With regard to professionalism, MISA has achieved success in Zambia and Botswana where the governments have accepted the concept of self-regulation by the media, and where functioning self-regulatory bodies are in place to enforce a code of ethics among the media. In 2007, the MISA chapter in Malawi resuscitated a press council that had not functioned for the past decade.

In 2005 MISA filed a case against the Zimbabwe Government at the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights, where the MISA Zimbabwe chapter made a submission on the proposed Interception of Communications Bill and highlighted a number of other repressive media laws put in place to curb media freedom and stifle freedom of expression.

In conjunction with twelve other organizations within the region, MISA launched the Southern African Media Action Plan on HIV/AIDS and Gender and the Media (MAP) in 2005. MAP is a three-year program that brings together the media industry, civil society and the international community to improve the quality of media reporting on HIV and AIDS and Gender, and to mitigate the impact of the epidemic on the media industry in Southern Africa.

MISA was also instrumental in the establishment of the Southern African Media Development Fund (SAMDEF), a facility providing funds for media development in Southern Africa that is the first of its kind.

Challenges

Although MISA has secured long-term core funding commitments from some of its donors, it is concerned that available basket funding does not cover its planned program activities, necessitating further fund-raising to fill the gap. MISA’s annual budget totals approximately US$3 million. Basket funds are provided by HIVOS, SIDA, NORAD and DANIDA and guaranteed until 2010. It also receives short-term project funding from the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA), NiZA, KAS and SAT, among others.

Although it has a well-established secretariat in Windhoek, MISA had identified the need to further build the capacity of its staff members on a sustainable basis. Funds are currently not available for institutional capacity building.

Opportunities

Private foundations can help MISA deliver on its planned activities by bolstering current core funding as well as by providing project support. More broadly, private foundations could expand efforts to support media freedom rights, free expression rights as well as access to information rights, issues that affect society at large. Another potential approach could be for private foundations to find ways to support pluralistic and independent media directly.