Article,
Crash Course: The International Press Institute and Journalism Training in Anglophone Africa, 1963–1975
Media History, 26 (4): 508-521 (2020)
DOI: 10.1080/13688804.2019.1634527
Abstract
The Ford Foundation and the International Press Institute used an African journalism education partnership in the 1960s to recast Western influence, help develop new nations, create networks, forestall the Soviets and spread the norms of modern Western journalism in the anglophone countries of a newly free continent. Most of the 300 Africans who graduated the African Training Scheme’s six-month-long course already were working at newspapers, radio stations and government ministries—often where British expatriates were leaving. The exposure to Western professional practices boosted many of their careers. The IPI’s Nairobi school operated from 1963 to 1968 and was ‘probably the most effective’ of the more than a half dozen crash courses that sought, largely successfully, to put a Western stamp on African journalism education. Finally, both Ford and the IPI prized the network of journalists and officials they had forged almost as much as the education they had provided.
