More than 185 African Media Owners have agreed on a charter for an African Media Initiative (AMI), a parent body that is working to improve the media sector across Africa, after a meeting in Lagos. A release from the World Bank Office in Accra on Tuesday said the two-day meeting dubbed "African Media Leaders Forum" (AMLF) discussed practical ways of strengthening Africa's media development. Addressing the Forum, Nduka Obaigbena, Chief Executive Officer and Editor-in-Chief of "THISDAY", one of Africa's leading newspapers, said the Forum was committed to improving the business environment for the media and to strengthening skills of African Journalists since the media had a central role to play in nurturing democracy on the African Continent. He said the Lagos meeting would serve as a launch pad for concerted, collective actions to promote African media development for the benefit of all. Mr Obaigbena is the founding chairman of the AMLF, which held its first meeting in Dakar, Senegal, a year ago. "The AMLF is the single-largest annual gathering of media owners coming together to discuss development in Africa and the range of cutting-edge issues affecting Africa's media industries, just as the African continent is being buffeted by the global financial crisis, deepening recessionary trends, and the advent of new, social, media, and technologies that are fundamentally altering existing media business models all across the globe," the release said. "The African Media Leaders Forum is a nascent body with an ambitious agenda," said Amadou Mahtar Ba, Acting Executive Director of the African Media Initiative (AMI) adding, "by convening the Forum in Nigeria, Africa's most populous democracy, we are sending a message that the strengthening of mass media systems is an urgent imperative for societal advancement, and needs the support of governments, business leaders, and civil society". Addressing the Forum, Mr Ncube said: "We have urgent business, and that business is development. Our role is to ensure that we participate in creating a marketplace of ideas and that media is perceived as an integral partner of the development process." The Lagos meeting focused on six critical areas with a view to developing shared literacy of the issues and spurring collective action and impact of new media technologies on the practice of journalism across Africa, drawing on lessons of experience from other parts of the world. It also stressed on the need for new business models that are necessary to grow and sustain Africa's media industries; finance for African media development including access to venture capital; mitigating political risk through innovative guarantee mechanisms and creating capacity so that media industries would have broader access to various sources of capital. The Forum suggested the alignment of the mass media to the overall governance agenda in Africa and exploring ways in which the functioning of the fourth estate could be improved. An overarching objective of the Lagos meeting was to explore ways in which the voices of the vast majority of Africans could be better mobilized to create a new narrative that is centered on wealth creation, away from the stereotypical view that emphasized problems and deficiencies at the expense of opportunity. The AMLF participants, representing the Continent's influential thinkers and doers, have a key role to play in transforming the one-dimensional image that shortchanges Africa into the more complex image that the Continent deserved. Mr Eric Chinje, Manager, Africa Region External Affairs, The World Bank said: "Now, more than ever before, is the time to create a new wealth narrative that can help to improve the everyday lives of millions of Africans who yearn for economic opportunity, knowledge, and cultural expression," the release said. Source: GNA