Türkiye’s public broadcaster TRT launched its new digital news platform TRT Africa Friday, on the sidelines of a broadcasting summit in Istanbul.
The multilingual platform aims to provide an accurate image of the continent according to TRT. Its launch follows Türkiye’s intense diplomacy to gain a foothold in Africa through humane diplomacy contrasting with the West’s exploitative approach.
The platform is the latest addition to TRT’s growing foreign language channels and digital platforms that includes TRT World, Russian, Deutsch, Arabic and Français. TRT Africa will broadcast news in English, French, Swahili and Hausa.
Speaking at the launch ceremony, TRT General Manager Mehmet Zahid Sobacı said Africa has long been exposed to Western media’s biased coverage. “The real history of this great continent, its colorful culture, natural beauties and its stories are not told the way it deserved. TRT Africa reflects Türkiye’s constructive and amiable approach to Africa,” he said. He said the new platform’s motto would be “Africa as it is.” He said they were now working to launch digital news platforms in Spanish and Farsi.
Gregoire Ndjaka, CEO of the African Union of Broadcasting (AUB), also attended a TRT-AUB summit and said at the ceremony that they had convened to strengthen Turkish-African ties. “The coverage of Africa elsewhere in the world creates a perception that it is a place full of conflicts. We desire TRT Africa will support us (to end this perception),” he said.
Fahrettin Altun, head of the Turkish Presidency’s Directorate of Communications, said TRT Africa would be a strong addition to a global communications network and expressed his faith that it would bring an authentic perspective in the face of the common perception of the continent and a one-sided flow of information.
“You will see our country’s fair approach to the continent of Africa and its peoples in the content and broadcasting strategy of this new digital channel. Because we believe the need to develop a new news broadcasting as an alternative to Western media’s discriminating, alienating and negative rhetoric in its coverage of Africa,” Altun said.
Altun, Sobacı and Ndjaka joined Somalia’s minister of information, culture and tourism, Daud Aweis Jama, later to share the first social media messages of TRT Africa in four languages at the ceremony.
