8 March 2010
His Excellency Mwai Kibaki, President of the Republic of Kenya
His Excellency Paul Kagame, President of the Republic of Rwanda
His Excellency Kalonzo Musyoka, Vice President of Kenya
Rt. Hon. Raila Amolo Odinga, Prime Minister of Kenya
His Excellency Joaquim Chissano, former President of Mozambique
His Excellency Benjamin Mkapa, former President of the United Republic of Tanzania
Hon. Samuel Poghisio, Minister for Information and Communication, Republic of Kenya
Honourable Ministers
Your Excellencies
Ladies and gentlemen
I am genuinely pleased to join you at this conference – an event which looks back at a distinguished past, and ahead to a daunting future.
The presence at this conference of President Kibaki and many other government leaders, past and present, has immense importance for me personally and for the Nation Media Group. For there is no doubt that relations between governments and the media are central to the future of Africa, challenging and even exasperating as that experience at times may be.
In many respects, this has been a new challenge for Africa. Prior to independence there were no national media owners, no national newspapers, television or radio stations, no indigenous corps of trained journalists. Newly independent governments had to work with media which had no African antecedents, even as both political leaders and journalists wrestled with massive debates about capitalism, communism and non-alignment.
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