The GMF brought together media experts, including practioners, scholars, and policy makers from all over the globe to discuss the recent development in media. The theme of this year’s edition being ‘Conflict prevention in the Multimedia Age’, the VoicesofAfrica mobile reporting could not be absent. The three alumni and the Voices of Africa Media Foundation team told the audience about the mobile phone as a conflict prevention tool’. In fact, the reports made in late 2007 prior to the presidential poll in Kenya allow to conclude that mobile reporters had detected the signs showing that there would be violence in the country.

The impression is that the idea of a news making phone astonished many, and drew the attention of international news media, who invaded the alumni to know more about their field experiences, and the coordination team to know more about the training programme, the selection of mobile reporters and perspectives for the future. It should be stressed that the VoicesofAfrica  was invited to the Forum by Deutsche Welle, the Voice of Germany, which declared the project the Best Video Blog for 2008. The Forum also served as a solemn occasion for the award ceremony. The BoB for the best videoblog is a major stimulus and a reward for all the mobile reporters, all the alumni, all the volunteers and all the sponsors who made this innovative project possible. The BoB is also theirs.

This special page contains reports and interviews by the three alumni who attended the Forum, namely Daniel Nana Aforo from Accra, Ghana, Peris Wairimu from Nairobi, Kenya, and Walter Nana Wilson from Buea, Cameroon.