Banjul, The Gambia – Gambian Information Minister Ebrima Sillah has said that there is a need for West African Journalists to look more toward doing stories on the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) as they are the biggest taxpayers in every growing economy.
Report by Mae Azango [email protected]
“All over West Africa, the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are the biggest taxpayers. But we are not seeing the corresponding interests from journalists, to look at taxes and how the taxes are being spent in order to advance the cost of the SMEs. Therefore, this is an area that desperately needs to be looked at,” stressed The Gambia Information Minister.
Speaking at the end of a three-day seminar organized by the International Monitoring Fund (IMF), in Banjul, The Gambia, for journalists from the five Anglophone countries of West Africa, Minister Sillah said as West Africans continue to see a boom in the SMEs, it is quite unfortunately that it still lacks the necessary information dissemination.
He further said the West African sub-region, which has 400 million people, is witnessing a growing consumer’s behavior in terms of using technology, to reach out to a number of customers. Therefore the media has a great role to help the consumers understand the trend and also help the businesses understand the new dynamics.
“Therefore it is very important for the IMF to train journalists to report efficiently as it relates to business and finance, because the government cannot do it alone, especially when media houses do not have the capacity and finances to do such training for journalists,” he added.
“Where there is good governance and democracy, businesses will boom. Therefore, the media has a great opportunity to help our government, businesses and also consumers to cope with the new trend we are dealing with. Business and finance reporting is a very specialized area that many journalists have not had the opportunity to tread into. So, we thank the IMF for creating such opportunity for you to be trained,” said Min. Sillah.
Mr. Sillah, who himself once reported business and finance and other stories for the BBC for over 10 years, said reporting on business and finance is very technical, because one has to know all of the jargons to be able to break them down for his listening audience. He further emphasized the importance for a journalist to have the technical knowledge and understanding of the business economy and how it affects the population.
He hoped that the trainees (journalists) will apply the skills and knowledge in their various reportages.
He also those English-speaking West Africa journalists to compare their works after being trained to the stories they before being trained in order to see if the training had impacted their reports. “You are the lucky few in the region to have been selected for the training. For those of you in The Gambia, we want to see some of these things in the reports you will be producing. We believe that this capacity training will not be the last of its kind and we want to call on the IMF to look at other broader areas of business and finances and further equip our journalists.”