2014 CNN – MULTICHOICE JOURNALIST AWARDS SHOWCASES TANZANIA DESPITE FAILURE TO WIN A SINGLE AWARD

Bento Venâncio, from Jornal Domingo and Brito Simango, from Televisão de Moçambique, posing with Victor Mlunde while holding their Portuguese Language General News Awards.

By Victor Mlunde.

Last Saturday, the world witnessed a historic annual CNN-Multichoice Journalist Award ceremony on the continent, hosted for the first time in our commercial capital, Dar Es Salaam. The choice of Tanzania is not only an unprecedented honor to the great peaceful nation on the continent, but a rare opportunity to showcase Tanzania and open its market to the world.

I congratulate the event organizers and His Excellency the President, Dr Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, for being the Guest of Honour, for his outstanding economic diplomacy skills and unending efforts in showcasing Tanzania to the world.

As usual, the president’s speech looked at quantity rather than quality, boasting to have more media outlets in the country than neighbors - even with mounting insecurity of media practitioners and existence of Draconian Newspapers Act, 1976 and National Security Act, 1970 which limit press freedom as we approach 2015 general elections, the standard rhetoric maintained that the government will soon table the Freedom of Information and Media Services Bills in parliament, a promise left unattended by the Ministry of Information since begin of his second term in office back in 2006.

Despite government’s slow pace in implementing commitments on free press, we should acknowledge the fact that the head of state is at least committed to transparency and open government more than his predecessors, at least by signing international commitments and protocols on transparency such as the Open Government Partnership, though more work needs to be done in getting Media Freedom Bill and Services Act in place before busy and tense election period comes in.