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Showing posts from November, 2016

Newspapers in Africa are dying out

When Nation Media Group installed the most modern printing press in Africa Print Newspaper publishing industry, couple of commentators argued that it was a bad business idea while others lauded the Nairobi based media company for putting faith in newspaper business. Unlike the Western countries, Africa publishing industry is still growing and newspapers are not an exception .To this day, despite decline in readership, newspapers still attract the largest advertising budgets in the continent although mobile and web based adverts are quickly eating into that market.At their best, the newspapers should be disturbers of the status quo.But it was those very newspapers which in recent times had seen their status quo disturbed by the digital transformation of the journalism industry. I have noted that around 1,000 journalists had lost their jobs in Africa in the last four years, many of them at Newspapers and Magazine sector as the old business model of print journalism has imploded.A friend

Sex in African literature

Just before the turn of this century, sex education was a taboo in African countries with exception of South Africa.According to a study published recently on sex and health, more than 30% of the Year 10-12 students surveyed in Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Zambia, Kenya and Tanzania reported having had sexual intercourse, while 82% have experienced some form of sexual activity.When sex is evidently a part of adolescent lives, it would be remiss not to include it in the literature written for them. Early sexual encounters are rarely like  those depicted in soap operas and movies. Instead of romance and seduction, they are often awkward and uncertain, performed in stolen moments while parents are absent.In African countries, very little scholarship has focused on depictions of sex in young adult literature. Literary depictions of teenage sex have largely been ignored, contrived or obscured by didacticism.In South Africa, usually it’s not the inclusion of the literary sex scenes themsel