Contador Harrison

Few days ago, a survey on social media influence on mainstream media reporting in Africa was unveiled. More than half of journalists in the continent use social media to find story ideas and data for their news reports. They also plunge into social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and less popular Google+ to gauge public opinion and monitor particular issues. According to an insider, the objective for the survey was to find out how social media influence mainstream media, and how it is affecting news production. The results of research show that social media plays an increasingly significant role in influencing public discourse. Survey found that African journalists engaged with varying degrees of enthusiasm when it comes to social media. Close to half of them participates actively in spreading information through social media networks especially in West and East Africa, while the rest occupied a more passive role, consuming and collecting information online mo...

Despite being thousands of miles away, I always follow what is going on back home. On Tuesday, Foreign Minister Bob Carr said that ties between Australia and China would not be hurt by revelations of state owned Australia Broadcasting Corporation’s investigative Four Corners program of an attack on a contractor involved with building the new Canberra headquarters of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization. According to ABC, the documents taken in the cyber attack included cabling layouts for the huge building’s security and communications systems, its floor plan, and its server locations. Until this moment, I have no idea why Bob Carr has refused to confirm or deny China was behind the attack despite the states broadcaster confirmation that servers used in attacks originated from China. Although I understand that government officials globally rarely comment on matters of intelligence and security because of potential aggressors, Carr should have let the co...

Few weeks ago, Uganda’s president His Excellency President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni unveiled the country’s middle Income status development planned dubbed Vision 2040 . It was clear that with an economy growing at more than 5% annually since for more than half a decade, Uganda like other African countries desperately needs to accelerate infrastructure and social development. With bottlenecks building up in just about every sector, the situation is dire and therefore the launch of the economic transformation plan is welcome. The government release of its master plan for the acceleration and expansion of Uganda’s economic prosperity, called for the construction of airports, seaports and highways to boost growth in rural and urban economies across the country through to 2040. Uganda estimates it will spend $200 billion to build the required infrastructure, with public-private partnerships seen making up 50% of the total spending. Although this has not happened as yet, pub...

As the African Union enters the final day of its 50th anniversary in Ethiopia’s capital today, speeches made yesterday left a lot to be desired as they were more about existing problems rather offering solutions to the one billion people. None of the so called best brains from the continent tackled the issues affecting the continent head on. Even head of states speechwriters failed miserably as most focused on past rather than present and future. In economic field, strong domestic demand will continued to be the engine of growth for development in Africa which posted a 5 percent growth for the last ten years according to His Excellency President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, Republic of Uganda head of state higher than any other region in the world, except Asia. In particular, I was delighted by President Museveni’s speech because he made it clear that the continent has a long way to catch up with rest of the world. Those who focused on economic sector, were categorical ...

Almost all head of states and governments in Africa are converging in Addis Ababa this weekend for the 50 th Anniversary celebration since the formation of African Union formerly organization of African Union (OAU). Outside the politics of Pan Africanism talk and Intra trade plans, if the African countries wants to escape the middle-income trap, they need to invest heavily in information technology and open the market for long term evolution operators that are facing delayed licensing and prohibitive regulations. Latest research indicated that every 15% of improvement in Internet penetration in African countries can potentially add up to 1% to gross domestic product and every doubling of Internet speed adds another 0.5% to a country’s GDP. Data shows there’s have few new investments being made across the continent especially with ICT sector that has seen other sectors like roads, ports and hospitals infrastructure take lion share of investment allocations. In mo...