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Mozambique Catholic Communicators Call for Stronger Church Media (Cisa, July 21, 2006)

National coordinators of social communications in eastern and southern Africa have called for closer collaboration among Church media practitioners in Africa. The call was made at a one-week management workshop for communications coordinators held recently in the Mozambican capital, Maputo. Participants were drawn from countries of the Association of Member Episcopal Conferences of Eastern Africa (AMECEA) and the Inter-Regional Meeting of Bishops of Southern Africa (IMBISA). The workshop was facilitated by two resource persons of the Christian Organisation Research and Advisory Trust of Africa (CORAT Africa), Mr Francis Karanja and Mrs. Victoria Mutiso. Participants were taught planning skills, writing project proposals, budgeting and resource mobilization and management among other skills. Bishop Januario Machaze Nhangumbe, chairman of social communications in Mozambique, said the church understood the necessity to contribute responsibly to a more humane society through the use of the modern means of communications. He commended media personnel working in the church “for the important and irreplaceable service that you render in particular to the Church and to society in general.” The new executive secretary of communications at the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), Mr Benedict Assorow, appealed to national and regional coordinators of communications in Africa to encourage professional training. He also suggested the drawing up of a policy on communications for the Catholic Church in Africa. Father Bernardo Suate and Mr Alvito De Souza of the global Catholic media organization SIGNIS took turns to present the activities of the association. The two regional secretaries for communications in AMECEA and IMBISA, Father Moses Hamungole and Sister Veronica Dingi, noted that cooperation between the two African regions offers national coordinators of the communications a forum to share information and experiences. Reports from the member-countries of the two regions revealed that a lot more needs to be done in church communications on the continent. Besides government policies that do not allow the church and other religious bodies to establish radio and television stations, the church lacks sufficient funds to carry out communications projects, they said. (Cisa,  July 21, 2006)

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