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It has been 15 solid years since the MTN Editors’ Forum in the Northern Region of Ghana was birthed. Year after year, mid-career journalists and most especially, news editors – meet together with staff and management of MTN Ghana.
The Forum is an annual meeting organized by Ghana’s leading telecommunication company, MTN Ghana – to bring together journalists of various media organisations comprising newspaper, radio, television and online.
The Forum initially started with only newspaper, radio and television journalists until some five years ago when MTN Ghana started to invite online journalists to also participate in it. This is because, 15 years ago, online journalism wasn’t so prominent in the Northern Region. Besides, very few online news organisations existed at the time in the country. The story is different today with the advent of the internet explosion in Ghana.
The objective of this novel Forum, seeks among other things, to update journalists on happenings in the telecom industry and most especially the operations of MTN Ghana as a company. These include operational challenges like fibre optic cuts by careless road contractors and stealing of cell site batteries and other machine parts which often result into poor calls and internet connectivity among others.
Journalists are also briefed on the milestones attained by the company by way of new voice subscribers, new data subscribers, profit made, taxes paid and corporate social responsibility activities carried out in the year under review. The exact amount of monies paid as taxes and what is spent on CSR is always disclosed and sometimes in a breakdown formats to show how transparent and accountable MTN Ghana is.
What makes this Forum interesting and outstanding is the fact that journalists also get the opportunity to learn and ask critical questions about the operations of MTN Ghana as well as relay concerns of the general public or customers to the company to address. Some of the concerns of the public often range from poor quality voice calls, poor internet connectivity and fraud related activities linked to mobile money services. This is the form the MTN Editors Forum has always taken ever since the maiden one in the entire Northern Ghana was held at the Radach Lodge and Conference Centre in Tamale in 2007.
Arguably, the Forum can be likened to a mini-MBA programme on Telecommunications Management when one participates in it for a few years. This is because, it’s at the MTN Editors’ Forum, that many a Ghanaian journalists without any background in information technology or engineering get to learn how to report effectively on activities in the telecom industry.
The Forum affords many journalists the opportunity to learn about data, voice calls, microwave, fibre optics, cell site, kilobytes, gigabytes and all the other bytes. You will also learn about capital expenditure, amortization, taxes and regulatory fees required to be paid by the company to government.
Additionally, you learn about the symbiotic relationship that exist between MTN Ghana and subsidiaries like MTN Mobile Money, MTN Ayoba and MTN Ghana Foundation and the impact these businesses are making to further build on what the former has achieved over the years.
Moreover, you get to understand as a journalist, how MTN Ghana is building and maintaining different levels of relationships between itself as a business and other stakeholders like the police, road contractors, the general public, merchants, vendors and other institutions.
Undoubtedly, the Forum has over the years continuously build a credible symbiotic relationship between journalists, media houses, the Ghana Journalists Association and MTN Ghana as well as its management team.
Many journalists have learned to write or comment on the subject of telecommunications with authority because they now understand the industry and how it operates. The knowledge gained from the Forum has helped journalists to report accurately with very little factual inaccuracies.
Journalists and media houses have also helped MTN Ghana to adequately inform and educate their customers on the challenges in the industry including what accounts for poor quality voice calls, poor internet connectivity and mobile money fraud.
Members of the MTN Editors’ Forum in the Northern Region appreciate the efforts by MTN Ghana over the years to inform and educate journalists about their work and the challenges they are often confronted with. However, some (editors) also think that the telecom company could consider other areas of capacity building for them besides what they were already doing.
At the 15th edition of the Northern Region Editors Forum held in September 2022, some editors spoke to SavannahNewsOnline.Com about what they think of the annual Forum, how it has benefited them and whether they had any suggestions on how things should be done going forward. Indeed, their views and suggestions on what they thought should be done to improve future meetings were amazing. The views and suggestions of these editors also sounded like a fair assessment of the Forum in the last decade and half and perhaps, a great feedback for management of MTN Ghana.
“It is one programme that is on the calendar of journalists that we look up to every year. We get to understand what MTN is doing, we build relationships which give us opportunity to have access to them as and when we need them”, said JoyNews’ Martina Bugri.
On how the Forum has benefited her as a journalist, she noted “Beyond that, the Forum has been a supportive programme with giveaways that have helped our work. I for instance, I have won a laptop before and I used it for work which was very beneficial. I won a phone, I won a power bank as well and so these are motivations that we also look up to. I think that in each year it comes with more improvement and they have been phenomenal.”
Martina added: “This year’s Forum was more interactive and I think they should build on it. There should be enough time allocated to participants so that they can present the issues they have been asked to identify and suggest solutions for. Going forward, MTN Ghana should have a communications person at the regional level who will always be ready to attend to journalists whenever they have questions that need quick answers. The current system where you contact someone and you’re directed to contact another person is so long and winding. If MTN could look at this it would help us a lot.”
Mohammed Bondirigbum, the Northern Regional Correspondent for Ghanaian Observer, acknowledged that the Forum provides opportunity for journalists like him to gain a lot of knowledge.
“There are so many things I must commend MTN Ghana for. We journalists have been like their eyes and ears in the region and communities and whatever problems we come across and relay to them, they act on the information very well,” he said.
That notwithstanding, Mohammed also believes that journalists who have consistently participated in the programme deserves some motivation which would encourage young journalists to seriously consider reporting on issues in the telecom sector.
“But another thing that I have to tell MTN Ghana about is the need to motivate journalists who have consistently participated in the Forum and covered their programmes over the years. I believe when this is done it will also motivate up-and-coming journalists who have started to participate in the Forum to take reporting on MTN activities and the telecom sector seriously. The motivation can be in the form of scholarship to continue with our education or support us with equipment to do our work.
Going forward, I will suggest that they seriously consider the venue of the programme. Sometimes the venue is too far and so if they can bring it closer to town it will help journalists who do not have their own means of transport to come on time so that we don’t start late.”
On her part, Shawana Yussif, Editor of Fiila FM commended MTN Ghana for such a good initiative as the Forum.
“I must say it’s a very good programme that MTN has decided to bring together people in the media front especially editors to let them know what they are doing in their field of work especially what they are doing to impact society. I would encourage them to continue to organize this Editors’ Forum.”
“One thing that I would actually ask that they should continue doing is what they did this year, giving journalists the opportunity to make presentations on issues they are assigned to investigate and suggest solutions. If possible, they should do it in two days, day one for journalists to make their presentations and day two for MTN management to also do their presentations. This way, there will be ample time for everyone to make presentations and the issues are thoroughly discussed. I think MTN Ghana could even organize retreats outside the region in secluded locations where journalists get to relax for one whole day, and for two additional days, the issues are discussed. Because some of the issues they (MTN Ghana) discuss at the Forum are very technical and one can’t understand these technicalities within a short discussion,” she suggested.
In response to the suggestions of the aforementioned editors, Georgina Asare-Fiagbenu, Head of Corporate Communications, MTN Ghana, assured that the company would continue to do the things it started towards building the capacity of the media in the Northern Region.
“…..the media has always been our partners and without them our stories will not be told. As we look forward to better years, we’re hoping that we’ll continue to build stronger relations and we also look at how we can both help each other in terms of building the capacity of the media in their story telling abilities and also with digital reporting. For example, we’ve been bringing people into the regions to help them understand the industry better and to report better, that’s something we’ll continue to do. And then when there are devices that will help the media improve or be able to report quickly, we’ll share some with the media like we did with our turbonet device.”
According to Georgina, the MTN Editors Forum has been sustained in all these years because of the benefits it’s giving to both the media and MTN and also most especially the customers.
“So the reasons why we continue to do it is because it gives us the opportunity to provide specific updates of what MTN is doing in every region, what we call regionalize communications. So for example, if we are talking to the media about things MTN have done, we’ll give them a national view and then we’ll give them a specific regional view of the network, marketing activities, foundation work in the community and all of that. So it makes the communications very real and credible because the media and the members of the community who are recipients of the stories get to know what we are doing. And we do surveys, we find out from the media what they think is working and not working and we continue to improve.
Most importantly, it helps us address customer issues because during the editors forum the media will raise persistent customer issues in the region and we’ll also take it back to the technical team and to management and so it’s also part of the reasons why we’re doing ongoing innovations, some of the issues are being resolved and new initiatives are undertaken. It’s all as a result of the regular engagements we do have.”
As the count down to 2027 for the twentieth anniversary of the Northern Region MTN Editors’ Forum begins, Georgina says she expects a continuous cordial relationship between the media and MTN Ghana.
“I think the media has been very good partners in that they’ve always welcomed us, they’ve always given us the feedback we need, where there are issues they’ll tell us, where there are improvements they’d let us know and where they think we need to make changes they’d tell us and so we continue to ask the media for that support, for that candid feedback, for that open feedback so that we can continue to get better. So that is all we expect from the media and we hope that going into subsequent years they’ll continue to welcome us and give us the opportunity to share information with them.”
After nearly two decades of consistent annual meetings mostly with mid-career journalists and editors, perhaps the time has also come for MTN Ghana to again institute another novel idea similar to the MTN Editors’ Forum. This idea could be called “MTN Ghana Media Fellowship” (MGM Fellowship) which would create the opportunity for Ghanaian journalists interested in specializing in “Science, Technology, Engineering, Multimedia and Data (STEMD) Reporting” to participate in it after going through a selection process.
The institution of MGM Fellowship could contribute significantly towards filling the STEMD knowledge and skills deficit that currently exists among many Ghanaian journalists especially in an era when technology is driving almost every sector of the country’s and world’s economy.
The MGM Fellowship programme could help many media practitioners especially early to mid-career media practitioners who are interested in online journalism, blogging and digital content creation to acquire critical knowledge and skills that would increase their level of innovation and professionalism as well as improve their economic situation.
The goal of the fellowship programme could focus mainly on practical training and mentorship over a six month period. Moreover, it could focus on equipping fellows with leadership and entrepreneurship skills to enable them identify the business side of STEMD reporting.
By SavannahNewsOnline.Com/Kusiele Ziem
