2024-04-27 06:22:58
In a speech read on his behalf by the Secretary General of the Department of Communication, Abdelaziz Bouzdaini, at the opening of the 7th General Assembly of the Atlantic Federation of African Press Agencies (FAAPA), the minister stressed that the African continent is called today “to write his own narratives, to give others and himself his own narrative”.
Evoking the theme of this 7th AG of the FAAPA, “African information, a major sovereignty issue”, Mr. Bensaïd noted that it recalls the major issues which are those of the noble profession of press agencies, that of information, noting that this assembly puts the information in its global context.
“Transparent and dynamic information agencies provide two functions for society: openness and solidity,” he said, stressing that “a free and open society, strong in information that circulates fluidly , is also a strong, robust and resilient society.”
The minister added that the theme of this general assembly also recalls this “necessary association between two requirements: freedom and sovereignty”.
For him, “a free society, through its press, its information organs, its space of expression, must also be a sovereign society, which does not depend on biased information, vector of stories foreign to its own values and to its own interests.”
And to add that Africa, more aware than ever of its riches, is today lucid on the question of information sovereignty, digital sovereignty and cultural sovereignty.
Mr. Bensaïd also noted that the work of the FAAPA is in the wake of the high Vision of His Majesty King Mohammed VI for Africa, recalling that, during the speech commemorating the 48th anniversary of the glorious Green March, the Sovereign recalled the place of the Atlantic for Morocco and for Africa more generally.
As such, the Atlantic initiative proposed by His Majesty the King is “a complete civilizational vision”, he affirmed, stressing that it is a logistical corridor, a geopolitical window, a socio-economic alliance, but it is also, as the Sovereign reminds us, a “high place of human communion” and a “center of continental and international influence”.
“This communion, this influence, it is up to the press organs, actors in the world of information, pens, cameras and voices of freedom of expression, to provide it to the Africa of today and tomorrow ”, he insisted.
“In the continental and oceanic civilizational bloc that needs to be built, with our common belonging to the African and Atlantic space as its foundation, information will play a major role,” he said.
“Alongside ports and gas pipelines, roads and railways, in short alongside physical logistics, information is the heart of the mental logistics which must connect us, this web which we must weave between us, between our languages, our cultures, our values, to create a free, open and sovereign African public space, capable of becoming a major player in the looming global cultural competition,” concluded the minister.
2024-04-27 06:22:58