Afrika News - Media house celebrates 50th anniversary

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Media house celebrates 50th anniversary

Written by By Afrika News Reporter
Thursday, 18 March 2010
Kenya’s Nation Media Group has celebrated its 50th anniversary with a big two-day media conference that attracted political leaders, prominent media personalities, freedom activists, and entertainment celebs from across the world. The title of the conference was Media and the African Promise. It was “a collaboration of the Africa Media Initiative and the Nation Media Group and reflected on the African media’s past, present and prospects for the future against the challenges of a dynamic globalized environment,” says Nation Media Group CEO Linus Gitahi, conference convenor. Held at the Kenyatta International Conference Center, the Pan African Media Conference 2010 was addressed by, among others, former Mozambique President Joaquim Alberto Chissano, journalism scholar Hussein Amin Professor, and a representative of the former UN secretary general Kofi Annan, Achim Steiner. Rock star Bono also attended the conference. The first copy of the Nation rolled out of the press in March 1960 in a country still fighting to shake off the shackles of British colonialism. The first major paper representation views other than those of the European colonialists, Nation has grown over the years to be the most widely newspaper in Sub-Saharan Africa. It was started by the Aga Khan. Although Africans first started as translators in the Nation, they slowly took key positions as the newspaper grew.