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Ghana is attending the 44th Assembly of the Union of French Journalists (UFP), which opened in the Togolese capital of Lome yesterday.

It is the first time Ghana, an Anglophone country, has been invited to the 44 year-old Francophone organization set up for the development of the media in French-speaking countries.

The Ghana Journalists Association President, Affail Monney is leading the four-member delegation to the Assembly, which is being held under the theme: “The image and role of women in the media.” Other members of the Ghanaian delegation are Bright Blewu, Director of the Ghana International Press Centre (GIPC), who is also the Coordinator of the UFP in Ghana, his deputy Monica Bleboo who is a part-time lecturer at the Ghana Institute of Journalism, and Dr Doris Yaa Dartey, a communications educator, gender specialist and a columnist of the Spectator.

The Chief of Delegation of the European Union in Togo, Nicolas Berlanga-Martinez commended the government and people of Ghana for giving journalists a free hand to do their work without attacks and intimidation.

He commended Ghanaian investigative journalist, Anas Aremeyaw Anas, for demonstrating through his recent expose on corruption in the judiciary, the importance of a free media in the development of every society.  He said, without the obligation of the media to the truth and their responsibility to dare to defend the rights of the people to know, human progress and development would be hard to attain. He said it is such monitoring of society by the media that make them relevant to society and development.

More than 300 delegates, mostly from Francophone countries, are attending the three-day conference. 

Opening the conference, the Togolese Prime Minister Dr Komi Selom Klassou, said Togo was making the necessary efforts to draw women in the media into leadership roles through upgrading their skills. This, he explained, was necessary as a way to motivate other women in the society to aspire into leadership positions in Togo.

In a keynote address, Madam Aminata Toure, the former Prime Minister of Senegal, expressed concern about the low representation of women in leadership roles in the media in many Francophone countries. She said, there was the need for a concerted effort by society to place women in management positions in the media as a way of bringing their perspectives to bear on decision making.

Madam Toure attributed the current situation of women’s absence from media leadership to cultural and masculine biases in many African countries where men who feared women empowerment promoted women isolation. According to her, real consensus building must include female voices. She challenged women to be prepared to make the necessary sacrifices in media practice that would make society recognise their capabilities. 

In an interview with the Togolese media, GJA President Affail Monney said it was necessary for Ghana, an Anglophone country that is surrounded entirely by Francophone countries, to forge strong family ties with those countries—La Cote D’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Togo and Benin.

He said: “We have been invited to the conference for the first time and we consider it good in the spirit of ECOWAS for the promotion of regional integration and globalization even in our diversity.”

He added that neither regional integration nor globalization can be achieved without linguistic collaboration among the world’s media to enable them to translate and transmit accurate and right images to their audiences.

The GJA President said a progressive role of women in the media and the images painted of them, were crucial in promoting gender equality and to ensuring that women took their rightful place in the development of their societies.