You may not believe it, but this is my first article I have ever published, with my own fair hands, on a website – not just any website, but ForbesAfrica.com, the publication I have ate and slept for more than six years.
I feel exhilarated, excited and on top of the world. What a way to take our precious content on the important business and entrepreneur story to every corner of the continent? The possibilities stretch out in my mind like an endless blue horizon. How many more lives will we be able to touch, for the good, with our incisive and measured journalism? How many more entrepreneurs could these words inspire to take the plunge? I feel as giddy as I did on my first day in the job 36 years ago.
It also makes me think about how communications for journalists have changed so rapidly in the two decades I have spent reporting from Africa. I arrived to the chatter of the telex machine – for those if you under 50, that was a huge metal box that would type out incoming news onto paper that we had to rip off and read. On top of this, very few people had expensive satellite television; all we had was the faint crackle of shortwave radio. When we journeyed to the bush, on stories, even day-old newspapers were scarce – it was so bad, we used to miss the deaths and funerals of prominent figures, only to find out months later that they had passed on.
In those dim days, even using a fax to file stories was seen as man landing on the moon.
But now the technology is on the march and so is our journalism. I work hard every day of my career to carry it forward through the pens and ambition of our crack young team of African journalists at FORBES AFRICA. What an enticing and appetizing prospect.
In the days of telex, crackly radios and dodgy fax machines, we still managed to send out many great stories that went down in African history. Just think how faster and further FORBES AFRICA can send those stories now.