Editorial
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Welcome to the East African Diaspora Media Watch (EADM)
By Samuel Muwanguzi, Ph.D.
I want to take this opportunity to introduce and welcome you to the East African Diaspora Media Watch (EADM), a newly developed news network and platform designed to serve East Africans living in the Diaspora. This news Porto has emerged as a result of careful analysis of media outlets available to all East Africans living in the Diaspora. Our findings indicate, thus far, that there is a vacuum in virtual space that is keeping East Africans in the Diaspora farther apart, isolated from each other, and neither communicating nor collaborating, in real time, to share ideas, pursue joint endeavors, and optimize opportunities offered by the ICT-driven global economy. Yet, most East Africans in the Diaspora live in developed countries where information societies have been well established with features of the digital age functioning as a given in our day-to-day cultural, economic, and political lives. Additionally, geographical, economic, social, cultural, and political boundaries and barriers that separate the five member countries of the East African Community (EAC) region are gradually but systematically being torn down to enable the free movement, interaction, trade, and collaboration between peoples living in the region.
Since the revival of the East African Community (EAC) in 1999 by the original members states; Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, several positive strides have been made to ease the free movement of people, capital, and other forms of integration. To these countries, Rwanda and Burundi were integrated as part of the EAC, with others such as South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sudan expressing willingness to join the burgeoning regional body. Presently, the EAC has attained several milestones including the establishment of a single customs territory, a common market, movement of labor and capital, and the removal of trade barriers such as taxes on produce from within the member states. The most recent is the announcement that the regional block will, starting next year, issue e-passports to citizens within the EAC member countries (see story in the news category). Gradual but steady steps are being taken to eventually form a political federation at a time most convenient to citizens in the five member countries. The way forward for the estimated 150 million population in the five member countries is to consolidate the gains acquired so far and stride, with confidence, toward a future that will ensure mutual integration in most aspects that affect citizens in the member countries. Thus far, by all accounts, this is the most vibrant and effective regional block in Africa.
While the EAC is attaining these historical milestones, we, the East Africans in the Diaspora are not reciprocating in significant ways to complement the process. We salute the business community in the United States took the lead and formed a vibrant East African Chamber of Commerce of Dallas to bring various professionals together to promote trade and investment between the United States and the EAC region. Other EAC-based Diaspora organizations have followed suit but their general preoccupations, too, are primarily training, trade, and investment. Inevitably, more needs to be done. Indeed, some online news networks, blogs, forums, and portos have been established but these largely serve either local communities hailing from one country or one Diaspora community from one member state of the EAC. This, therefore, leaves an exigence to invest time, expertise, efforts, and other resources to fill that glaring communication gap to foster interactions and collaboration between and among East Africans in the Diaspora.
The ties that bind us are too strong to negate our shared responsibility of providing information, education, and entertainment among and between ourselves as East Africans living in the Diaspora. To the gains made by the EAC regional block, to aspirations of our kith and kin back in East Africa, and to the hundreds of thousands or millions of East Africans in the Diaspora seeking some virtual space to connect, communicate, and network, we have responded by designing, unveiling, and welcoming you on board. We will, as we move forward, to add our voices, ideas, expertise, energies, and support to enhance the momentum and value to the transformative EAC process.
We can no longer sit back on our laurels without joining hands with fellow East Africans both in the Diaspora and back home to help bring about positive change to present and future generations. We are therefore voting with the tool that we can harness best, communication. There is no excuse that we ‘cannot not communicate’, in virtual space, as East Africans in the Diaspora. This need and well-considered view have, over time, guided the development and launch of this media platform to add our voices to other constructive voices seeking to consolidate the East African integration and future federation based on mutual understanding and respect to the heterogeneous cultural values.
When you click on our link and read the content we offer, you will be gifting us with a thumbs-up inspiration to continue providing human-interest stories, opinions, reviews, and commentaries worth your time. Similarly, as readers, you will receive interesting, insightful, and well-researched news reports with the depth and breadth that you so much deserve. Together, we will pursue this exciting path to information, knowledge, wisdom, and professionalism that we expect to benefit us and our people living in East Africa. This medium and platform will endeavor to provide a no-holds-barred access to news, information, education, and entertainment you may need to survive and thrive wherever you are as a knowledge worker and global citizen with an East African Heartbeat!
We live in exciting and challenging times that offer both boundless opportunities and complex obstacles to human growth and development in the ICT-based global economy. As East Africans living in the Diaspora, we need to collectively optimize the ceaseless opportunities and strive to overcome obstacles that may hinder the East African region from leap-frogging into the burgeoning information society. The onus to join forces, share ideas, plug into the information society, prosper, and share the gains with our fellow East Africans back home squarely rests on our shoulders. Inaction and failure are neither optional nor acceptable.
To inspire the connections, communication, collaboration, and prosperity we desire and deserve, we will pursue an independent, nonpartisan, and unbiased editorial policy that promotes the unity of our diverse cultural communities, social and gender equity, democratic ideals, respect for human rights, and equitable economic development of all peoples in the East African region. . We are political animals that cherish egalitarian values. To state that we are apolitical will be burying our heads in the sand, ostrich style. No human being is apolitical. We don’t intend to be and we will not pretend that we will be apolitical. We will be as political as you, our readers are. But we will, under no circumstances be partisan. We will be professional, courteous, and respectful to all sheds of opinions that reflect our cultural diversity. We will, however, shun any discourse designed to malign individual or social communities, sow seeds of discord, and generally deviate from our mission and vision. For East Africans in the Diaspora and our respective cultural heritage as cherished within member countries and the regional block, we pledge respect, professionalism, and ethical engagement. This medium and platform is designed to offer communication with civility and respect to enhance the integration of the peoples of East Africa in whichever country they live.
While we will pursue an independent editorial policy, we will depend on you, our readers, in an interdependent relationship for support and inspiration. We therefore appeal to you to continue playing the supportive roles you have played in supporting your respective families and countries both in the Diaspora and in East Africa. But to those roles, we add our request to you to become part of the ‘new normal’, an evolving community of citizen journalists to contribute tips, stories, videos, and audio (sound bites) to the editorial of the East African Media Watch (EADM) from the comfort of your local communities. We want the entire East African Diaspora to celebrate with you, empathize with you, mourn with you, and share both in your glorious moments of success and sad moments of grief as members of one family; East Africans in the Diaspora.
We are also inviting you to advertise on this Web site as we have developed features that will offer you a scientific rationale and analysis that will support your decision and the potential value your advertisement will bring to your business and events. And for all those able and willing to support this work in any way possible, your contributions and donations are welcome especially during this formative period as we seek to firmly ground our feet.
Finally, we want to express our gratitude to all those individuals and entities that have lent their support, as volunteers, experts, and sponsors that have made the design, construction, and launch of this Web site possible. More importantly, we want to acknowledge individuals in the East African Diaspora community across the globe that consistently urged us, pushed us, and finally inspired us to operationalize the idea of starting an online East African Diaspora news Porto. The hours you spent brainstorming on this idea were indeed not in vain.
Finally, but once again, I wish, on behalf of the East African Media Watch, to warmly welcome you to this one-stop news platform where communication and media are central to the cultural, economic, social, and political developments among East African communities in the Diaspora. If you have any information including tips, stories, photos, video clips, and audio files you wish to share with EADM News, you can do so by emailing it to: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to an EADM journalist. You may also contact us via skype at editor_eadm
Samuel Muwanguzi, Ph.D., a veteran print and broadcast journalist, is a scholar, professor, and communication and information consultant. Before relocating to the United States, he worked in Uganda with several media houses including the Weekly Topic newspaper as a News Editor and former Radio Uganda and Uganda Television as the Chief News editor. Dr. Muwanguzi is the Founder and editor of the East African Diaspora Media Watch (EADM).
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