Marie-Roger Biloa is CEO of the Africa International Media Group, which includes MRB Networks, one of whose offices is located in Paris.
She has regularly participated in news and debate programs on French and international television channels (TV5Monde, France24, France Télévisions, ARTE, BBC, Aljazeera, etc.).
She has edited several magazines, including Africa International for 20 years, a monthly magazine dedicated to politics, economics, and culture in the African world.
Through your company MRB Networks, you recently launched the TV program "Africa International." Can you tell us more about it?
MRB Networks creates TV programs to enrich the media offering in Africa and to meet the scientific and educational demands of the public. To this end, we launched the "Africa International" program in January 2019. This is a program that we produce and which is a continuation of the monthly magazine of the same name, which we have published for many years.
MRB Networks is headquartered in Cameroon, and we have studios in Paris and Dakar.
Faced with declining readership of print media, we decided to move into audiovisual media and develop a television channel. We are proceeding in stages. The first step was to transform our monthly magazine into a program, "Africa International."
Presented and hosted by myself, Africa International combines talk shows, debates, documentaries, and interviews.
Through this program, we are driven by the ambition to refine judgment based on African and international research in order to encourage questioning and debate about ourselves, to create a space for educational and critical content based on African production that promotes its own reflection and is hosted by the continent's best professionals, to highlight the challenges and issues of economic, social, and cultural development in Africa, and finally, to promote access to information in areas such as health, education, the arts, and culture.
So far, we have broadcast three editions of "Africa International."
What motivated us to launch this audiovisual
program
?
Our program was eagerly awaited. I think we need this type of program on the continent. A program that promotes African expertise, addresses substantive issues, and, above all, highlights solutions without personalizing the debates. This program aims to complement the audiovisual offering, which is currently dominated by news. With "Africa International," we want to initiate a genuine reflection.
Which television channels are you currently working with for broadcasting?
We broadcast our programs across Africa via satellite networks, ADSL boxes, and the web via our YouTube channel.
Our strategy is to increase partnerships with African channels to create synergies and means of distribution. For the moment, we have signed a broadcasting partnership agreement with seven major African channels, including RTS, Canal 2 International, and Africable.
We have also just consolidated our partnership with CRTV, which will host the filming of several MRB Networks sets and the Africa International program.
What are your ambitions?
Africa International is currently a program, but we will gradually transform it into a dedicated television channel with a pan-African and international audience. To do this, we will strengthen our content production. In addition to the Africa International program, we also want to start producing documentaries.
Are you also behind the Millenium Club?
In 2005, I founded the "Millenium Club," of which I am the president. It is a think tank that explores visions for the future of the African continent. We invite leaders at all levels, economic operators, thinkers, political leaders, and artists to come and discuss various topics. With this club, we also have ambitions in the audiovisual field: we want to create an integrated platform between this think tank and our future television channel, thus bringing the two activities together.
The first broadcast in France of the new edition of the program "Africa International" by Ubiznews will be on April 29 at 9 p.m.
Theme:
Africa International No. 3: Soon to be a minority? The great fear of "white people" in the United States.
Expert speakers:
– Séloua LUSTE BOULBINA (philosopher and post-colonial specialist)
– Doudou DIENE (specialist in contemporary forms of racism)
– Louis-Georges TIN (Honorary President of the Representative Council of Black Associations) – Prof. Théophile OBENGA (Egyptologist, linguist, and historian)
Broadcast:
Ubiznews (Orange Livebox 396; SFR 535; Freebox 477; BBox 403)