About Africa TALK

INTRODUCTION
Provincial Media Economist would like to introduce Africa TALK,  the first publication of its kind in South Africa that is aimed at the African Community that has migrated to south Africa or is exiled here. It also intends to be of benefit to the Business Community interested in following development events in the Continent. This weekly publication occupies a gap in the market place that is two fold: It informs exiled Africans of development and opportunities back in their home countries while at the same time informing South Africans of the same and helping to network Africans in the process. It focuses more on guiding its readership to opportunities and reports there of, rather than politics and political squabbles in the countries concerned as there is a lot of coverage on that front already.

The publication carries a thick mix of economic development and business news, guidelines and advice, including travel and tourism related features with a bias towards government programs (local to provincial level), community news (Development & Social), health (HIV & AIDS) and also captures general social and networking scenes.

There are regular features on the State of each Country’s Economy, national and local Governance in relation to encouraging economic growth, diversification and the creation of a climate for investment and job creation.

Major economic drivers like the mining, agriculture and the tourism industries are regular features, including enabling sectors like national, provincial and local governments, finance, economic, transport and labour ministries.

There are also regular features on companies that play a positive role in the development of particular countries, including profiles of business movers and shakers there. South Africa being part of the African continent and an important player for that matter, it works well for it to be the host for such a publication. Besides, South Africa has a lot of its own stories to tell and other countries can learn from them.

This in most cases is done through Supplements that are pull out publications inside the main newspaper. Each supplement comes with its own advertising that is specific to the subject and focus of the supplement. In some cases, if the supplement gets a platinum sponsor, the supplement gets branded with the platinum sponsor logos and colours.

Pullouts are popular with government and big corporate companies where by when they have an event, our photographers and journalists cover the event and a 4 page pullout is designed to give a special highlight on the event and sold to the client to be published inside the publication. Alternatively, the client can provide the photographs and content to be used.

The weekly publication will hit the streets on Wednesday 17 February 2010 and the boardroom launch will be on Friday 19 March 2010. The boardroom launch will be attended by business people or representatives of businesses that have an interest in African opportunities, ambassadors, advertising agencies, NGO’s and other strategic people from the continent based South Africa. The second launch will be attended by the General exiled Community  at a bigger venue as a celebration. Other media will be invited. 

Africa TALK will come out every Wednesday morning to prepare the community in good time to plan their weekend trips and initiate positive contacts to set the tone for the following week. As a start, 30 000 copies of the publication will be printed every week and  sold for R5. Monthly staggered increases in the print run are in the plan. The copies will be distributed across South Africa through our street sellers (as have been identified) feeding into the various exile communities and will overlap to Zimbabwe and Botswana.

EMPOWERMENT
We have identified unemployed youths as street sellers in all the major towns with groups of exiled communities as well as areas with targeted South African communities, who will sell for us. As an empowerment measure, from the R5 cover price, our street sellers keep R2.00 for every copy sold. The goal is to assist these street sellers to develop regular networks of readers every week so as to feed into those network there by having a constantly growing income from established readers. We are working on compiling a database of the people that will subscribe with our street, flat and house sellers so that we can also empower our advertisers as they will know the living standards of the people that they are communicating with in the major towns of South Africa and other targeted countries.

Also identified in these towns are freelance journalists and marketing agents, another empowerment measure. Complimentary copies of the paper will be sent to all Embassies in South Africa.