Firstly, our sympathies are with the people of Nigeria who faced two deadly
bomb attacks in the northeast on Saturday.
In this sporting heavy month, with the soccer world cup underway in Russia and the
Rugby Africa Gold Cup 2018 starting in Zimbabwe; and the Cannes Festival of Advertising lighting up the world of advertising and marketing (read all about it on
Bizcommunity.com daily); Africa continues to top the business agenda's around the world as next week's Washington
Africa Trade and Investment Global Summit attests, and last week's
African Innovation Summit in Rwanda that put the spotlight on home-grown African innovation and the huge talent available on the continent. In fact innovation labs in Africa have doubled in the past two years, with a new wave of
tech incubators emerging in North Africa.
This is all tremendous good news for the continent and feeds into the 'Africa Rising' narrative that is being peddled around the world for 2018 and hopefully many decades to come. But all this good news is jeopardised as media oppression continues on this continent. Freedom of speech and press freedom are basic human rights and Africa risks everything gained if media and individual rights continue to be viciously targeted by some governments. That needs to end. The
Committee to Protect Journalists which daily highlights atrocities against the media - including in Africa - this week honoured those journalists around the world putting their lives at risk to bring us the news. We honour them too.
Have a great week!
Louise Marsland
Africa Editor: Bizcommunity.comComment online in our ed's column archive. Go mobile with apps and m.bizcommunity.com. Engage with us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+. Subscribe to YouTube and via RSS. Send all your African marketing and media news and event invitations to africanews@bizcommunity.com, exclusive opinion pieces to contributors-africa@bizcommunity.com and international news to internationalnews@bizcommunity.com. Read "How to contribute to Biz, from op-ed pieces to news".
