A note from James about his experience: I’ll try to answer all your questions as accurately as possible. I did however live in the bush so did not get as much access to media as one normally would.

Q: Could you tell me a bit about yourself?

A: My background has been in conservation and tourism/guiding in the safari scene in Africa. I got my first jobs in Kenya before moving to Tanzania and then Uganda. I’m currently in Madagascar managing a lodge on the southern coast. Through one of my dad’s best school friends I’ve had a connection with Africa from a young age and first visited Tanzania when I was 7. From then on I’ve always wanted to work out here. I was slightly sidetracked with going to university and a corporate job in London but decided after a few years to chuck that in and get out here.

Q: What is media like in Uganda? What are your impressions of it?

A: In terms of my impression of media in Uganda I think like most countries there is probably a ‘metropolitan elite’ in the bigger cities who were slightly more liberal and progressive and probably absorbed a wider range of media. The perhaps less educated rural communities and tribes just didn’t have the same access. However, I did find that people would read a newspaper or watch the news on tv whenever they possibly could. For example we did a weekly shop from our camp where we would buy 4 newspapers and literally every member of staff would read them cover to cover over the next week when we got more papers in.

Q: Is there a primary platform for media?

A: I’d say the primary platform for media is probably still the television. Most rural villages tend to have someone with a tv and big football (soccer) matches are normally a sort of communal event at least amongst the men. Similarly, people will normally crowd round to watch the evening news. Hollywood, Nollywood and Bollywood films are also extremely popular as well as music channels. Lots of our staff had DVD’s with East African artists music videos which they would watch repeatedly.

Q: What about social media?

A: Access to smartphones in Uganda is becoming much easier so more and more people are using social media on their phones, in particular Facebook. However I noticed this would lead to a lot of fake news and rumours being believed as they would often not cross check information gained from social media (perhaps because of the lack of media education). My personal feeling about this is that they are sort of a step behind the technology because it wasn’t something they grew up with like maybe we have in the western world. It went from nothing to everything very quickly if you know what I mean. In the space of a few years a remote tribesman could have gone from never having even seen a landline phone to having a smart phone.

Q: In general, is media education practiced?

A: In terms of media in education, from my experience it is negligible. Again we worked with schools in our local, very rural community so it may not be representative of the country as a whole. (c5)