The completion of the survey met the first immediate objective set in the project proposal, namely "to survey in detail existing textbooks and other teaching materials used in permanent institutions of journalism education in and for Anglophone Africa" (Annex 1). Moreover, it met a good deal of the third objective "to identify the need for new materials, and for the adaptation and modification of existing materials".
Another objective of the project was "to analyse and evaluate this material in terms of its adequacy and relevance to regional journalism education". Such an analysis and evaluation remains to be done in detail as a follow-up of the survey. However, the findings do justify already an immediate overall conclusion, namely that the existing textbooks are to a large extent inadequate for communication education in Africa. For experts of the field this is hardly a surprising outcome, but the degree of Western - in particular American -dominance and the respective underrepresentation of African and in general Third World textbooks is probably more marked has been usually realized. At least the present authors must admit that they were surprised to see how big was the imbalance.
Consequently, the findings serve as an impressive justification of the very idea behind this project; an acute need to promote textbooks in the field. At the same time the findings invite follow-up action not only in terms of textbook production and distribution but also in terms of questions such as the training of trainers, their ideologi cal orientation and even personal comfort, as well as the prevailing doctrines of news values and ultimately the social theories of the press. In other words, we are back at the basic questions of the new information order.
The first stage of the original project - with the 20,000 dollars - was limited to the survey reported above. The next stage - with 80,000 dollars and two more years - was supposed to produce the detailed assessment of the material used and proposed as well as "to prepare and evaluate, in the regional context, a number of trial adaptations and new materials". However, as explained in the Introduction, the original project plan was changed in spring 1987, because the ACCE, with the support of SIDA, offered to take over the rest of the project. Therefore the IAMCR did not submit additional requests for assistance from the IPDC.
Before the continuation of the present project was passed to the ACCE, the follow-up of the field survey was foreseen by the three project leaders along these lines:
First, one should simply circulate the findings of the survey among all the educators concerned so as to produce the first output listed in the project proposal, namely "improved knowledge of the scope, relevance and use of existing teaching materials in journalism education". This will be made by distributing the present report to all the institutions included in the survey.
Second: The survey demonstrated that the need for textbooks and teaching materials for communication education in Africa is substantial and varied. However, since not all of the suggested areas and topics can be covered immediately, it will be necessary to set priorities among them so that a realistic, phased implementation plan can be devised. This concerns both the existing African material and the plans to produce new local textbooks. This priority-setting exercise can begin with a re-examination of the results of the field survey, with the assistance of a small panel of communication educators from Africa, with a view to indicating the priority and feasibility of both a wider use of existing textbook materials and the prospects of realising the suggested textbooks ideas. When the priorities have been set, the existing textbook materials to be reproduced and distributed for the benefit of others can be identified and concrete proposals about specific content, orientation, target audiences, authorships, production arrangements and schedules can be prepared for the new textbooks.
Third, an opportunity should be provided for the project to benefit from relevant experience acquired by educators in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean in the field of textbook preparation. This would also mean identifying suitable materials from these other regions for distribution and eventual translation/adaptation for the African region.
Fourth, the final stage will be the actual reproduction and distribution of selected existing materials as well as the preparation of new textual materials. As far as the latter is concerned, many models and approaches are possible. For example, joint authorship under an editor or editorial team or single authorship especially for manuscripts already completed or nearing completion. Another approach would be to consider textbook writing as a "knowlegde and skills area", requiring systematic development in the African region, and to see the present project as an opportunity, not only for producing particular textbooks to meet identified needs, but also for motivating groups of African educators to write textbooks through becoming familiar with "the technology of textbook publishing". For this approach to succeed, it may well be that texts requiring multiple authorship should be encouraged, and that "the production process" should receive as much attention as the textual outcome of the project.
These recommendations, which naturally require further elaboration, are included in the ALLE/SIDA project. It utilizes the baseline data presented in this report as a start-off point to develop communication teaching and training materials which specifically deal with the problems and are suitable for the African environment as well as meet the needs of journalism and communication training institutions in the region. The project will include both print teaching materials and audio-visual materials and will deal with all areas of the media and communication development in Africa. It will embrace oral and traditional media, the rural press, rural radio, African communication history, theory and research and television production and distribution.
The ACCE/SIDA project, which was approved by the IPDC under a Funds-in-Trust arrangement in February 1988, will initially cover the same Anglophone African region covered by the present survey. There are plans to extend the project to other major linguistic areas in the region. Moreover, the example set by the present IAMCR project has inspired initiatives in other regions as well - first and foremost in Asia where the situation and the problems appear to be very much the same as in Africa, as suggested by the Indian experience.
At the same time there is a growing recognition for a more systematic interregional contact and cooperation in communication education in general and textbook promotion in particular. While the follow-up of the African project has been handed over to the ACCE, along with similar regional projects in other parts of the world, the IAMCR is faced with a growing challenge of facilitating a common forum for all - not only to meet and talk at biannual conferences but also to cooperate in the framework of an interregional project. Such a project would help in identifying and producing textbooks from the broadest possible professional and academic pool of resources. It would be a concrete step beyond the particular regional initiatives to meet the long-term objectives of the present project (Annex 1):
(i) The development of adequate textbooks and other educational materials in the training of journalists in developing countries in accordance with their authentic needs and interests;
(ii) The replacement of alien textbook materials by those produced specifically for the country/region concerned;
(iii) The widest possible distribution and utilization of these materials within the constraints of limited financial resources;
(iv) The improvement of South-South as well as North-South cooperation in the preparation and translation of new editions, with the overall objective of providing schools of journalism with more relevant educational materials in keeping with the requiremets of contemporary curricula.
Such a project would obviously need long-term financing, and the most natural way to facilitate it would be a Funds-in Trust arrangement under the IPDC. It would be surprising if such a project would not meet interest within the IPDC and among the donor agencies - given the findings of the present project and the moves of communication educators in different parts of the world.