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BBC Focus on Africa show: A tale of the continent’s 60-year history
Mr Paul Bakibinga, a presenter and producer on BBC’s Focus on Africa. The programme has undergone rapid change over its 60 years. PHOTO | COURTESY
What you need to know:
- This year, Focus on Africa programme on BBC is marking 60 years of existence. The programme started in 1960 at the time 17 African countries were becoming independent from colonial rule.
- Since then, the programme has covered several news events on the continent, including civil and guerrilla wars, the apartheid in South Africa and HIV/Aids, among others. Mr Paul Bakibinga, a presenter at Focus on Africa, spoke to Angella Nampewo about his decade-long involvement with the programme.
“Focus on Africa has been part of my life from my childhood. I can’t remember when I got my first radio set. It might have been 1978 or 1979. That was when Idi Amin decided to attack Tanzania and during the time of oppression of Idi Amin, we had no other radio stations that we could listen to which had good quality news. We always used to turn to the BBC, Deutsche Welle or Voice of America to get news about Uganda. That is when I started listening to Focus on Africa,” Mr Bakibinga, who joined the show in 1997, recalls.
Mr Bakibinga and his peers keenly followed the interviews of Robin White, the presentation of Chris Bickerton and what they thought was a “fabulous” team in London. As students at Makerere University, the signature tune for Focus on Africa echoed through the halls of residence daily at 6pm.
“That is how long I have had Focus (of Africa) as part of my life. It is something I listen to daily even when I am not producing: it is a programme I try to listen to daily,” he adds.
In speaking about his time on Focus on Africa, Bakibinga sums it up thus: “It’s been a great privilege to be on the front seat of history with Focus on Africa and seeing how things are happening on the continent.”
Mr Bakibinga’s career at the BBC began with a simple request for work experience while he was on a break in the UK as he landed from training in America.
When he had almost given up hope of being accepted at the BBC, something in the way he presented himself must have impressed Robin White, whom he believes had a soft heart for Uganda because of his boss, Israel Wamala, one of the founding fathers of Focus on Africa.
Mr Bakibinga got the two weeks of work practice and two years later, with the formalities such as visa processing out of the way, he was offered a position at the BBC.
It also happened that the leadership team at Focus on Africa felt they needed African presenters to tell the continent’s story.
“They had convinced the Foreign Office that after some time, they could be in position to employ people from Africa,” Mr Bakibinga recalls.
When he joined the BBC in 1997, there was a diverse set of reporters on his team that were not only trained as journalists but also came from different professions. The team was an exciting, sort of intimidating team from different professions who, he says, brought a different perspective to news.
Technological changes
“There has been a gradual evolution. I came in when there was [the use of] tape, and you had to cut it but I came on the very end of that tape before we went into the computer and being able to edit, that made life a lot easier. When I joined, we were talking about getting faxes, telex or even letters by post, which were then read on the programme [Focus on Africa],” Mr Bakibinga recalls.
This evolution is illustrated in anecdotes which he shares. For instance, the story of Rick Wells, then a presenter, who had travelled to Sudan and had to send back a fax which took about two weeks to reach the studio.
However, at that time, since they hardly heard anything from Sudan, Mr Bakibinga says the fax was still of news value, something which would not happen in this age of fast-moving information via electronic media.
Not only has communication become faster, it has become cheaper to collect news. “We used to spend a lot of money getting people reporting via satellite phones. Now it is so much cheaper, with WhatsApp or Skype. You are hardly spending that much money but you are still getting a quality interview,” he says.
Also, Focus on Africa used to be the programme for which all activities came to standstill every evening in some places across Africa. In Uganda it was 6pm.
“There are anecdotes about stories from Sierra Leone, Liberia, or Somalia, of people having to pause to listen to Focus on Africa to know where there fighting is or where the it has stopped because that is how they were able to get their information,” Mr Bakibinga says.
Now, however, thanks to social media platforms, as soon as news breaks, may people around the world are able to know the top news, at least the headlines.
“People are not waiting for Focus on Africa at Six O’clock. They listen to Focus on Africa to see what perspective, what more hidden weight or analysis we are adding to a particular story. That is where the change has largely come in,” Mr Bakibinga says.
Also, in place of stringers in-country, Focus on Africa now has bureaus across the continent.
Shortly after he began with Focus on Africa, one of his colleagues had to leave Zimbabwe for personal reasons and Bakibinga had to stand in for him for about six months.
As a Ugandan reporting from Zimbabwe, he found himself reporting from the frontline in what was then termed as Africa’s First World War; Zimbabwe, Angola, Namibia were fighting on one side of the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo while Uganda and Rwanda were fighting on the other side.
“Here I was, a Ugandan based in Zimbabwe reporting in Harare about whatever was happening but I think there was some Pan-African understanding. I was speaking to the government spokesperson and he said, ‘oh by the way, the President (Mr Mugabe) knows you’re around’. I don’t know if that was a way of intimidating me,” Mr Bakibinga recalls with amusement.
Memorable moments
In 1999, when he was in Zimbabwe, the Movement for Democratic Change party was formed. It was an exciting time to watch the trade union turn into a political party, especially as it promised to give the ruling Zanu-PF a tough time.
Sometimes the trick was about where you were when stories were breaking, as Mr Bakibinga recalls: “The toughness with Zimbabwe was that it was a still closed system. Sometimes as happens with journalism, you spend a lot of time sitting around waiting for a story to happen. One time we were waiting for President Mugabe and President Laurent Kabila. They were in a summit and we waited the whole day. They came out and hardly said anything.
It happens that the editor calls me at that particular time and asks, ‘has the meeting ended?’ I said yes and the next thing I found myself live on Focus on Africa talking about the nothing that had happened but it was about the atmosphere and the seriousness of the talks that we were trying to relay at that time.”
There was also an incident where one of the programme’s stringers in Ghana reported about the death of a king and within that culture in Ghana, you did not announce the death of a king until certain rites had been performed.
“Everybody was so annoyed with him on account of what had happened. He was taken off air for some time. The people were so angry. Him being a local stringer who came from that area, possibly it was thought that he should have known better,” Mr Bakibinga recalls.
On a light note, when the king of Buganda was crowned, (1993), Mr Bakibinga happened to be producing the programme and he recalls saying to Robin [White]: “We usually cover start the day with bad news but here is a person representing a people, who has been crowned. Can’t we go ahead and start Focus on Africa with the crowning of the Kabaka of Buganda?”
Robin agreed and the listeners had a chance to hear from Israel Wamala, one of the founders of Focus on Africa, and somebody whom Mr Bakibinga greatly admired and felt privileged to have on a programme he was producing.
Looking back over his time at Focus on Africa, Mr Bakibinga says: “It’s been an exciting time. We look forward to the next 60 years. There has been a change. Sometimes I think the importance of Africa is not seen the way it should be. Africa is a very important continent. I think it is going to be very important in the future.”
ABOUT PROGRAMME
The BBC started as the Empire Service before becoming the General Overseas Service in 1947. The programme “Calling West Africa” started to cater to West African audiences, especially West African service people. In 1957, the Hausa, Somali and Swahili services were introduced, marking the start of much more tailored content for Africa. In 1960, during the year of the transistor radio and the year 17 African countries gained Independence, Focus on Africa joined the family of other programmes from Africa.
