Food For Mzansi Group is celebrating after scoring three wins at the prestigious 2024 Africa Digital Media Awards. Announced this morning by WAN-IFRA, the World Association of News Publishers, these awards solidify the agriculture news publication’s position as a champion of journalism innovation on the continent.
In a release issued by Vincent Peyrègne, the Frankfurt-based chief executive of WAN-IFRA says, “The winning projects … showcased outstanding innovation. These initiatives placed their audiences at the centre of their work, resulting in increased engagement and positive feedback from readers. These projects provide a winning strategy for any initiative.”
In the Best Podcast category, Food For Mzansi’s popular Farmer’s Inside Track podcast beat Media General in Ghana and Health For Mzansi, its sister publication, for the top prize in Africa. The global panel of judges remarked that Farmers Inside Track “could serve as a case study to serve up niche content that will appeal to all. Agriculture is, to many, a dry but vital subject matter; served here, it could be anyone’s cup of tea.”
Empowering South African farmers
In their remarks about the award winners, WAN-IFRA described Farmer’s Inside Track as a user-centred podcast with a range of topics delivered through three distinct weekly episodes focused on mentoring, farming issues and how-to’s, and native content.
The judges say it is “an important resource that engages and empowers the South African farming community.”
Farmer’s Inside Track also beat Daily Maverick in South Africa in the Best Digital Subscription category. This innovative membership programme empowers new-era farmers with exclusive content, personalised experiences, and a strong sense of community.
Food For Mzansi Group co-founder Kobus Louwrens says they’re delighted to see Farmer’s Inside Track win big in two categories this year. He hailed Farmer’s Inside Track as a potent tool for fulfilling its core mandate. “It allows us to engage directly with our core audience, allowing us to listen more closely to them and shape our work to best fulfil their needs.”
Developed from the Farmer’s Inside Track podcast, newsletters, and farming advice articles, the publication’s membership now provides new-era farmers with free access to exclusive content, discounts, and priority access to events. Louwrens adds, “Members who couldn’t attend the recent 2024 Mzansi Young Farmers Indaba in Pretoria will soon be able to exclusively watch videos of all the informative and inspiring main-stage sessions.”
Award-winning collaboration with Meadow Feeds
Food For Mzansi’s collaboration with Meadow Feeds earned it a coveted honourable mention in the Best Native Advertising Campaign category. This recognition is particularly noteworthy as Food For Mzansi was the only African media house to be mentioned in this category.
The Meadow Feeds campaign resonated with the judges, who highlighted it as “a powerful example of a strong partnership aimed at serving the needs of audiences to better engage and empower communities.”
The collaboration delivered impressive results, maximising reach and engagement with the agricultural community. This success stemmed from a multi-pronged approach that included high-quality information integrated into newsletters, podcasts, technical articles, and social media strategy with the leading animal nutrition solutions expert.
Debbie Nortjé, Marketing Executive at Meadow Feeds, says, “For over 80 years, Meadow Feeds has been delivering our customers ‘more than just feed’, and our ‘Powered by Meadow Feeds’ campaign on Food For Mzansi offered us the perfect platform to share our technical expertise with young, emerging farmers in an easy-to-access and understandable format. Congratulations to the Food For Mzansi team on a productive collaboration that exceeded our expectations.”
Showcasing innovative journalism
According to Ivor Price, Food For Mzansi’s co-founder and editor-in-chief, the three wins at the 2024 Africa Digital Media Awards solidify the publication’s position as a champion of journalism innovation, not just in Africa, but with a growing reputation on the global stage. This brings their total to a remarkable 18 global awards – a testament to the dedication and creativity of a small, but powerful and resilient team.
“Our innovative approach goes beyond bells and whistles. It’s about understanding the unique needs of their audience – South Africa’s new generation of farmers and agripreneurs. These awards are a powerful validation that innovation doesn’t require a massive team or resources.”
The WAN-IFRA Digital Media Awards serves as a significant recognition platform within the news media industry, highlighting exceptional digital media projects. Drawing from a global network of 3 000 news publishing companies and technology entrepreneurs, and backed by 60 member publisher associations representing 18 000 publications across 120 countries, WAN-IFRA identifies and commends innovative initiatives.
The winners of each category will now advance to the prestigious 2024 Digital Media World Awards, where they will contend with top projects from around the world.
In this Africa Science Focus episode, reporter Michael Kaloki discusses the relationship between artificial intelligence (AI), drone technology, and data analytics with information technology professionals.
Dennis Mutua, managing director of Geo-Cart, a Kenya-based surveying and drones solution company, says AI and drones could improve agriculture, engineering, and resource management.
AI and blockchain could shape the future of African businesses, says Bright Mawudor, regional lead at blockchain specialists Crystal Intelligence.
We also hear from Nancy Kinyua, head of geospatial engineering and data analytics at Nairobi-based data analytics firm Statsspeak, Moses Kemibaro, founder of Dotsavvy digital marketing agency, and Addy Kimani, sales and marketing lead at Fahari Aviation, a company specialising in unmanned aircraft systems.
Do you have any comments, questions or feedback about our podcast episodes? Let us know at [email protected]
Africa Science Focus is produced by SciDev.Net and distributed in association with your local radio station.
This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s Sub-Saharan Africa English desk.
Persisting inequality has made many young South Africans question the choices made by Nelson Mandela – podcast – Modern Ghana
Some young South Africans have begun to question Nelson Mandela’s legacy, and the choices made in the transition to democracy after the end of apartheid in 1994. Some have even called him a “sellout”.
To mark 30 years since South Africa’s post-apartheid transition began, The Conversation Weekly podcast is running a special three-part podcast series, What happened to Nelson Mandela’s South Africa?
In this final episode of the series, we talk to two academics about the way Mandela is viewed by young South Africans today, and the challenges facing the African National Congress (ANC), which has governed the country for three decades, and its current president, Cyril Ramaphosa.
Known as the “born free” generation, they never lived through the persecution of apartheid. And they’re not afraid to question the state of the country they’ve inherited.
“There’s this grappling of the new generation trying to understand why South Africa still looks the way that it does,” explains Sithembile Mbete, a lecturer in political science at the University of Pretoria.
I think that there’s a revision or a review of Nelson Mandela’s legacy, mainly just from a dissatisfaction with the present and seeing the persistence of inequality of all sorts of manifestations – of white supremacy and racism and then all of the big political issues that we have for young people… and you’ve seen then a backlash to that amongst young people who are, like, why can’t we criticise him? Why can’t we criticise the decisions that were made?
Principal among the issues facing young people, she says, is unemployment. At the end of 2023, the unemployment rate for young South Africans between the ages of 15 and 34 was 44%. Mbete says that young people are asking serious questions about the way the economy is structured, but they’re not yet playing enough of a role in shaping the country. She adds:
Our expectations of what could have been done in the past are too high, but then our expectations of what we should be re-imagining in the present for the future are too low.
Ramaphosa has had the very difficult task of rebuilding the state, rebuilding confidence in public ethics. And it’s really a tough battle. It’s like Sisyphus pushing and pushing that big stone up the hill. And it’s going to take quite a long time, I think, to recover lost ground.
A transcript of this episode will be available shortly.
Disclosure statement
Sithembile Mbete has received grant funding for research on South African foreign policy from the National Research Foundation, National Institute of Social Science and Social Science Research Council. She’s received research support on South African democracy from the Open Society Foundation and the Ford Foundation. Richard Calland is a partner at The Paternoster Group: African Political Insight. He is also a member of the Advisory Council of the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution.
Special thanks for this series to Gary Oberholzer, Jabulani Sikhakhane, Caroline Southey and Moina Spooner at The Conversation Africa. This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Mend Mariwany, with production assistance from Katie Flood. Gemma Ware is the executive producer. Sound design was by Eloise Stevens, and our theme music is by Neeta Sarl. Stephen Khan is our global executive editor, Alice Mason runs our social media and Soraya Nandy does our transcripts.