The afrol news exchange network

Since 2001, afrol News has been a key player in an all-African free news exchange service, which originally was launched and drifted by the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) and until 2003 was called Misanet.

The aim of this free news exchange service is twofold. First, it is to promote press freedom and independent journalism in Africa. Second, it shall help to promote independent media in Africa by offering a common platform and providing a free professional service that also will save costs. Working with independent African media for over a decade, we know that finances, infrastructure and professionalism often pose key problems, especially when competing with to state-sponsored media. A low-technology network sharing foreign news coverage addresses some of these problems.

The following media can participate in the news exchange network: Independent African media (print or online), not affiliated to any government, and with a policy (or a desire to develop a policy) of respecting copyright legislation. Non-African media can in some circumstances participate, if it is deemed that their news copy will be a valuable addition to independent African media's foreign news coverage.

The following media can not participate in the news exchange network: Media owned or co-owned by the state or the ruling party and privately-owned media regularly showing strong bias in favour of a ruling elite choosing never to cover issues criticising this elite. Media regularly ignoring copyright legislation are not welcome in the network. With a few exceptions, non-African media are excluded from the service and advised to apply for a reasonable subscription to our news agency services.

The new exchange service provides participating media with a free foreign (mostly Africa) news coverage. The service includes all afrol News copy, AON news agency copy and selected internationalised articles from other participating media. "Internationalised articles" means they are rewritten (often also translated) from the original media's focus on a national readership to the news network's focus on a non-national readership.

News copy can be obtained in two ways: Either by receiving articles via e-mail or by logging into your AON news agency account at any time, picking articles from there.

Conditions for participation include, most importantly, a previous agreement with afrol News. Please write to mail@afrol.com to negotiate an agreement (if in a hurry, you may be given preliminary approval for the reproduction of some urgent articles while we negotiate). Violators of afrol News' copyright will not be admitted.

Other conditions include that parts of your media's news copy is made available for the news exchange (you can however exclude competing media from your country from receiving), either via e-mail or via your online services. Also, there are strict rules for how the copyright and author of an article from the news exchange are to be presented.

Contact afrol News to apply or to learn more about the news exchange. Write to mail@afrol.com.

You can read more about the media afrol News ("Key data") on this link.