‘Citizens must hold leaders to account, demand transparency in their actions’

Zeinab Badawi is a Sudanese-british television and radio journalist. She was the first presenter of the ITV Morning News (now known as ITV News.) She co-presented Channel 4 News with Jon Snow (1989– 98), before joining the BBC News. She was the presenter of World News Today broadcast on both BBC Four and BBC World News, and Reporters. Presently, she is one of the presenters of BBC Hardtalk and BBC Global Questions. She was in Lagos to film BBC Global Questions in July 2018. In this interview she reveals how nations can leverage on the media to drive growth and development. Excerpts.

YOU are al media a household sphere. There name is no in one the who globwatches international news, who would not recognise your face or know your name. How did your media career begin? That is going back a long time ago. My media career really began in a very quiet way. I just went straight from University as a trainee into television. So, it was very simple. I did not study media; I studied politics and economics at Oxford University and from there I went straight into ITV as a trainee. That was it and they trained me on the job. Why media? What drew you to journalism? Could you have been influenced by your father who was a newspaper editor in Sudan and who also worked in the BBC Arabic Service? I have always been interested in current affairs and politics and my father had also been involved in pre-independence politics in Sudan. So, I think that if you are interested in politics, some people become practitioners and others become observers like me. And I suppose there must have been some family influence. And I think you are a very privileged person if you can combine your interest and passion with your work; which is what I did. Where was your mother in all this?

My mother is a very lovely, accomplished, highly intelligent woman. She was a teacher before she got married. She continued to teach in Sudan but had to stop. She is a mother of six children. So, her career was a bit disrupted when she moved to England. She comes from a very educated background; that is because her grand father (my great grand father) pioneered female education in Sudan. And all the women in her family (if they were alive today; some would be well over 100 years old) could read and write. I have had aunts who have got post graduate degrees from Western Universities who are in their seventies. So, she was always a huge encourager. She encouraged all her children to aspire to do well. Back to your career path, how easy and difficult was the journey, considering that you are an African ( Sudanese British)? Yes. When I started in the media, there were very few people of colour, working in the British media. I think that perhaps, I entered at a time when there was a sense that they needed a greater diversity in the workforce in the early 1980s. There had been race riots in England, people would remember the Toxeth riots in Liverpool (July 1981) and I think there was a huge discussion. There was a very famous report by a British judge (The Scarman Report of 1981 Report) and I think that I must have just come in on that wave where they thought that people needed to diversify the workforce. So, there were few of us. It has been a long haul but you know this was in the days when there was no international news really; no international channels. And I suppose, I have just hung on in there. How have you found working with the BBC as a black woman?

Really I am not in the minority now ( well, I was in the minority but there are so many of us now.) I think I would make a distinction between then and now. I mean, in years gone by when there were few of us ( espe

cially on camera), there was a novelty value. You get a lot of attention. But now, I think it is really just very standard to see women of colour on screen. And I think there is a particular drive in the BBC ( particularly in the BBC International Channel – BBC World Service and BBC World); to really draw on the first hand experience of African-british, Asian-british workforce because they bring particular insights into covering those particular regions. For instance, we have got for Nigeria, a West African correspondent Mayeni Jones. And that is just a demonstration of how we are using that talent pool; who are from the British Black community. What are the challenges you still encounter as a woman and an African in a male dominated field vis-à-vis the Carrie Gracie story and her campaign for equal pay in media houses? The media is no different from any other sector or industry in the economy. And it is part of society and there is of course, right across every sector; be it business, politics, science and be it the media, that there are gender disparities which need to be addressed and in the light of the Carrie Gracie story; the BBC has responded and it is trying to do its best to ensure that there is not a gender gap when it comes to pay and promotion. For me, I think it is not a particularly burning issue, for me personally but I support all efforts to make sure that gender disparities are addressed. And I think the BBC is doing that now. Why was it not a burning issue for you personally?

I think that I am of a certain age and for me, I also have a project (The History of Africa) which I have nurtured myself, which is for the BBC of course, and which is something I am pursuing as my own passion, my own interest. And so, I don’t work full time at the BBC as I used to. I am writing a book about African history, so I have other things I am working on. The discussion was very much about correspondents out in the field. And I am not one of these correspondents out in the field. That is why it did not touch me personally because I have other projects that I pursue. When your documentary series aired on the BBC; I watched all the episodes except for one. Why did you decide to film the documentary series “The History of Africa”? It has been a real labour of love. My post graduate was in history, so I have always loved history personally as an interest. But I happen to think that African history has been occluded (that means deliberately hidden). You know, it has been either been denigrated, occluded, or written by outsiders. Or indeed, Africans are being told they don’t have any history which is a supreme irony because of course Africa has the longest history in the world, because this is where humankind originated. And I just felt that, that needed to be addressed. And so, I wanted to bring that popular history to our screens whereby chronologically, systematically and regionally, I would chart the course of African history from the beginning of time to the modern era. Also, for an African audience, because I don’t think that has ever been done before. So, if you watch the series, you would know more about African history; you would be encouraged ( I hope) to go and find out more and be entertained as well, in the process.

The second series that I am starting would focus more on West, Central and Southern African than the first series and I hope to come to Nigeria later this year to film some of your wonderful Kingdoms from the past. And I just think that there was a gap ( as I said, it has not been done). We have had series that have looked at highlights of African history but never before has it ever been done in this kind of chronological, inclusive and systematic way. And also, the other thing, I do is, there have been programmes in the past, whereby somebody would bring you their own point of view. Let us say, the presenter, the great and wonderful Ali Mazrui, Basil Davidson and so on. And they would bring their own interpretation. But what I do is, I merely act as a facilitator for the African experts themselves or the ordinary Africans to tell their own story. So, it is also about ownership. I am not sitting there telling you this and that (of course I studied the history and learned about it) but I am bringing a Nigerian historian to talk about Nigeria. I am bringing a Ghanaian historian to talk about Ghana. Do you see what I mean? It is about ownership of the story but then of course, going back then to the past, there were no countries as such then. What were the challenges you faced whilst filming the history of Africa documentary series? Well look, you live in Nigeria. It is very difficult to operate in Africa, getting permis- sions etc. Sometimes, I go off the beat and track (I don’t just go to capital cities) and unfortunately, you would know that infrastructure is lacking in Africa. Roads are very poor sometimes; there have been logistical challenges i.e. physical challenges and that has been really difficult. This is a difficult series to pull off anywhere but in Africa where transport is really not very great; it has been a challenge and internal airlines’ air flights are not there sometimes. So, I would say that, that is the greatest challenge. I mean, the country where I was born, The Sudan (the third biggest in Africa) and going by road across huge tracks of desert, you get lost, you don’t know where you are going sometimes because there are no roads, the SATNAV (Satellite Navigation) does not work. So, I would say that those kind of challenges have been the biggest really. Once, you get through, to the people and the historians, the anthropologists, the archaeologists; that is the highlight. They are absolutely all wonderful. They know their subjects and they have a great passion for it. And that offsets those challenges. What discoveries fascinated and surprised you during the filming of the documentary? I think that I was surprised at how rich Africa’s history is. Also, not surprised because I had read about it of course. I was delighted to see that actually, Africa’s history is even richer than I had imagined and also, how people integrate historic traditions into their day to day lives. You see that continuity of traditions from centuries gone by; still preserved in people’s daily lives. It is quite remarkable. The ancient Kingdom of Kush in Northern Sudan, (you would remember, if you saw the series), I just looked at even the kind of beauty treatments the women still do; various customs, the scarification of the faces (they found mummies with scarification on their faces). So, it is extra ordinary that you see this continuity of tradition. I think that is what is wonderful about African history is that although modernity has been embraced; there is what is still a real sense of wanting to retain traditions. I think that, that would be the most interesting observation, I would have to make. You once said that while getting the content ready, you spoke with several African elder state persons. And a lot were surprised by the fact that they knew more of Western history than African history. One of such persons, who you spoke to and mentioned, was Chief Olusegun Obasanjo. How did that strike you? I think that with people like President Obasanjo (actually this was a conversation that mirrored one I had with my own parents who were brought up in Sudan; just as Chief Olusegun Obasanjo was brought up in Nigeria, under British rule and at the beginning went to school. And of course you had the British education system) who said to me, “I know more about British Kings and Queens than I do about my ancient history.” Going way back, you could mention Henry VIII and so on. And I think that was the same thing with my parents. So, this idea that once you have been through the British education system during the colonial era, you would have that kind of curriculum whereby your own country’s ancient history ( not the modern but ancient history) would not just really be particularly emphasised in the curriculum or if it is dealt with; it is dealt with in a very superficial way.

Badawi