Salim Amin:
I inherited my love for Africa from my father, photo-journalist Mohamed “Mo” Amin.

He gave up his youth, his family, his left arm and eventually his life for the continent he loved and for his conviction that his photos could depict it objectively. [Mo Amin lost his arm to a grenade while covering strife in Ethiopia. He worked as a photo-reporter until 1996, when he died on board a hijacked Ethiopian airliner that crashed.]

When Mo started his career in the 1960s, the term “African journalist” was derogatory. He turned it into something symbolizing pride and achievement. My father believed Africa could be covered best by African journalists, who understand African history and culture. Under his tutelage, I worked as a frontline photographer during conflicts in Somalia, Rwanda and Congo.

My father’s images of the 1984 famine in Ethiopia brought international attention to the crisis and helped save the lives of millions.

His career inspired me to do what I do now.

After my father’s death, I took over his business, Nairobi-based Camerapix, Africa’s first online agency for news video and photography.

In 1998, media pros David Johnson and Christel de Wit and a Nairobi-based college helped me launch the Mohamed Amin Foundation to develop local journalistic talent to tell African stories to an international audience. In 2008, I started Africa 24 Media, Africa’s first online delivery site for materials from journalists, broadcasters and NGO’s from around the continent — another step in making my father’s dream a reality.

As equipment gets cheaper, smaller and more efficient, Africans will become better informed and bridge the communications gap between themselves and the outside world. I want to see an Africa that has its own voice. I want to see an Africa that will not be viewed as the poor relative looking for a hand-out, but as a pioneer in a new world, leading and not following.

The media can go a long way in realizing this vision. But we must unite as a continent and wisely use support from our friends around the world.

See also a Huffington Post interview with Salim Amin.

Roger Mudd:
I agree with Salim Amin’s father that journalists should have an understanding and feeling for the history and the culture of the country they are covering. But I’m not so sure that African journalists can “best” cover Africa if what is meant by “best” is coverage that promotes Africa as a “pioneer in a new world, leading and not following,” to quote Salim Amin.

My view is that the best coverage is an even-handed coverage, reporting the successes as well as the failures. My view is that journalists have no business marching in the parade; that they should be standing on the curb watching the parade go by and reporting on what they see.

In 1964, working for CBS News, I was assigned to cover the Senate’s civil rights filibuster on television. Most conservatives, which meant most of the southern senators, regarded CBS News as part of a very powerful, very liberal network with little sympathy or understanding of the South and its culture. In the beginning, I hit a stonewall with the southerners. Even though I had southern roots, had been educated in the South and loved southern politics, they were suspicious of me as just another liberal reporter out to denigrate them.

It was not until the senators realized that when I interviewed Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, the floor manager of the bill, I also interviewed Richard Russell of Georgia, the southern field general and that for every TV piece with Jacob Javits of New York there was a piece with Sam Ervin of North Carolina.

Soon enough, press secretaries for the southerners began calling me with tips, off-the-record comments and not-too-subtle suggestions that I interview their boss.

In the end, it was not so much my knowledge of the South that gained the trust and respect of the filibusterers as it was steady and even-handed reporting.