Africa Media Online is an organisation that enables African media professionals to reach international markets. Based in

Pietermaritzburg Pietermaritzburg (; Zulu: umGungundlovu) is the capital and second-largest city in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It was founded in 1838 and is currently governed by the Msunduzi Local Municipality. Its Zulu name umGungundlovu ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

, the organisation provides online media library systems, professional digitisation services, digital imaging training, and access to a worldwide audience through their image library, previously known as africanpictures.net.

Stock photo library

The image library represents individual African photographers, including the likes of the internationally acclaimed Guy Tillim,

Greg Marinovich Greg Marinovich (born Gregory Sebastian Marinovich, 8 December 1962) is a South African photojournalist, filmmaker, photo editor, and member of the Bang-Bang Club. He co-authored the book '' The Bang-Bang Club: Snapshots from a Hidden War'' (2 ...

and

David Goldblatt David Goldblatt HonFRPS (29 November 1930 – 25 June 2018) was a South African photographer noted for his portrayal of South Africa during the period of apartheid.Weinberg, Paul.David Goldblatt: Photographer Who Found the Human in an Inhuman ...

, as well as acts as an aggregator of content by representing other photographic and heritage agencies such as South Photographs, Baileys African History Archive and Shuter & Shooter Publishers. Until late 2008 all

stock photography Stock photography is the supply of photographs which are often licensed for specific uses. The stock photo industry, which began to gain hold in the 1920s, has established models including traditional macrostock photography, midstock photography, ...

was sold on a

Rights Managed Rights Managed, or RM, in photography and the stock photo industry, refers to a copyright license which, if purchased by a user, allows the one-time use of the photo as specified by the license. If the user wants to use the photo for other uses an ...

basis. Now the organisation has launched a series of

Royalty Free Royalty-free (RF) material subject to copyright or other intellectual property rights may be used without the need to pay royalties or license fees for each use, per each copy or volume sold or some time period of use or sales. Computer standards ...

collections in which all images are model-released and available for multiple usages, including advertising, for a single fee.

Software platforms

Africa Media Online’s online picture library management and sales system, called MEMAT (Media Market Technologies), is used by organisations and professional photographers to display their collections of high resolution images on a website (in some instances for purchase) in a secure way. Initially designed only to showcase photographs, the new version to be released in 2009, will feature sound files, digital video files, text, graphics and

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradition ...

Ownership

Africa Media Online (Pty) Ltd. is a black owned company, defined by the South African Department of Trade and Industry as an HDI, and is a Level 3

Black Economic Empowerment Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) is a policy of the South African government which aims to facilitate broader participation in the economy by black people. A form of affirmative action, it is intended especially to redress the inequalities creat ...

Contributor. The organisation also owns Digitise Africa, a high-end digitisation service geared at putting African photographic collections online. The company has established a not-for-profit trust, the independent Digitise Africa Trust, in order to raise funds for training African professionals and digitising African collections.

Partnership projects

The African Image Pipeline (AIP) project was made possible with 70% grant funding from the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...

through Gijima

KwaZulu-Natal KwaZulu-Natal (, also referred to as KZN and known as "the garden province") is a province of South Africa that was created in 1994 when the Zulu bantustan of KwaZulu ("Place of the Zulu" in Zulu) and Natal Province were merged. It is locate ...

, launches EU funded African Image Pipeline project an initiative of South Africa's Department of Economic Development. The African Image Pipeline enables the organisation to train photographers from historically disadvantaged backgrounds; digitise 32 000 images from photographers and the heritage sector; upgrade the MEMAT online media library system; translate the African Archival Thesaurus, which allows images to be searched, into the major trade languages of Africa; and gain greater penetration into global media markets. Twenty Ten is a project for professional print journalists,

photojournalists Photojournalism is journalism that uses images to tell a news story. It usually only refers to still images, but can also refer to video used in broadcast journalism. Photojournalism is distinguished from other close branches of photography (such ...

and radio journalists of African nationality and currently living in Africa. A project between the World Press Photo Foundation, Freevoice and Lokaalmondiaal,Road to 2010
''lokaalmondiaal'' and sponsored by the Dutch Postcode Lottery, it aimed to encourage media professionals to creatively produce and distribute articles, images, broadcasts and multimedia productions related to African

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

ahead of the FIFA World Cup held in South Africa in 2010.

References

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External links

Africa Media OnlineTwenty TenAfrican Photo Entrepreneur Programme
Mass media in South Africa Photography in Africa