The Senegal Numérique SA company will contribute to strengthening the capacities and digital skills of media players, under the terms of an agreement signed Thursday with the Maison de la presse Babacar Touré.

The interest in the collaboration between Senegal Numerique SA and the Maison de la presse lies in “the digitalization and empowerment” of journalists, to better prepare them for digital professions, declared Cheikh Bakhoum, general manager Senegal Numerique SA, formerly the Agence de la Presse. State IT (ADIE).

Collaboration between the two parties should make it possible to “set up programs for journalists,” he said, adding that “human resources” are needed to build an ecosystem such as the digital one.

He considers that it is possible to have “a competitive press” thanks to digital tools.

“The training component will be largely developed within the framework of this cooperation,” assured Cheikh Bakhoum, according to whom, it is a question of training “new types of journalists”, while digital technology is shaking up the traditional way of dealing with information.

“We will together strengthen this offer of the Senegalese press to further professionalize it”, by working to “show all the capacities” that Senegal has in this area to allow the Senegalese to access “quality information”, insisted the CEO of Senegal Numérique SA.

“The service will modernize the ecosystem and benefit from [the expertise of Senegal NumeriqueSA]. It will be a question of better arming our target made up of journalists,” indicated Bara Ndiaye, general administrator of the Maison de la presse, Babacar Touré.

According to Mr. Ndiaye, “the media are strongly influenced by digital technology” which in turn requires the ability to adapt. “Our main target must be to take advantage of digital technology. Our actors must be trained in data journalism,” he said.

“Today, data is invading us, we need to master and process it to make it available to viewers and readers,” he stressed.

“We have umbrella organizations and our mission is to support them as press companies in training and capacity building in a context where our profession is characterized by digital changes,” continued Mr. Ndiaye.

“It is extremely important to be able to count on the expertise and experience of Senegal digital SA.” “And in this sense, there is an expression of needs which is already formulated at our level. Senegal digital SA is prepared to support us in this direction,” reassured the general administrator of the Maison de la presse.

He believes that “we no longer need to entrust our data to foreigners thanks to the State of Senegal, we have become sovereign,” noted Mr. Ndiaye.

Senegal digital SA will notably offer shared hosting solutions, the cloud, data security, e-waste solutions which involve taking into account broken down machines. It also intends to offer support and expertise solutions as well as the service catalog.

With APS