The leading international story at the moment is that Afghanistan is imploding, and the airport in Kabul, the country’s capital, is packed with thousands of Afghans fleeing their country. The Taliban, pushed out by the Americans decades ago, have rolled back in with heavy artillery.
It is the duty of the media to help humanity make sense of what is happening around. It is the duty of Kenya’s media to not only bring the world to our sitting rooms, but to explain why it matters to us.
On this one, the banquet goes to KTN News Business Today for Kenyanising the Afghanistan story and for answering the so-what question for many of us who either have no idea about what is unfolding in Kabul, thousands of kilometres away, or think it is none of our business.
KTN Business Today ably pointed out that Kenya sold tea worth Sh2 billion to Afghanistan last year, and that this market will take a hit from the unfolding Afghan crisis. Still, the two young reporters that presented the story clearly needed a history lesson.
They could have backgrounded the story by explaining how the current crisis begun – at least with the most recent history on how the Taliban were gunned out of power by the Americans and her allies after 9/11 terror attack.
Then they would have told us how we faired with Afghanistan under the Taliban. Were we selling more tea to Afghanistan or less? Can we expect to sell more tea to the new Taliban regime?
Did the sales dip or rise after the Americans edged out the Taliban? Clearly, we need to either do more research on global stories that touch on ordinary Kenyan lives or let only the best tell them-these, otherwise our audiences out there will feel cheated or insulted.
Incidentally, a BBC business programme, aired under the auspices of KTN’s Business Today, took the Afghanistan story further by reporting that Uganda had offered to take in 2,000 Afghans.
After an impressive allay of facts and figures about the Afghan crisis, which their hosts (KTN News) either forgot to use or did not have at all, BBC’s version of Business Today tried to Africanise the story by reporting that the Uganda had become the first African country to make the offer (the Sudanese are still contemplating making a similar offer).
The BBC went further to answer the BIG question here: Why would the Uganda offer to host 2,000 Afghans, and who will be footing the bill?
Turns out that the Ugandans have seen a financial and economic opportunity in the Afghanistan crisis. The BBC had researched into the story deep enough to know that the refugees’ expenses, from their transport from Kabul to their accommodation in Kampala, would be footed by the Americans.
And, two, that the Ugandans were eager to resuscitate their struggling hotel industry with the dollars that the Americans would be pumping in to support the refugees.
Well, here we have a case of two business stories aired as one. Only difference is that one is barely one inch deep, the other is like the father in Shakespeare’s sonnets, five fathoms deep.
The stories may be similar, but the difference lies in the amount of research and creativity put in.
We rest our case.
