IT News Africa, an online news site focused on technology in Africa, has launched a quarterly ICT magazine brand named the African Innovator.
The African Innovator magazine will focus on innovations in Africa and their contributions, the brains behind them and challenges facing the ICT sector and related businesses across the continent. Women influencing the sector will be listed in addition to ways of accelerating progress on achieving millennium development goals, MDG’s.
According to the magazine’s publisher Abby Wakama, African Innovator will fill the gap on emerging technology trends, innovations and ICT impact to the economy in Africa.
The initial edition of African Innovator was officially launched on July 31, 2012 in Johannesburg, South Africa at the Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology focused IT News Africa Innovation Dinner.
The magazine will be first available in South Africa then later expanded to Kenya and Nigeria. According to Wakama, African Innovator’s vision is becoming Africa’s premier ICT voice dealing with topics that influence people’s lives and the economy.
The magazine’s launch comes at a time when the print media is facing stiff competition from online media. Magazine sales have been dropping more than those of newspapers, notes the Guardian.
A report sourced from the Audit Bureau of Circulations shows magazine sales fell by nearly 10 percent in the first half of 2012. They totalled 26.4 million in the first six months of 2012, down from 29.1 million in January to June in 2011, a fall of 9.6 percent.
In 2007, 47.1 million magazines were sold during that period showing an alarming 44 percent drop in just five years. This has been pegged on the readers’ shift to online real-time news.
Wakama however remains adamant that African Innovator is uniquely focusing on impact of ICT in Africa, which few are covering.
He says there are several ICT publications on technology althoughvery few offer insight on innovations in Africa and their impacts on the lives of Africans.
“Our objective is to empower senior executives and decision makers with information that is relevant to any sized operation within an environment that is constantly changing,” he said.
Basing on a 2011 Deloitte survey, with the rise in the number of tablet devices, 88 per cent of the respondents preferred reading print copies of magazine content in 2011, a proportion unchanged since 2010.
The magazine will be delivered to selected senior executives in the private and public sectors making it a better means of reaching industry decision makers on the continent.
MTN, NetApp and Dimension Data are some of the new magazine’s early advertising partners.
