Birame Faye, the coordinator of the Panos Institute in West Africa, announced last Thursday that the institute wants, in collaboration with UNESCO, to advocate for legislative and regulatory reform aimed at encouraging Internet giants, known as GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft), to the monetization of content produced by African media

A workshop to return a study on the legal framework relating to the takeover and exploitation of media content in Senegal by GAFAM was held last week. On the occasion, the coordinator of the Panos Institute said: “we want to examine the various laws, such as the press code, the advertising code, the copyright law, the information society orientation law, existing regional directives to verify whether there are provisions that provide for payments” granted to content creators, especially the media.

For the latter, “the workshop aims to improve the knowledge of the community of media, institutional and cultural actors, of the framework relating to the exploitation of their content in order to engage them in advocacy for legislative and regulatory reform aimed at ; protect the creation of content against the commercial action of digital platforms”.

According to Birame Faye, this initiative aims to strengthen the viability of media in West Africa in the face of increased competition from content platforms such as GAFAM, TikTok, Opera News, etc., which aggregate and distribute online content from various sources. The focus is on improving legal frameworks in Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire to better protect local media.