Foreign correspondents are an increasingly rare species and especially unaffordable for African news organisations. For on-the-ground reporting, we need to embrace models for sharing content about our continent - content not produced by the Western newswires, but by local correspondents. 

Gone are the “glory days” of the foreign correspondent. The white man with the notebook, sitting under the swaying palm of a once grand colonial-era hotel, double whisky in one hand and pen in the other as he languidly composes his latest despatch from a sweaty, war-torn African country is a rare, if not extinct, breed. These days, a foreign correspondent needs to be able to write the story, record the podcast, take the pictures, comment on live TV and radio, and blog, all the while remembering to constantly update the Facebook page (and the Twitter feed, if our intrepid reporter is really on the ball). The foreign correspondent must analyse the situation, get the interviews, record the facts and maintain impartiality throughout.

And even when all this is done, they still can’t retire to the bar and accept a cool, refreshing lager from a liveried native. For, unless they are among the very few employed by one of the big media beasts, they now have to sell the story; contact the various editors with whom they have a relationship, pitch to the ones with whom they want to have a relationship, convince them all that the story is important, pray that the story runs and then pray they’ll actually pay. Finally, after a long, exhausting day, a drink might be in order (unless, of course, the foreign correspondent finds himself in one of the major hotspots of the world – say Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen or Somalia – where a fresh orange juice is usually the strongest beverage on the menu), and the foreign correspondent can relax and savour the fact that their story is comprehensive and up-to-date.

But, of course, the story is neither comprehensive nor up-to-date. What is comprehensive and up-to-date is the virtual army (virtual in the sense of online; these are very real people, often taking real risks) of bloggers, tweeters and amateur photographers who are inevitably, on the strength of their numbers if nothing else, better informed and better placed than the foreign correspondent.

So much of the news from the revolution in Egypt came via Twitter that when the Internet was cut, Google and Twitter teamed up and rolled out an emergency speak-to-tweet service, allowing Egyptians to phone in their tweets. A number of excellent Egyptian bloggers also filled in many of the details of how the revolution started and what was happening, as well as excellent analysis. These became so influential that The Guardian gave Egyptian bloggers almost equal billing to its own reporters on its live blog. Even Al Jazeera, despite having an excellent presence on the ground, relied heavily on footage sent in from ordinary people using digital cameras or cellphones.

We are perhaps moving towards a time when foreign correspondents are obsolete – after all, why send a person at vast expense and grave personal risk into Libya when much the same information can be gathered through social media networks?

Of course, from the point of view of the news organisation, nothing beats having your own eyes and ears on the ground. The benefit of being there in person is to collect your own impressions, interviews, facts, and stories and to follow any opportunities that may arise – and they almost always do. But foreign correspondents are extremely expensive – a luxury in this strained media economy – and most African media outlets simply cannot afford them.

But a couple have made a plan. AllAfrica.com, the continent’s biggest pan-African English website, relies almost exclusively on content generated by in-country media. It has a stable of newspapers across the continent whose content it syndicates. If there's a Zimbabwean story on the site, it will usually be from a Zimbabwean newspaper. This is a good model, but relies on the quality (and impartiality) of the in-country media - a risk the website minimises by careful curation, but a risk nonetheless.

Global Voices, a website which is not Africa-specific, but has a strong African focus, approaches the problem from a different angle. It gets news directly from the blogosphere, with dedicated and usually country-specific bloggers who themselves get most of their stories from other blogs. It’s designed to be a place that rationalises the mayhem of the social media world, but is also an excellent news source in its own right. It was one of the first major websites to report on the recent demonstrations in Gabon, which had received no coverage in the mainstream press.

Contrast these approaches with that of the SABC. Two years ago, when Snuki Zikalala ploughed millions into the failed experiment that was SABC News International, a large proportion of the channel’s running costs was its insistence on having fully fledged bureaus  in cities all over Africa and the world (including, ridiculously, Jamaica because, apparently, African television audiences always need more features on Bob Marley and the perils of marijuana). The foreign bureaus were a status symbol, but ultimately unviable.

Similarly, permanent foreign correspondents are unviable for the vast majority of African publications. But there are alternatives. If Africa is to start taking its news into its own hands, it needs to get creative and start looking at non-traditional media models. There is no reason why African newspapers can’t do, on a more localised scale, what Global Voices and AllAfrica do. It’s not very expensive and will immediately decrease reliance on Western wire services, meaning more of Africa’s news is produced by Africans for Africans. This will help us all understand what’s happening on our own continent and enable us to decide for ourselves what stories are important to us. But before this can happen, Africa’s journalists need to embrace the new technology and their editors need to let them run with it. FAM

South African Simon Allison is currently a foreign correspondent in Hargeisa, Somaliland.