SADC Executive Secretary, H.E Dr. Stergomena Lawrence Tax this morning held a consultative meeting with Editors-in-Chief of Gaborone based media houses to explore ways to cultivate, strengthen and broaden cooperation between SADC Secretariat and the media industry in the region.
Dr. Tax said the media are the greatest custodians of SADC information and enlightenment – a crucial tool that must be employed in shaping the process towards regional integration and development. “You are entrusted with the instruments that are necessary to build media capacity to enable the people of our region to understand issues of regional integration and create awareness and visibility of SADC in the regional integration”, she said.
She said the gap between what SADC does and what the members of the public get to know is wide. “This gap needs to be eradicated to enable popular participation in SADC regional agenda” said Dr. Tax.
The meeting is the first engagement between the Secretariat and Botswana based media to re-think and re-engineer the manner in which the citizens of the region can easily access information on and about SADC.
