The Associated Press (AP) recently announced a new collaboration with African news channels, eNCA and Africa 24. AP clients can now download a broad range of video news from across the African continent, and utilise exclusive access to stories from eNCA. This user-ready content will be available to all AP Video Hub subscribers, providing them with in-depth news stories that were previously unable to access.
This service is now live and enables AP Video Hub customers to access an additional ten new pan-African stories each day. Together, this pooling of ready-to-use video news will enable subscribers to utilise a growing catalogue of content from both channels, plus a broad range of UGC and social content from Sub-Saharan partners in addition to AP’s own coverage of stories from Africa. News, lifestyle, regional and feature stories will be available to download.
eNCA is a South African independent 24-hour TV news channel and through this exclusive collaboration their content will be made available internationally by AP Video Hub. This will showcase an average of 120 new stories each month and will be updated daily to provide the most up-to-date content for subscribers. With bureaus across South Africa and a network of contributors across Africa and beyond, the company produces and distributes an array of award-winning multimedia and multi-lingual news content.
Africa24 Media is the first 24-hour channel, seven days a week, to provide news from across the continent. It is a pan-African online media agency that connects the rest of the world with content production resources and information from and about Africa. This new partnership will make available around 100 new stories every month.
Paul Shanley, director of business development and partnerships at AP, said: “We are delighted to be partnering with eNCA and Africa24 Media. Until now, news stories from across Africa have been hard to access overseas, but we are providing our clients with effective and time-saving means of gaining a wealth of user-ready content; from eyewitness journalism and personal stories to entertainment and sport.’
Timothy Spira, general manager of eNCA online said, “We are excited to be working with AP to get eNCA’s unique content out to a wider audience. It has been clear to us for some time that there is demand across the globe for independent video reportage from South Africa and the southern African region. With its solid pedigree and network of top-tier broadcasters and online publishing clients, AP’s Video Hub will make it far easier for anyone looking for such content to discover and acquire it.’
Africa24 commented: “Africa24 Media is proud to have a new platform which gives media around the world an opportunity to tell unique stories about our continent. With AP’s global reach and Africa24’s creative storytelling and high quality production values, viewers around the world will soon be seeing a new view of Africa as a talented, developing, dynamic place to be.”
AP Video Hub will continue to develop its partner relationships across Africa to give customers greater access to African stories and content. Video Hub launched in 2012 to address the increase in demand from online publishers for video news. The platform was an industry first, providing access to AP world news, entertainment, sport and lifestyle video, as well as combining breaking news with relevant footage from AP’s historic archive. The result was the development of richer online storytelling for online publishers, who do not usually have the technical infrastructure to handle satellite news feeds.
