South Africa: Soccer World Cup 2010

The World Cup Finals 2010 are the sporting and media event of the decade, not just for South Africa, but for the entire continent. All over the world, the 2010 World Cup will be the main talking point. For six weeks, millions of people will look to Africa in anticipation and expectation.

This is a big opportunity for African journalists to use football to transport a new, different image of Africa. An image not characterized by civil wars, natural disasters, famine and epidemics - issues the world often associates with Africa.

This is why DW Akademie is planning a special, purely practically-orientated seminar for television and Internet journalists to coincide with the World Cup 2010. A total of 17 journalists from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America will be taking part. They will form internationally mixed teams and report on the media mega-event that is the World Cup. They will produce modern, cross-media formats - the latest sports news, interesting background pieces, entertaining magazine-style reports and Internet-friendly online content. This special, intercultural collaboration will benefit the local population because the internationally mixed teams will have novel, subtle and diverse perspectives on Africa.

Many TV and radio broadcasters in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America will also benefit from this DW Akademie training course. Under normal circumstances, financial and logistical constraints would prevent them from sending their own correspondents to South Africa. Therefore, the participants will also be tasked with sending home the World Cup reports they put together every day as part of the workshop for broadcasting by their home stations.

The respective home broadcasters will also have access to a specially created Internet portal. For the entire duration of the World Cup Finals, it will be updated with the latest articles, photos, sound bites and TV reports. This Internet portal, set up for the DW Akademie training course, will also be accessible for any other interested users.