By Sorie Sudan Sesay, London.
The Marketing Manager of the renowned world television network MTV, Jennifer Griffiths, today, Wednesday, 11th, February 2009, expressed her company’s interest in selling Sierra Leone in order to attract British and other foreign investments into the country through the media.
Griffith was speaking during a courtesy call on the Deputy High Commissioner of the Sierra Leone High Commission at the mission’s 41 Eagle Street, Holborn office.
She said through their television network, they hope to push forward the existing ties between Sierra Leone and Britain as well as the international world as a whole.
“Sierra Leone has not got the attention it deserves in the international media - if you ask a typical Londoner now where is Sierra Leone, what’s the name of the capital city or who the President is, they will tell you they don’t know,” said Griffith, who also said they already have a team of 50 people including researchers, freelancers and specialist editors who have taken up the task of rebranding the image of Sierra Leone.
On the contrary, according to Griffiths, “I can tell you every Londoner or European is interested in travelling to Barbados, Jamaica or South Africa for holiday and these are countries not better than Sierra Leone but because the international media is doing a great media job for them, they have been attracting investment.”
She said: “everybody is talking war, war, war about Sierra Leone which is not good for development.”
Having established in some other African countries, Griffiths believes her company is determined to put that war stigma behind Sierra Leone now and for all”.
Griffiths said her company is not looking at the financial gains for now, but they will be happy to take the credit at the end of the day.
“We want to put the rebranding of Sierra Leone into mainstream television broadcast in order to attract massive investment into the country,” she said.
According to her, with massive British and foreign investment into Sierra Leone, there will be no talk of coups or chaos in the country because these countries will not sit and allow their multi-million investment to go down the drains.
She believes Africans themselves cannot portray the good side of their countries because nobody will believe them, but the international world would be convinced when they see white people behind the screen portraying the good side of Sierra Leone.
Griffiths said, as part of their projects, their first task will be to cement the ties between Britain and Sierra Leone and when once that is done, they can now go ahead and organise conferences involving prominent investors and all other activities of the President and his government for broadcast.
Comments