The question is whether the Media Development and Diversity Agency is making any progress in creating an enabling environment for media development and
diversity? If not, why not? If so, what are the relevant details? And, whether any programmes and initiatives that are intended to assist in developing community media and small commercial media which are based in the rural areas and advance gender diversity, especially in commercial media, have been initiated by the MDDA in the past five years?
The reply is that, the MDDA enables the environment for media development through its grant funding capacity development and awareness raising campaigns. Through this, an environment for media development and diversity has been enabled overtime. This is confirmed by an independent study which was commissioned by the MDDA in December 2017. The study confirms that the agency has channelled resources to the community and small commercial sector. This has widened the base of community print and radio in the country. This has contributed immensely in providing media and information to historically disadvantaged communities across provinces. However, MDDA is in the process of developing other communities such as the deaf community as well as other indigenous languages by funding them as special projects.
The second challenge has been the underfunding of the MDDA. This does not allow the MDDA latitude to finance all proposals in the
country. Despite all this, MDDA has and continues to focus on supporting community and small commercial print project owned by women, youth and persons living with disabilities. Yes, the MDDA has projects in various rural communities and the following are some of the projects that have been supported through funding and capacity building over the past five years.
The first one is community print projects such as Rise and Shine Disability Magazine, owned by four disabled women based in Mdantsane in the Eastern Cape. The second one is in Bushbuckridge news based in the Ehlanzeni District Municipality in Mpumalanga. The third one is EzaKwaZulu News, distributed in KwaZulu-Natal. The fourth one is SMME News which focuses on assisting small business development which is based in KwaDukuza Local Municipality in KwaZulu-Natal. The fifth one is the Eastern Cape Women's Magazine based in OR Tambo District Municipality. The sixth one is Siyapagang Newspaper based in Zeerust in the North West province. This is just a few we are naming. Thank you.