Michael’s contribution to Africa comes not just in the form of this [US-Africa Business Forum] summit, but through his latest commitment of $10 million that he made just this February to African countries to build media capacity with a business focus and to promote reliability in reporting, educational opportunities, and the transparencies that markets need in order to give capital confidence to grow.

Reliable data and financial analysis bring transparency to markets and promote sound economic development – and they can help keep Africa growing and creating opportunity.

It will establish the missing link in the development of financial and business journalism, and infuse the genre with the requisite professionalism, ethical and normative values as expressed in international best practices.

This effort to deepen the coverage of complex issues holds the promise of advancing good governance and transparency, strengthening civil society organizations and providing the citizens of South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria with crucial information to bolster their democracies.

We are very excited to see the start of this new phase of the Bloomberg Media Initiative Africa Financial Journalism Training program. The Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) is proud to partner with Bloomberg in helping equip a global talent pool of journalists with the sort of specialist expertise that can drive them towards attaining a high level of professional excellence. This is the basis of a robust, ethical, independent press, which now seems to be more critical than ever.

We are excited about this initiative and believe the platform will enhance the capacity of beneficial journalists in analyzing government fiscal and economic policies and in turn educate the Ghanaian and African populace with accurate reporting. With the right information, the citizenry and other stakeholders will be better prepared for active citizenship.